Life is a Hologram of HologramsThe popularization of the Holographic Paradigm as conceived by physicist David Bohm and neurologist Karl Pribram began in the 1970s, and carried into the '80s with the publication of Bohm's WHOLENESS AND THE IMPLICATE ORDER.
Based on the work of Northrup & Burr, the less well-known, yet concurrent development of "A Holographic Concept of Reality" (1973), by Miller, Webb, Dickson was published in Krippner's PSYCHOENERGETIC SYSTEMS. A follow up, "Embryonic Holography" (1973, Miller & Webb] suggests that DNA is the projector of the biohologram, both at the cellular level and the whole-organismic level.
The holographic theory's evolution in scientific and philosophical thought was followed by ReVision Journal, and summarized by Ken Wilber in the classic of New Science literature, THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM AND OTHER PARADOXES (1982). Consciousness Restructuring Process is related to this theory in Iona Miller's "The Holographic Paradigm and CRP: Explication, Ego-Death and Emptiness" published in CHAOSOPHY '93.
The gist of the holographic theory is that: "Our brains mathematically construct 'concrete' reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension, a realm of meaningful, patterned primary reality that transcends time and space. The brain is a hologram, interpreting a holographic universe." Pribram postulates a neural hologram, made by the interaction of waves in the cortex, which in turn is based on a hologram of much shorter wavelengths formed by the wave interactions on the sub-atomic level. Thus, we have a hologram within a hologram, and the inter-relatedness of the two somehow gives rise to the sensory images.
There is a more fundamental reality which is an invisible flux that is not comprised of parts, but an inseparable interconnectedness. In this dynamic model, there are no "things" only energetic events. The holoflux includes the ultimately flowing nature of what is, and also of that which forms therein. Bohm speaks of "the source" as beyond both implicate (enfolded) and explicate (unfolded) realms.
We can imagine Source as the coherent Light which illuminates and objectifies the implicate realm. In a more recent commentary, Fred Alan Wolf (1991) comments on the possible roots of "shamanic physics" and the holographic concept in relation to two shamanic notions: visionary or mythic reality, and the sense of universal connection.
In brief, according to the transactional interpretation of quantum physics, these invisible quantum waves of probability originate in the present, in the past, and in the future. For any event to manifest, these waves coming from the future and the present or from the past and the present must interfere with each other in the present. The pattern of that interference then creates matter and energy as we perceive them. Somehow shamans were able to see to either the past or the future source of those waves. In this manner they were able to construct visions that had mythic proportions and appeared to them as archetypes in the Jungian sense.
Above it was suggested that perhaps supraliminally coherent energy oscillations, when "slowed" within the temporal limitations of finite reality (ranging from 186,000 miles per second to near-zero velocity), would lose their coherency and separate into their polar opposites forming interference waves. This idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds because a subliminal version of such a phenomenal process is currently being accomplished in research laboratories.
Physicists have found that particles can be "trapped" using a combination of laser beams and magnetic energy field, and thus slowed-down, or cooled to a temperature approaching absolute zero. At this point, which seems to represent the infinitely slow, dark end of our spacetime continuum, energy oscillations seem to stop and particles all merge into one large particle-soup, the subliminal energies of which the "cold, dark matter" (the void) of our universe is composed.
In this energy state, known as the Bose-Einstein condensate, "the wave nature of each atom is precisely in phase with that of every other." These condensates were created in the lab winning the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics. Quantum mechanical waves extend across the sample of condensate and can be observed with the naked ye. The sub-microscopic thus becomes macroscopic (Cornell & Wieman, 1998, p. 40).
Another interesting and useful finding is that physicists are also currently developing communications technology using laser-beam-split particles, each half of which is known to carry and "aware of" the same identical energy-state information as its twin. In this coherent light beam, not only the beam is split but each photon. Thus, it is hoped that someday we will be able to send these microcosmic bits of energy zooming around inside computer chips serving in effect both as transmitters and receivers of information, much the same as do the messenger molecules of our mindbody (Smale, 1997).
Other physicists have actually succeeded "proving" that particles do not have distinctive properties until those properties are made distinct. In essence, they sent split-halves of particles flying off in opposite directions, a distance of nearly seven miles apart. They found that each time one of the halves was secretly detected and measured by a researcher at one end, the observing researcher at the other would see the half at his end "magically" manifesting itself at the same time with the same identical informational characteristics. In effect, it instantaneously experiences the same energy-pattern changes as its mate. This two-slit experiment has been replicated thousands of times by different researchers (Pool, 1998).
In other findings relevant to our claims, physicists have actually succeeded in creating a minuscule amount of matter from an enormous amount of energy by focusing an incredibly intense laser pulse of electromagnetically charged photons at a field of electrons moving at nearly the speed of light. As the laser beam approached the electrons, its photons absorbed so much energy from the interaction that they ricocheted off into what very quickly evolved into an electron and its anti-particle twin, a positron.
"The action is the reverse of the usual matter-antimatter annihilation: the blaze of energy [in this case] becomes matter" (Winters, 1997, p. 40). Furthermore, in another laboratory, researchers have developed an immensely durable mirror which could withstand the force of incredibly high-powered laser beams, out of "hot, electrically-charged has, also known as plasma....[I]t will behave the same way as a metal mirror"...but only for two-trillionths of a second at a time (Saunders, 1998, p.95).
And finally, behind all the observable light and matter in the universe, astronomers have now discovered a "faint, nearly uniform glow...about 2.3 times as bright as the visible universe" which they speculate seems to emanate from "some unidentified source...which generates two thirds of the light in the cosmos" (Wusser, 1998, p. 18). Thus, overall, modern science does seem to be distinguishing itself as a wonderful metaphor for its own creative origins; it seems as though researchers are peering into their microscopes and telescopes, perhaps "seeing" evidence of an infinite, pleromal "eye" staring back.
In his book, The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot (1991), among other things, explained three very important concepts reminiscent of Jung's Sermons and which consequently justify the above sojourns into the realms of science. The first topic was covered when parallels were drawn between the infinite and finite functions of pleromal and virtual energies.
The second is that of interference patterns, which Talbot describes as "the crisscrossing pattern that occurs when two or more waves....ripple through each other" (p. 14). In Sermons, for example, the very first interference patterns could be seen as those primordial energy wave frequency patterns which were created when the pleroma divided unperturbable, infinite energy into its mirrored, negatively- and positively-charged, life-and-death generating polarities. Others would have increasingly followed over time, as a natural consequence.
The third concept of this integrative summary encompasses the dynamics of the first two. Talbot offers up the following metaphor for the emergent phenomenon of our holographic universe, as seen from the perspective of a physicist's laboratory:
A hologram is produced when a single laser light is split into two separate beams. The first beam is bounced off the object to be photographed. Then the second beam is allowed to collide with the reflected light of the first. When this happens they create an interference pattern which is then recorded on a piece of film. To the naked eye the image on the film looks nothing at all like the object photographed. In fact, it even looks a little like the concentric rings that form when a handful of pebbles is tossed into a pond. But as soon as another laser beam...is shined through the film, a [lifelike] three-dimensional image of the original object reappears. (pp. 14-15)
This parallels with Jung's Sermons. First of all, laser light is also known as a "coherent light source in which all waves in the beam are in step [in perfect synchrony]" (Benton, 1998, p. 115). Imagine the pleroma as the source of all infinitely coherent light, "shining" itself into its own entropic womb where our temporo-spatial universe is given its life-potential as a single laser beam (Abraxas).
As it enters through the "beam-splitter" of this new temporo-spatial domain, its infinitely coherent energy is divided into its electromagnetically-charged paradoxical energy state distinctions, "god" and "devil." These magnificent energy beams are now independently oscillating at mutually reciprocal frequencies, each with the potential to "cancel" or diminish the effects of the other through the interference effects of their positive versus negative wave crests and troughs.
As these crests and troughs initially encounter one another's equally powerful effects, the tremendous tension between them generates the explosion from which our universe evolves. This "big bang," in effect represents an act of ultimate equilibration between infinitely coherent and finitely incoherent forces, the source of all known and unknown (all actual and virtual) equilibrative forces of our universe.
Meanwhile, the individual particles given birth during these events are now zooming around in different directions, each still containing the "remembered" reflection, its wholeness state of perfect energy coherence. Thus compelled by their own need for re-equilibration, they begin to interact vigorously with one another, each seeking to join up with others which can help it re-achieve a state of balanced wholeness. When their interactions finally electromagnetically attract those particle-partners whose energies create that perfect balance, they euphorically "disappear in a cloud of virtual light" for a tiny fraction of time before being recycled back into the imbalances of our asymmetrical, four-dimensional energy state.
Given this hypothetical set of events, the first holographic interference pattern created would have been reflected onto the ethereal "holographic film" of our finite universe. It then develops into the lifelike, three-dimensional, "god-like" qualities, or "effects" that infinite energy takes on within our finite reality (as Abraxas) when illuminated by the pure light of its own omniscient, infinite, pleromal energy source.
Thus, returned to our Sermons' metaphor, all of Jung's creatura, --god, the devil, and their "children," Eros and the Tree of Life -- can now be better understood as pleroma-Abraxas created holograms, whose functions and forms were intended to be made distinct from one another so that they could thus reciprocally interact as interference waves, and thereby regenerate themselves into increasingly complex developmental levels of distinctions.
Over time and space, it can be similarly imagined that the emergent function of the "rippling" effects of immense numbers of criss-crossing interference waves must have been -- must be-- one of making mutually interactive, or reciprocal, holographic projections of holographic projections. Talbot (1991), bootstrapping his thought from Pribram/Bohm, also implicates the unfolding of this kind of underlying "holomovement" dynamics within the universe.
Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time: The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe (p. 55). Put another way, the universe can now be understood as a continuously evolving, interactively dynamic hologram whose function it is to explicitly reflect through time and space the emergent effectiveness of its implicitly enfolded, infinitely holographic nature.
In "The Enfolding, Unfolding Universe," Bohm suggests that, "Consciousness is basically in the implicate order as all matter is, and therefore, it's not that consciousness is one thing and matter is another, but rather consciousness is a material process and consciousness is itself in the implicate order, as is all matter, and that consciousness manifests in some explicate order as does matter in general."
Further, David Bohm suggests psychological "atom-smashing" as a way of radically destructuring the ego, opening it to wider experience of the undivided whole. The holographic paradigm is one of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding of patterns of information (explication). The stream of images in CRP functions analogously to the unfolding of the stream of consciousness and the enfolding and de-structuring of the ego (ego death). Consciousness and matter share the same essence; their difference is one of degree of subtlety or density. "Emptiness" is an integral aspect of mind/matter. Chaos theory links all these elements as aspects of the archetypal healing process, which is facilitated by CRP. (Miller, Holographic Paradigm in CRP, 1993).
Remember, Jung said that we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. Weber is a little less ambiguous suggesting in the Holographic Paradigm that,
Psychological death occurs when consciousness keeps step with the ever-moving and self-renewing present, allowing no part of itself to become caught or fixated as residual energy. It is residual energy that furnishes the framework for what will become the thinker, who consists of undigested experience, memory, habit-patterns, identification, desire, aversion, projection and image-making. This is not a purely personal process but the energy of aeons of such processes sclerosed through time, persisting on both personal and collective levels. Ego-death dismantles this superstructure...
Ken Wilber cautions us not to jump on the mystical bandwagon which confuses the implicate order as the Source, the Tao, or even the mystic void. While the implicate reveals the holoarchy of the material level, this is as far as it goes--except as an analogy. The implicate is not transcendental to matter, but underlies it, as a coherent unity--it is still matter. It is analogous to "ecology" on the biological level.
Wilber states that, "the problem is that the quantum potential is merely tremendously huge in size or dimensions; it is not radically dimensionless, or infinite in the metaphysical sense. And you simply cannot equate huge in size, potential or actual, with that which is without size, or prior to any dimensions, high or low, subtle or gross, implicate or explicate."
To "worship" nature or mistake the immanence of wholeness in matter as the Ultimate Reality does not account for transcendent realities--it mistakes the creation for the creator. This is pantheism, reification of matter, animism. Arguably, pantheism is a confusion of two radically different domains--matter and spirit, according to Wilber's vision of the "perennial philosophy."
We could compare four aspects of the nonrepresentational voids as the
1). "Dead" Void: physical void (implicate order, frequency domain; QM's dynamic void; interstellar space); 2). the Emotional Void of the derepressing unconscious, with its empty trances and transitive moments between explicate states; 3). the mental or Existential Void, the imaginal realm, with its bliss states, ecstasies, and inspirations; and, 4). the spiritual or Mystic Void of objectless contemplation, transcendental unified state. In some mystical schools even this state is the not the Ultimate. They represent embedding, or progressively deeper phases of implication within a Reality which supersedes explication in any form.
Wilber notes that, There is a world of difference between the pre-temporal consciousness, which has no space and no time, and trans-temporal consciousness, which moves beyond space and time while still embracing it...This in no way proves that the holographic blur is not a transcendent state; it demonstrates that one cannot judge so on the basis of language correlations.
What physics has found is actually a unified interaction of material shadows; it discovered that various physical particulars are interrelated processes--but interrelated shadows aren't the Light. As for the implicate order, we saw it was actually a huge energy dimension; it wasn't radically dimensionless or metaphysically infinite.
Consciousness is information -- consciousness-in-forming -- the process of unfolding. The intensity of consciousness at any level is a function of the amount of information at that level (Battista, 1978). All of the potential information about the universe is holographically encoded in the spectrum of frequency patterns that constantly bombard us.
Through destructuring in meditation or process therapy, one quiets the brain becoming sympathetically in tune with (entrained to) this universal frequency pattern. When this occurs, the encoded information about the universe becomes holographically decoded, and the individual experiences a state of unitive consciousness with the entire universe.
Bohm suggests that we transform as eternity unfolds in us, but that eternity may also transform, as it returns to itself enriched by our participation. Bohm contends that the nonmanifest frequency realm is n-dimensional and atemporal, inconceivable to 3-dimensional thought. Bohm likens n-dimensional space to phase space, (ref. polyphasic consciousness).
He asserts that only when the individual has dissolved the 3-dimensional self consisting of gross matter, can the ground of our being flow through us unobstructedly. He extends this notion to psychology, urging us to dissolve the "thinker" as the highest priority the seeker for truth can undertake. He advocates a kind of "psychological atom-smashing," in which countless illusory egoic clusters (analogous to spasms that reduce the flow within the whole) are dissolved.
Knowledge consists in this theory of the process of tuning in on the manifestation (phenomenon) of the nonmanifest in order to make it accessible, through a state of consciousness which lies outside the barriers of the finite senses. Bohm maintains that this capacity exists in the universe, not in us strictly speaking.
However, "the challenge for the individual locus of consciousness is to provide the condition that allows the universal force to flow through it without hindrance. The result is not knowledge, in the Kantian sense, but direct nondualistic awareness..."
Its precondition is emptiness, as Bohm repeatedly insists, which entails a suspension of the Kantian categories and of 3-dimensional space-time. Such emptiness brings about the cessation of consciousness as the knower and transforms us into an instrument receptively allowing the noumenal intelligence to operate through us, irradiating our daily lives and those of others.
Consciousness & the Biohologram
Consciousness may be seen as a frame of electrical charges in motion such as electrons bombarding a television screen; personality is a time series of these scintillating frames of consciousness. Personality becomes a reverberating input-output pattern of self creation seeking information or patterns of energy from the environment as well as from its own memories. The personality never recreates itself but creates only a close approximation which is accepted due to the principle of constancy as being the same (Miller & Webb, 1973).
The phenomena of unique individuality and personal continuity depend on memory. Consciousness involves the most recent memory and thereby the most subject to erasure and loosening. Personality transformation becomes energy pattern modification of not only scintillating consciousness but also of recent circulating memories and older stored memories.
Thus consciousness can be conceptualized as an electronic phenomena occurring in the brain that involves both dynamic charges in motion and also stored structure (Tien, 1969). Referring to the mechanisms mentioned earlier, a very close connection between electronic activity and structure can be seen. A good deal of work on human psychological processes indicate that human beings are extremely sensitive to the various electromagnetic events in their environment.
It has been shown that stress can uncouple synchronized and harmonious biological rhythms resulting in pathological conditions for the organisms (Burr and Northrop, 1935). We are proposing that these biological systems can be resynchronized and recalibrated through conscious effort. The proposed mechanism for this influence has to do with the indicated coupling of these various external events to biological processes.
The amplifying effect of consciousness has also been seen to be relatable to the various electromagnetic occurrences in the brain. At a deeper level of analysis, it can be suggested that the field phenomena which we have been studying and working with are in fact more real, if that term can be used, than the particulate matter and various objects of which we have been speaking (Wheeler, 1959).
Briefly stated, the fields and particles may be themselves composed of empty curved space, trapping lines of electromagnetic force. This is the holographic concept of reality. The structural configurations themselves or the geometry of the fields and the particles are more fundamental than either the fields or the particles themselves.
The personality never recreates itself, but creates only a close approximation which is accepted due to the principle of constancy as being the same. The phenomena of unique individuality and personal continuity depend on memory, of which consciousness is the most recent and, thereby, the most subject to erasure and loosening. Personality transformation becomes energy pattern modification of not only scintillating consciousness but also of recent circulating memories and older stored memories of childhood.
According to the holographic model of reality, all the objects we can observe are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. All the objects of our world are three-dimensional images formed electro-magnetically, i.e., holograms. This concept and the models of human information processing based on the hologram, throw interesting light on the philosophical tradition which holds that the world of objects is an illusion. With the triumph of relativity and quantum physics, the interpenetration of the philosophical and the scientific is possible.
We propose that the "reality hologram" which appears as a stable world of material objects is the elementary particle which has a long-term existence and fairly simple rules of interaction. We also propose the existence of a "biohologram" which appears as mobile and evolving, through the DNA molecule. This "biohologram" projects a dynamic three-dimensional image that serves as a guiding matrix for the manipulation and organization of the "reality hologram."
Thus we have mobile self-organizing holograms moving through a relatively static simpler hologram. The possibility exists that such "bioholograms" could achieve sufficient coherence to continue existence as a pattern of radiant energy apart from a material substrate. We feel that such an occurrence could form the scientific basis of such psychoenergetic phenomena as psycho-kinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition. (Miller, Webb & Dickson, 1973).
Researchers have found that at the moment of ovulation there is a definite shift in the electrical fields of the body of the woman. The membrane in the follicle bursts and the egg passes down the fallopian tubes. As a sidenote, we feel that the phases of the moon quite probably influence the permeability of the membrane in the follicle, making it more likely that the egg will pass down the fallopian tubes at certain periods of time. The sperm is negative with respect to the egg. When the sperm and the egg unite, the membrane around the egg becomes hyper-polarized. It is at this moment that the electromagnetic entity is formed.
The fertilized egg cell contains all information necessary to create a complete operational human being. And furthermore, the biohologram begins to function at conception, and only ceases to function at death. So, perhaps conception is the proper place to mark the beginning of the individual.
The zygote begins to divide as it travels down the fallopian tube. It is quite possible that it navigates its passage partially by sensing the biohologram of the mother. And this may actually assist in approaching and attaching to the wall of the uterus.
As soon as attachment to the wall of the uterus is complete, the zygote begins the process of establishing the linkage with the mother's circulatory system that will permit the passage of blood carrying important nutrients into the zygote. The womb is a special electronic environment in which an electrolytic solution provides an excellent framework for electromagnetic effects which are necessary in the development of the egg.
With the formation of the neural tube, one end (the end that is in the center of the embryonic disk) begins to expand and enfold, twist, and develop itself into a system of complex tissues in complicated geometrical structures, which will become the structure of the brain of the creature. It is our contention that the brain is necessary and the nervous system is necessary for the development of the creature. It is one of the earliest formations and is prior to the generation of most of the structure of the body.
Our contention is that the DNA at the center of each cell creates the multi-cellular creature hologram by influencing the DNA in the center of the cells. Initially, the problem of development centers around the flow of materials through space, and the establishment of material structure at discrete locations in space. (Miller & Webb, 1973).
We believe that the biohologram projected by the embryonic nervous system forms a three-dimensional pattern of resonant structures; including points, lines, and planes that electromagnetically behave as the acoustic waves - the material waves - of the drumhead. In other words, these electromagnetic points, lines and planes form locations of no movement. Essentially the matter that is flowing, the electrolytic solutions that are flowing, that have been drawn from the blood of the mother, are caused to move rhythmically through the developing embryo. As they reach certain points, lines and planes their motion stops. This is where structures are laid down and built up. This process is the key to embryonic holography.
The zygote acts like a three-dimensional nozzle. Electrolytes from the blood stream of the mother flow through this nozzle and into the cymatic structure of standing wave patterns distributed through space inside the embryo and becomes fixed, solidified structures. This accounts for the different zones and the separation of the zones of the different kinds of tissue groups.
The picture is completed by the effects of the biohologram on the DNA of the cells that have formed along with the migration of the substances. You have an actual migration of cells, and a migration of substances throughout the embryo that take up locations dependent upon resonant structures of standing wave patterns. The cells, having arrived at their proper location and beginning to involve themselves with the materials and the fluids that are flowing in the three-dimensional nozzle are then specified in their particular tissue nature by the biohologram being projected by the nervous system.
They are refined and developed as their genome is shut down until only the DNA that operates in a particular cell is just that DNA which defines the structure and operation of that particular kind of tissue group. So, through a complex interaction of three-dimensional electromagnetic fields rapidly dividing cells and a flow of electrolytes that is directed by the field but also feeds back on the field and influences it, a multi-cellular organism achieves the proper structure that will permit it to exist apart from the specialized environment of the womb.
As long as the biohologram is functioning properly, as long as the nervous system is continuing to coordinate and project the complex three-dimensional fields that support the biological processes in the organism, the organism survives. When the biohologram ceases to function properly, the organism suffers. And when the principle action of the biohologram stops, the organism dies. If there is any scientific correlate to the concept of Soul, it is most probably this bioholographic pattern system. It is composed of the ultimate stuff of the universe, electromagnetic field energy.
Which does not die in the sense that creatures die, so it fulfills the attribute of the Soul of being immortal in that sense. However, the pattern does change with growth, with learning, with experience, and with age. So there is a development of the Soul or the electromagnetic field entity.
It is conceivable, although a great deal more research needs to be done, that the electromagnetic field entity might be capable of an independent existence which would form the basis for the concept of life after death. However, a free electromagnetic field entity without a biophysiological matrix might have a difficult time in interacting with creatures, such as ourselves, that are still utilizing the biophysiological matrix. (Miller & Webb, 1973).
The Holographic "Enchanted Loom"
The conscious brain has been described as an "enchanted loom," and as such, can be metaphorically framed within the four dimensions of its finite universe. Its attention-shuttle is empowered by various combinations of energy frequencies as they equilibratively oscillate back and forth across the warp-threads of its neural net. "Enchanted loom" takes on a whole new meaning , however, when it is incorporated into the holographic paradigm. A holographic enchanted loom would simultaneously record each of its state-dependent memories across the entire warp and woof of its structure and upon each single thread on the loom.
Thus, each strand of energy patterns from which one's conscious picture of life is woven would contain, in its entirety, the ever-changing consciousness of the whole life-tapestry. And indeed, as will soon be made clear, this does seem to be how our magnificent brain works at its most fundamental level, --as a holographic frequency analyzer.
The process begins with our five senses, which have all been found to process information holographically, according to Talbot (1991) who explains that the transference of new information from one part of the body to another is accomplished via a mathematical language which physicists call "Fourier transforms." As Talbot explained it, this universal language is used at the quantum level of our existence to communicate descriptions of the dynamically interactive temporo-spatial relationships, or current energy-pattern states, of our wave forms.
What [experimenters] found was that the brain cells...responded to Fourier translations of [energy wave] patterns...The brain was using Fourier mathematics, --the same mathematics holography employed, --to convert visual [and other sensory] images into the Fourier language of wave forms. (p. 28).
He went on to describe how physicist Carl Pribram had earlier worked through the problem of how our body communicates with itself by imagining what would happen if it were to convert all of its memories and learned skills into a language of interference wave forms. "Such a brain would be much more flexible and could shift its stored information around with the same ease that a skilled pianist transposes a song from one musical key to another" (Talbot, 1991, p. 24). He further theorized that once something was thus memorized as a particular combination of wave forms, (as a holographic form) it could be recalled and/or examined from about any viewing angle or perspective desired. Much subsequent research has supported his theories.
Talbot goes on to describe the mathematics which were developed in order to describe the functions of wave forms. He explains that Fourier transforms are a mathematically symbolic way of converting any pattern, no matter how complex, into a language of simple wave frequency formulas. These wave formulas can then be converted back into their original wave patterns, much like a television camera converts images into electromagnetic frequencies, and then the television set changes them back into their original image.
Therefore, as Candace Pert (1997; 1990) and others implied earlier in this paper, our mind-body seems to be a magnificently complex, holographic frequency analyzer which has also been observed speaking to itself, by way of its messenger molecules, in Fourier transform "tongues."
The phenomenon of energy transduction, in terms of Jung's Sermons via Zukav's quantum mechanics, began way back at the beginning of the universe when pleromal energy waves begat Abraxas energy waves. These in turn begat both the energy waves of which all subsequent life has been composed, and the stressor-- "anti-energies' by which one's life forces are consumed.
The key to both the long-term and the short-term survival of this whole energy-transducing process seems to be found in the concept of regeneration, wherein new life energy resources are appropriated for oneself through adaptive mind-body commerce with the Tree of Life. As Rossi's (1993) theories implied earlier, when one's relaxed energies become focused and centered within this regenerative process, creation of new energy is facilitated in the form of something-for-nothing virtual energy exchanges between one's infinite and infinite states.
In addition to what we learned earlier from Rossi about the mind-body's ultradian healing-response, he also explained that when life stress is psychically perceived as the challenge to be met rather than as distress to be escaped from, the body alters its biochemistry in order to meet the challenge presented to it by releasing only the needed catecholamine neurotransmitters. This is turn creates an optimal state within the body for creative problem-solving.
When stimuli are perceived as distressing, however, the body also produces cortisol. It immediately increases arousal within the body-mind to levels which reduce--or completely block--one's attentional focusing abilities, and thus limit problem-solving capacities, ability to discriminate, emotional intelligence, his health, --all levels of resilience. "Cortisol is probably one of the most violent immunodepressants there is" (Sapse, 1977, quoted in Fackelman, 1977, p. 350).
The point here is that when we believe that we are equal to the challenges life presents us (where no cortisol is causing hyperarousal states), we seem to enter into a creative "zone" where the mind-body actually generates more energy reserves for itself. It is as though, at this apex of our human-beingness, or enery-wave frequency distinctiveness, -- the state where mind energy has to creatively stretch itself in order to meet the demands of its body, or body-energy must stretch in order to meet its mind's demands, or where mind-body energy is just generally being stretched by its mind-body challenges, --that we actually seem to become more alive.
It is as though accepting the challenge to stretch and grow alters the state of our mind-body in a way that focuses all of our energies on solving the problems at hand, with faith that the energy will be available to meet the challenge. Somehow, this act of staying faithfully focused on our goal communicates that need for energy restoration in a way that actually facilitates its regeneration as needed (Sears, 1995).
It makes sense that increased levels of highly focused energy--or increased energy-wave frequency distinctiveness -- leads to increased levels of quantum energy exchanges, which lead to increased levels of residual virtual energy from which new actual energies can be made.
This, in its most fundamental essence is what the ultradian healing response (formerly biorhythms) is all about. It is the regular, daily rebalancing of our mind-body state so that it can holographically regenerate itself. It does this through the creative production --and transduction --of virtual-to-actual energy wave frequencies and interference patterns into better coping skills, or emotionally intelligent, resiliently equilibrative neural structures. These enhanced neural pathways in turn facilitate the efficacious transduction of information and energy patterns through all the levels of one's being.
Looking from another angle, it could be assumed that every time one accepts a life stressor as a challenge and thus in effect lowers his stimulus threshold in order to allow more creative information (energy wave patterns) into his mind-body, he increases his problem-solving, adaptive capacities and along with them his sense of self-efficacy.
Thus, the next time an even bigger stressor confronts him, he will have been effectively "stretched" enough psychologically to take on this even bigger challenge and become even more "alive." This is how moral consciousness grows as one individuates into an increasingly distinct, whole individual, and how that whole individual, in turn, generates increased morally-conscious energy back into the body of the collective. And that, ultimately, is the Tao of resilience.
Take a look at the architectural energy-pattern structures from which our reality seems to derive its temporo-spatial form. Among other theorists, Tom Stonier (1990, cited in Rossi, 1995) has identified information transduction as being the organizational principle behind the structure of our universe. Stonier, however, claims he has mathematically established information as the equivalent of matter and energy, each of which he sees as being ultimately transducable into the others. He also explains that
organized systems exhibit resonances. Resonances lead to oscillations. Oscillations represent time cycles during which changes may be introduced. Such changes may dampen or amplify the existing oscillations. Alternatively, they may create new resonances and excite new sets of oscillations. The more complex the system, the greater the likelihood of introducing change into the system during any given cycle. Hence the exponential growth of information (p. 41).
More on this later. For now we will make another quantum leap to a related line of thinking called "string theory," or more accurately "the M-theory of Everything." "M" is said to stand for either "Magic, Mystery or Membrane, according to taste (Witten, 1996, cited in Duff, 1998, p. 64). This theory gives us a useful new metaphor as Duff goes on to describe some of its terms.
A particle, which has zero dimensions, sweeps out a one-dimensional trace, or 'worldline,' as it evolves in space-time. Similarly a string--having one dimension, length--sweeps out a two-dimensional 'worldsheet.' and a membrane--having two dimensions, length and breadth--sweeps out a three-dimensional 'world volume.' (p. 65)
'Spin,' or inherent angular momentum, which we briefly touched on earlier, is the way physicists describe the way particles appear to be rotating even thought they really are not. It is actually more like the idea of spin which is inferred from the trajectory of particles through space (Zukav, 1979). According to Duff (1998), laws of "supersymmetry" require that each particle of a particular spin must have "a particle with the same mass but half-integer spin" (p.64) which is a technical way of saying that particles must have anti-particles in order for our universe to make logical sense, which it as yet does not.
Since researchers have never found such a symmetrical particle-partner, they assume that is merely because it cannot be seen. Since the state of supersymmetry implies a balance of gravitational forces, this new paradigm also further validates many of the ontological views expressed earlier in this work, since it proposes that all four of the elemental forces (gravity, the electromagnetic force, the nuclear force, and the weak force) are ultimately just different phenomenal aspects of their mutual, virtual energy-exchange origins.
M-theory proposes a number of possible scientific explanations for the origins of everything, but the one most useful for our purposes here is called the "T-duality" theory. This growing paradigm, in a very concise nutshell, sees the universe as existing simultaneously at both microcosmic and macrocosmic reality levels as parallel universes, one the reciprocal, or inverse function, of the other. Harking back to the past, the ancients also thought so and expressed this truism in the alchemical maxim, "As Above; So Below."
In other words, it portrays the energy of both these realities as existing in two simultaneous states which Duff called the "Duality of Dualities" (p. 67). One of these energy states is called its "vibrating" state and the other is called its "winding" state. Loosely translated, this points back to oscillation frequencies (waves) and their related states of energic tension, called particles, -- or in this case, the energy-pattern traces called strings, which are made by particles vibrating across space and time. Significantly, Duff reports that the physicists are hoping to use "known" characteristics about our observable universe in order to infer the unknown reciprocal characteristics of their proposed alternate reality. Put in terms even more useful for purposes here, they believe that the energy information which exists in one of these dual reality dimensions is humanly transducable into its paradoxically mirrored, reciprocal state. And that is pretty much what this whole work has been trying to say.
As living beings, we exist paradoxically within a dual state of dual states as both the finite, living products of interactions between particle and wave/matter and energy/body and mind, and the infinitely interactive process from which all of those dual-state living products arose.
In other words, the proposed invisible 'reciprocal dimension' has already made itself knowable within our reality as the virtual/actual informational energy-exchange by means of which we communicate as both messenger and receiver in order to become more harmoniously and resiliently evolved. So, in effect, physicists are "reinventing the wheel" here,--but that is okay; they too need to intuit truth via those metaphors within which they are best prepared to see it. The creative interactions of our many paradigms, philosophies, and religions are vital to the evolution of collective consciousness.
For example, physicists'' "matrix theory" also provides further validation of our holographic theories of everything. According to Duff (1998), they evidently imagine the phenomena of quantum energy dynamics as an infinite number of criss-crossings of energy-wave strings forming an immense, hypothetical matrix upon which numerical coordinates are meaningless, and where "points" on this matrix are themselves matrices which "do not commute,--that is, xy does not equal yx" (p. 69). Not only is Cartesian logic being replaced here by something very similar to the holographic, Fourier-transformational reality metaphors discussed earlier, but cutting-edge physics is again supporting a key point of this work:
Our four-dimensional reality state seems to be simultaneously gazing into and reciprocally interacting with a quantum mirror-image of itself where sequentially-ordered informational states do not commute. That is to say, because of the temporo-spatial limitations of finite reality, the energy sequences through which we communicate our information/energy states must oscillate up and down as well as from left to right, at varying frequencies.
These sequential properties of matter do not perfectly commute into their energy equivalents within our reality, but rather, they create the reversed, paradoxical mirror image which, in effect, stabilizes life energies in their finite evolutionary state. This is probably why infinite virtual energy exchanges (of which we, as evolving by-products of their electromagnetic interactions are fundamentally composed), when they are not able to be perfectly completed within their finite, "actual"--mirrored states, return so infinitely quickly to this "actual" state -- for further self-correction.
From these quantum energy-metaphors we have now also found a more efficient way of imagining how energy takes on its 3-dimensional shape as it moves through the temporal dimension of our reality: Dimenionless virtual/actual particles vibrate across time, forming two-dimensional waves, which oscillate across time in various geometric shapes, which in turn move about in all four dimensions like invisible duct-work energy tunnels.
As energy becomes increasingly ordered into evolving patterns of evolving patterns, it begin to electromagnetically manifest as matter. This concept of shaped energy will "shape" the conceptual contents of the next section of this paper. {Add on CNV here?}
From Strings and Membranes to Struts and Cables
It has been established that a particle has no measurable dimensions in our reality, but is merely a hypothetical entity with the potential to have mass (energy) as one of its characteristics. So, it is really just a symbol that we use to describe the movement, or interactive relationships of energy within our four-dimensional reality. One of the ways we are here describing life in our reality zone is as an elaborate energy/information-transducing process whose purpose it is to enable us as its chief frequency-modulators, to become more highly conscious of, and thus individuated within, that process.
It seems fitting to conclude this theory by also metaphorming a mechanically stable energy-reinforcing structure upon which this process can take shape. And, since energy particles can now be imagined to exist as potential shapes in space, it follows that there must be some rules and regulations that its virtual energy shapes must follow in order to become actuated.
According to the fundamental laws of physics as described by Ian Stewart (1998), nature likes to conserve, or minimize, the energy it has to expend in order to do its work. The original proponent of this view was Buckminster Fuller, who expressed it mathematically and philosophically in his tour de force, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) and Synergetics II (1979).
Fuller discovered Nature's own rules of assembly. His vision was founded on the geometry of close-packed spheres, which can be found in the nuclei of all atoms. In fact, there is much to link the nature of Fuller's primary modules, the self-assembling tetrahedron and the Vector Equilibrium Matrix to the virtual vacuum or quantum foam, Jung's pleroma.
Nature's own economy and minimalism is the reason why: (a) "the surface of smallest area that encloses a given volume is a sphere"; (b) "Without some constraint, the area of minimal surface would be zero"; and, (c) "Minimal surface" is a surface whose area is the smallest possible, subject to the following constraints: the shape's surface must contain some given volume, and its boundary should lie on some given surface or curve, or both (p. 104).
Thus it can be said that in its material form, energy seeks to equilibrate itself into a perfectly energy-efficient, completely energy-balanced shape of a sphere. Its underlying "assimilation and accommodation" dynamics therefore all seem subsequent to this basic geometrically equilibrative law of energy conservation. Therefore, the distinctive shapes which virtual/actual particle/energy wave patterns reciprocally evoke depends upon their underlying energy-redistribution dynamics. In his very notable Scientific American article (1/1998), Donald E. Ingber revitalizes the current of Synergetics by identifying the prominence of tensegrity in geometric shapes in "The Architecture of Life," and its relationship to Complexity. He states the following as his introduction:
Life is the ultimate example of complexity at work. An oganism...develops through an incredibly complex series of interactions involving a vast number of different components...[which] are themselves made up of smaller molecular components, which independently exhibit their own dynamic behavior...Yet, when they are combined into some larger functioning unit--such as a cell or tissue-- utterly new and unpredictable properties emerge, including the ability to move, to change shape and to grow....That nature applies common assembly rules is implied by the recurrence--at scales from the molecular to the macroscopic--of certain patterns, such as spirals, pentagons and triangulated forms...After all, [everything is] made of the same building blocks: atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus. The only difference is how the atoms are arranged in three-dimensional space (p. 48).
Ingber goes on from there to describe this emergent phenomenon as a process of "self-assembly" (p. 48) into increasingly complex hierarchies of life forms. He stated his observation that nearly everything in our world, including the human body, is constructed using a form of architecture known as tensegrity (p. 48). He explains, "The term refers to a system that stabilizes itself mechanically because of the way in which tensional and compressive forces are distributed and balanced within the structure" (pp. 48-49).
The key point here seems to be that the stability (or resilience) of a tensegrity structure comes not from the strength of its individual member-parts, but from the way that its mechanical stresses are balanced and distributed across all of the parts of the whole.
Ingber describes two categories of tensegrity structures, the first of which is made up entirely of "rigid struts," each of which is able to bear either tension or compression, and the second of which is composed of "prestressed" structures which bear either tension or compression even before being subjected to external forces. The compression-bearing rigid struts function to stretch, or tense, the flexible tension-bearing members, or "cables," while the tension-bearing cables, in turn, compress the struts. Thus, these "counteracting forces, which equilibrate throughout the structure, are what enable it to stabilize itself" (p. 49).
[insert figures from appendix here]
A closer look at some of the other interesting and relevant features of tensegrity shows that: (a) It is the constructive, architecturally equilibrative use of gravity which gives most buildings their stability by taking advantage of its continuous compression forces; (b) Tension-bearers "map-out" the shortest path between adjacent members, resulting ideally in highly resilient geodesic-like shapes; (c) Tensional forces, in turn, follow these accommodative shortest routes between points so that their tensional stresses become adaptively assimilated as new functions of the structure's resilient, ever equilibrating form (Ingber, p. 49-50).
When studying the functions of tensegrity structures involved in the make-up of cells, Ingber found that when attached to a flexible substrate material, cells contract and become more spherical, thereby "puckering" the material beneath them. So it seems that the tensegrity dynamics of any given structure, even a living one, can have a significant rippling effect on the dynamics of its surrounding neighbors.
More significantly, it was seen that pushing down on a tensegrity structure forces it into what appears to be a flattened, disordered state, but as soon as the pressure is removed from it, "the energy stored in its tensed filaments causes the [structure] to spring back to its original, roughly spherical shape" (p. 50). This demonstrates that when tension and compression ratios are evenly distributed across a structure's member-parts, the structure will resiliently rebound from traumatic stressors.
As shown above, in cellular tensegrity structures all the way up to and including the human body, all interconnected structural elements rearrange themselves as needed in response to local stressors. So, in effect, just as the body varies the stiffness or flexibility of its bones, joints, tendons, and muscles in response to demands made upon it, cellular structures also stiffen or relax their various cytoskeletal parts through contraction and extension of their minute microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments in response to its structural integrity needs. This is important because some research shows this bears directly on our own consciousness, as we shall see in the next section.
Furthermore, molecules too rearrange their shapes in order to communicate their reactions to the electro-chemical dynamics which influence their structural integrity. Thus, all levels of the human body's structure are simultaneously and continuously increasing their tensegrity states as much as possible, within the reciprocal limitations set forth by the corresponding state of the "structural matrix" to which and within which they are attached. Elsewhere in science, the notion of reciprocal limitations is referred to as "rein theory."
Ingber and his associates actually observed how it is that these kinds of structural alterations communicate information in order to bring about changes in the biochemistry and genetic activities of the cell and its surroundings. For example, they found that [b]y simply modifying the shape of the cell, they could switch cells between different genetic programs....Thus, mechanical restructuring of the cell and cytoskeleton apparently tells the cell what to do. Very flat cells, with their cytoskeletons stretched, sense that more cells are needed to cover the surrounding substrate--as in wound repair--and that cell division is needed. Rounding indicates that too many cells are competing for space on the matrix and that the cells are proliferating too much; some must die to prevent tumor formation (pp. 52-53).
It is important to emphasize that it is at some point in between these extremes of shape variation that the living cell functions most resiliently. And thus we return to the topic of our work here. However, we can go into a little more detail on just how this tensegrity not only affects our structural robustness, but also our consciousness.
Microtubules: Where Consciousness and Tensegrity Meet
Quantum theory describes extraordinary behavior of matter and energy which comprise our universe at a fundamental level. At the root of QM is the wave/particle duality of atoms, molecules and their constituent particles. When a quantum system remains isolated from its environment, it behaves as a "wave of possibilities" and exists in a coherent complex-number valued "superposition" of many possible states. Superposed quantum states for which the respective mass distributions differ significantly from one another will have space-time geometries which correspondingly differ.
Microtubules are hollow, cylindrical, tiny subcomponents of the cytoskeleton and transport system of our cells. They are the structural and dynamical basis of the cells, organizing functional activities, including synaptic regulation in the brain's neurons. They are self-assembling and mediate cell division and DNA splitting. Their conformation allows them to make computations--they function as onboard quantum computers.
Within MTs are arranged in a hexagonal lattice which is slightly twisted, resulting in a helical pathway. The cell's bone-like scaffolding appears to fill communicative and information processing roles. They regulate the strength of neuronal synapses. Microtubules can convert incoherent energy (thermal, chemical, or electromagnetic) into coherent photons, in a process known as "superradiance."
Cells get their shape from tensegrity, the architecture of life. Systems stabilize themselves mechanically because of the way in which tensional and compressive forces are distributed and balanced in their structure. Tensegrity structures are stable because they are "prestressed."
The cytoskeleton is composed of microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments. They compose a lattice, which stretches from the cell surface to the nucleus. It pulls the cell's membrane and internal constituents toward the core. In opposition, the two compressive elements are the microtubules (or compressive "girders") and the extracellular matrix. Intermediate filaments connect microtubules and contractile microfilaments to the surface membrane and cell's nucleus. (Ingber).
Synergetics stabilizes the cell through continuous tension and local compression. Microtubules, as tension-bearing parts of the structure, connect along the shortest, most economical paths. Because of this synergetic geometry, tensegrity structures offer a maximum amount of strength for a given amount of structure.
Changing the shape of cells can switch them between different genetic programs. Mechanical restructuring of the cell and cytoskeleton tells the cell what to do. Changing cytoskeletal geometry and mechanics affects biochemical reactions, protein production and gene expression. Changing cell shape can make them differentiate, (flat) can make them divide, or (round) activate a death program called apoptosis.
According to Hameroff (1995), if quantum theory IS relevant to consciousness, it is at a level of embedding deeper than neurons, and possibly deals with conformational shapes. Proteins configured in a lattice so that coherence occurs among the superposed quantum states may result in "quantum computing," where outputs regulate neural firing. The role of neurons is more like a magnifying device in which the smaller-scale cytoskeletal action is pumped up or transduced into something which can influence other organs of the body (Penrose, Shadows of the Mind, p. 376).
Microtubules are such geometric lattices of proteins. Its paracrystalline lattice structure promotes long-range cooperativity and order. This crystal-like lattice can function as a quantum wave-guide, which may be one possible biomolecular quantum device in neurons. The most basic cognitive unit is not the nerve cell synapse, but the microtubular structure within cells.
Tube-shaped microtubules and tubulins are ideal quantum mechanical resonators. Resonance might support the existence of sub-quantum coherence in the brain. This conformational state occurring throughout significant brain volumes may produce Bose-Einstein condensate (shared quantum state), and/or quantum optical coherence.
Coherent, nonlocal order emerges. The many parts that make up an ordered system not only behave as a whole, they become whole; their identities merge or overlap so they lose their individuality entirely. Thus, they are capable of forming ephemeral but extended structures in the brain. Structures formed by Bose-Einstein condensates are the building blocks of mental life; in relation to perception they are models of the world, transforming a nice view, say, into a mental structure which represents some of the inherent qualities of that view.
Coherence is a matter of phase relationships, which are readily destroyed by almost any perturbation. On the other hand, complex dynamical systems have subtle internal phase relationships, and in some cases the nature of the dynamics protects these relationships through feedback, amplification, etc., especially in the presence of a supply of energy (Hameroff). So the physical dynamics which follow from quantum coherence can assume a significant role.
"Superradiance" is an effect which can convert disordered energy of various kinds into coherent electromagnetic energy. Spontaneous emission of radiation in a transition between levels leads to the emission of a coherent radiation pulse which excites "super-radiant" states. Ordering of water molecules in each microtubule can transform incoherent disordered energy into coherent photons within its hollow tubular core. Through pumping and a further effect called self-induced transparency, coherent photons are allowed to propagate. (Hameroff).
Objective reduction means cascades of self-collapse give rise to the "stream" of consciousness, and provide a "flow" of time. ("OR", Penrose, 1994). An intrinsic feature of space-time itself, quantum gravity may be the agent of such collapse. Self-collapse creates an instantaneous "now" event; sequences of such events create the flow of time and consciousness. Self-selections in fundamental space-time geometry may result in the factor we call subjectivity or subjective experience.
OR in brain microtubules is the most specific and plausible model for consciousness yet proposed, according to its authors Penrose and Hameroff. OR is an instantaneous event--the climax of a self-organizing process in fundamental space-time. Sequences of OR events give rise to our "stream" of consciousness and orchestrate our perceptual experience. The actual choice of state made by Nature is non-computable, a self-selection of space-time geometry, coupled to the brain through microtubules and other biomolecules, (Hameroff & Penrose).
Consciousness may involve a form of quantum computation that occurs in fundamental space-time geometry. At extremely small scales, space-time is not smooth, but quantized. Quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory predict virtual particle/waves (or photons) that pop into and out of existence, creating quantum "foam" in their wake.
This granularity has been modeled by Penrose as a dynamic web of quantum spins. If spin-networks are fundamental units of space-time geometry, they may provide the basis of proto-conscious experience. In other words, particular configurations of quantum spin geometry would convey particular types of qualia, meaning and aesthetics.
Specific arrangements of space-time geometry constitute all brain activity. Quantum computation involves the processing of "qubits" as 1 and 0 (and other states) simultaneously. Subunit tubulins act as qubits, switching between states on a nanosecond timescale. Information is superposed and computes in the form of "qubits" in a quantum state which then collapse to definite "bits," or particular results.
Pre-conscious processing of information occurs in the form of qubits, or superposed states of microtubule automata. As the threshold for objective reduction is reached, these qubits collapse to definite states and become bits, resulting in a conscious experience of recognition or choice. While the microtubule quantum superposition evolves linearly, it is influenced at the instant of collapse by hidden non-local variables. The final response or action (or resilience) is determined by the effects of the hidden logic inherent in the space-time geometry of the quantum system undergoing reduction.
Holism and non-locality are features of the quantum world reflected in the quantum nature of awareness. This implies interacting systems have to be considered as wholes; non-locality means spatial separation between parts does not alter the fact we must deal with an interacting system holistically.
The sense of self is attributed to temporal correlation (e.g. coherent 40 Hz). Jibu (1990) proposed that gap junction synapses account for synchronized 40 Hz neural activity. Quantum states and self-collapse in neuronal MT could link brain activities such as thalamo-cortical 40 Hz to experience embedded in "funda-mental" spacetime geometry.
Buddhists describe distinct "flickering" in their experience of reality (Tart, 1995). 25 second intervals between 40 Hz depolarizations suggest such "cognitive quanta" as functional entities. When these move from pre-conscious to conscious they orchestrate our moments of experience.
Time doesn't really flow, but appears to flow, because OR events are irreversible and have a direction in time. Thus instantaneous events give rise to the subjective flow of time, our stream of consciousness. Self-organizing quantum activities in cytoplasm may be the missing ingredients in neural-level correlates of consciousness.
The instantaneous conscious "now" creates new experience from rearrangements in the fundamental spacetime geometry in which raw qualia, or proto-conscious experience resides. In a volitional act possible choices may be superposed. As the OR threshold is reached, the quantum state reduces to a single classical state -- a choice is made.
Summary: Energy Transducing Tensegrity Structures
Wheeler described a "pre-geometry" of fundamental reality comprised of information. Chalmers contends it includes "experiential aspects" leading to consciousness. Consciousness emerges from a critical level of complexity.
Microtubules transduce the experiential aspect of fundamental information. MTs are "electrets" with piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties. MTs assemble and disassemble dynamically, and reassemble. They convey signals and process information. Thus, MTs are linked to learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity. Information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. Matter and mind may arise from consciousness -- the fundamental constituent of reality according to some (Goswami, 1993). Information has both physical and experiential aspects. The climax of a self-organizing process is fundamental to the structure of space-time.
Yes, consciousness has neural correlates. However, brain processes relevant to consciousness extend downward within neurons to the level of the cytoskeleton, in which proto-conscious qualia (subjective experience or inner life) are embedded in the basic level of reality. Consciousness runs deeper than membrane-level functions. "Qualia" (raw feelings or experience) or an experiential medium from which consciousness is derived, may exist as a fundamental component of reality. For science to demonstrate this empirically, the very nature of physical reality must be re-examined.
Only large collections of particles acting coherently in a single macroscopic quantum state could possibly sustain isolation and support coherent superposition in a time frame brief enough to be relevant to our consciousness. Only very special circumstances can support consciousness. In this model, microtubule-associated proteins "tune" the quantum oscillations leading to OR.
Ingber has demonstrated mechanical signaling through cytoskeletal tensegrity networks in which MTs are compressed by contractile action and other filamentous structures. Associative learning, memory, and phase transitions occur in simulated MT experiments. Collective quantum dynamics called super-radiance allows MTs to transform incoherent, disordered energy into quantum coherent photons within its hollow core.
Now we can see how all these concepts and terms fit together in the "synergetics of resilience," to produce emergent effects which are greater than the sum of their parts.
Resilience, as seen through the lens of the tensegrity paradigm, appears to have the flexible yet stable shape of an elaborately constructed network of on-going energy-distribution information feedback loops. Yet it is also simultaneously the reciprocally interactive process underlying the dynamics of its own self-assembly. This resilience is achieved in humans through a combined process of creative self-reflection and intelligent self-correction.
When the concepts of tensegrity are viewed from the perspective of quantum mechanics, the shape which energy (as a potential particle-function) take sin three-dimensional space evolves relative to the tension and compression dynamics recorded within the interference wave interactions from which it has emerged over time. In other words, the architectural design of a material form emerges as the holographic by-product of its continuously shape-shifting, -- and thus information-transducing function.
This is ultimately how all life forms transduce information about themselves to other life forms. By utilizing an interactive, holographic kind of particle-wave "Morse Code" about their current temporo-spatial state just as Candace Pert (1990) predicted earlier, the human body-mind communicates within its inner environment (it "self-reflects") in order to increase the over-all tensegrity of its immense number of "parts" so that it can adapt ("self-correct") more resiliently to all of its life stressors.
Each form of feedback loop can be seen as a separate continuum which is reciprocally interactive with all other feedback-loop continua supporting its life form structure -- which, ultimately is all of them. Every living-energy-information feedback loop is holographically interconnected with all other living energy-information feedback loops.
Resilience, as a tensegrity process, therefore, is the organism's ability to (a) respond appropriately to stressors from within and without its biological structures in a way that allows it to (b) redistribute those stressors equitably across its member-parts in a way that (c) establishes and maintains its many tension-compression ratios within their respective homeostatic comfort zones.
Those feedback-loop continua whose ideal "set-points" have been stretched and tempered, or "prestressed" have the ability to creatively adapt to more stressful energy than those whose "zones" remain very limited. Also, some "strut-like" feedback loops allow more for the compressive receiving and holding of stressor energy, while others, -- more "cable-like," allow more for the flexible holding and sending of energy tensions.
On the human level, the former, compressive feedback loops might be compared to one's innate craving for novel stimuli, an intellectual, strut-like strength, and the latter cold be seen as one's ability to evaluate stressors as challenges, rather than as oppressors, an emotional, cable-like strength.
When these continua of energy patterns are all interconnected into even one "simple" organ of the body, and complexity of the structure is immense and mind-boggling. The next higher level of complexity after the human body's physical structures upon which the body's mind is shaped. Our metaphor of how the dynamics of the human mind-body fits together with the pleroma, holographs, and tensegrity will conclude this section.
Chaos Theory and Complexity offers perhaps the best metaphor to subsume all of our previous threads of investigation. Chaos Theory models nature's dynamics in non-integer fractal dimensions. This complements our Synergetics whose geometries model atomic structure in whole numbers.
Chaos permeates all scales of observation including macro-, meso-, and microscopic. Quantum mechanics describes the unpredictability of rampant uncertainty at the tiniest scales. Chaotic systems are likewise unpredictable yet deterministic. They depend intimately on the system's initial conditions. Imperceptible changes in the beginning value of a variable can make the outcome of a pocess impossible to predict.
When these two models merge, quantum chaos emerges. Research suggests events inside atoms and molecules display chaotic features. Scientists expect aspects of chaos to emerge repeatedly throughout the quantum realm. We suggest that quantum chaos may be a means of "mind over matter" or wherein mindbody synchronizes in psychophysical restructuring.
A model is described in which subjective consciousness is generated through an unusual property of quantum non-locality. Chaos and bifurcation serve to link quantum transactions to global brain dynamics through the fractal architecture and dynamics of the central nervous system. The resulting process operates at the boundary between quantum computation and wave-particle reduction, thus combining optimality and free-choice. It is concluded that subjective consciousness has an evolutionary role as a non-computational predictive faculty, first emerging from chaotic excitations in single celled-organisms and that conscious anticipation, rather than computation, has been the principal factor promoting selective advantage in the development of the brain (King, 1997).
Consciousness and the Discovery of Quantum Mechanics
Despite the vast and diverse development of twentieth century science, one small dark cloud remains unchallenged and unsolved on the horizon of human understanding, the subjective nature of the conscious mind. One key to unravelling this paradox lies in our understanding of the principles of operation of the human brain. In this context, there has been a growing interest in both quantum mechanical ideas and chaos as possible answers.
Several of the pioneering quantum physicists, including Heisenberg, noticed that the uncertainty principle provides a physical basis for the brain to manifest free-will. If the brain is a quantum system, rather than a classically deterministic one, its states are not entirely determined because of quantum uncertainty. A single particle can occur anywhere within its wave function, despite the behavior of many settling into a probability distribution determined by the wave. In the same way, free-will in a single brain could correspond to quantum uncertainty in the ongoing brain state. Eddington (1935) showed for example that the uncertainty of position of a synaptic vesicle was as great as the width of the membrane thus constituting a possible trigger for an unstable cascade, leading to a global change in brain state.
Chaotic Neurodynamics
More recently, there has been interest in the idea that the brain may utilize transition in and out of chaos (Schuster, 1986; King, 1991; Barton 1994, West, in this special issue) in its processing to form a complex system (Ruthen, 1993), displaying self-organization (Barton 1994), capable of generating new types of structure through bifurcation - a sudden qualitative change in structure occurring at a critical value of a continuously varying parameter. Experimental evidence for chaos has been found in the electroencephalogram (EEG) and in the excitation of individual cells.
Walter Freeman (1991), (Skarda & Freeman 1987) has formulated a chaotic model for olfactory sensory recognition. In the olfactory cortex, excitations are globally distributed wave forms, much like a hologram in which coupled cells oscillate together, however the cell assemblies can oscillate chaotically in time.
Chaos permits the exploration of dynamical or phase space without the system becoming locked in an inappropriate mode. Sensitive dependence guarantees sensitivity to input. The system will eventually bifurcate to create a new attractor. In addition to ensuring plasticity, responsiveness and full exploration of the space of possibilities, the model is tuned so that a decisive end state is guaranteed.
The use of 'holographic' distributed wave forms is also consistent with studies in which phase decoherence occurs with unexpected stimuli, to be replaced by coherent states once the brain has developed a stable representation of the situation. An evoked potential of a randomly omitted regular stimulus displays decoherence when the pattern cannot be anticipated and coherence when the expected stimulus occurs. Chaotic systems can cohere through non-linear coupling.
Lorenz, the meteorologist who first described dynamical chaos in three dimensions, noted the example of the butterfly effect - the flap of a butterfly in Hawaii could, in principle, subsequently be amplified by a chaotic airflow into a hurricane in Tahiti. Because a chaotic system is sensitively dependent on its initial conditions, arbitrarily small perturbations are amplified into global fluctuations.
Sensitive dependence also ensures that the eventual state of the system cannot in principle be predicted from outside, because any simulation will eventually become inaccurate as a result of the amplification of small errors. In this respect, the chaotic model has similarities to the quantum approach in that future states of the system cannot be determined from outside e.g. by simulation. Neurodynamic sensitive dependence ensures the brain remains optimally responsive both to the environment and its own evolving states. It also provides a basis for quantum perturbation to become inflated into global fluctuations when the neurodynamics is critically poised.
The Fractal Expression of Chaos in the Brain Many chaotic systems contain fractal invariant sets, which are self-similar on descending scales of size, much like a snowflake. Any fractal has a non-integer fractal dimension associated with it. Both the broad frequency spectrum and the low correlation dimensions indicate the presence of chaos. An added feature of the brain, which separates it from other potentially chaotic systems is that it is specifically constructed from the global level down to individual sub-molecular assemblies as a particular design of non-linear geometric and dynamic fractal. Threshold tuning of a neuron to its input makes it an unstable bifurcator. The global many-to-many connections implicit in neural nets require the neuron to be a geometric fractal tree. The neurons utilize several distinct neurotransmitters. The varying fractal dimension of distinct neuron types also determines their electrical conduction characteristics.
Furthermore the dynamics, not just on a global scale but on descending orders of magnitude, from neurosystem, to cell, to synapse, to ion channel, vesicle or microtubule (Hameroff, 1994; Penrose, 1994), to protein sub-assembly and neurotransmitter molecule all display non-linearities, chaos or fractal dynamics (King, 1991).
The synapse, for example contains complex feedbacks including non-linear reactions. The acetyl-choline ion channel requires two molecules to activate it, thus having quadratic, rather than linear concentration dynamics. Large molecules such as proteins are structurally and dynamically fractals, as a result of interacting on several levels of scale, from atom, through individual amino acids and sub-assemblies such as the alpha helix to global conformation changes. Voltage-gated ion channels have a fractal time delay in the closed state, (Liebovitch et. al. 1987).
The fractal architecture of the brain provides for a structured scale interaction, in which fluctuations at one level can be linked to instabilities at a higher one, if the system happens to be at unstable bifurcation or in chaos. The system can thus over-ride any micro-instabilities if it is evolving toward a stable outcome, but may become arbitrarily sensitive to them if it is unstable.
This leads to the hypothesis that the brains of multi-celled organisms have evolved in response to the selective advantage of properties emerging from fractally-organized chaos. From the point of view of instability, the law of mass action not withstanding, such a fractal architecture provides unique possibilities for the entire neurosystem to become responsive to fluctuations at the level of a single quantum. What particular advantages could accrue from such an apparently noisy process?
Noise would normally be an anathema which could corrupt a computational process. We know that artificial neural nets do have a use for random noise in terms of thermodynamic annealing. By shaking the system a little, one can jolt a sub-optimal state and cause it to roll down to a deeper hollow in the energy landscape, representing a better solution. A combination of fractal chaos and quantum mechanical fluctuation may provide qualitative advantages over such a primitive form of plasticity.
The Quantum Foundation of Chaotic and Statistical Fluctuation
At stake may be the very nature of statistical conceptions of the universe. What is the origin of randomness? Theories combining determinism and random variation arise in three contexts: The first is quantum theory, in which deterministic wave evolution is punctuated by reduction of the wave packet, giving a statistical distribution of states whose probabilities are determined by the wave amplitude. Quantum uncertainty thus represents the indeterminacy of a particle within its wave.
The second arises from chemical kinetics and other examples of statistical mechanics. Partial information about individual trajectories of populations of interacting particles results in a description in which the positions and momenta are based on random variables and statistical probabilities. Biological evolution could be included as a sophisticated example.
The third case consists of chaotic dynamical systems, whose evolution may be in principle deterministic, but cannot be predicted. Individual trajectories are often ergodic, wandering through phase space in a similar manner to a random variable, [JOURNEY METAPHOR: In the dream journeys, our consciousness "wanders" around phase space, organically self-organizing a variety of sensory metaphors to describe the existential condition of the journeyer and seek creative solutions, much like a random variable with chaotic changes in trajectories].
When we come to consider a real world chaotic system based on molecules, we can see that Lorenz's butterfly effect extends naturally down in scale to a random kinetic encounter growing into a butterfly-sized fluctuation and hence a hurricane. So the underlying source of fluctuation in macroscopic chaos is kinetic randomness. However the matter does not stop there. All such molecular billiards are actually instances of quantum chaos (King 1989) (Mason, 2001).
Molecules are not simple classical billiard balls, but wave-particle assemblies which diffract according to their wave functions. Quantum uncertainty of position is thus amplified by kinetic interaction to form the ultimate underlying source of global fluctuation in macroscopic chaotic systems. Collapse of the wave function thus lies at the core of chaotic fluctuation. King (1997) calls this amplification quantum inflation.
The duality between deterministic and probabilistic processes extends to many levels of organization. Consider biological evolution: Some traits, such as unusual plant alkaloids are clearly the result of historical accident giving rise to unique and varied forms, which need not exist by necessity and have come about opportunistically.
Many others, from the existence of photosynthesizers to the parallel forms of marsupial and placental carnivores, appear to be shaped by environmental factors which are influential enough that repeated mutation and selective advantage will almost inevitably lead to the adoption of the trait. The former case is like the behaviour of a single photon and the latter is like a large flux, forming an interference pattern.
We thus have a distinction. On the one hand we have historical processes, in which one of many possible histories occurs. On the other, necessary processes in which causes precipitate effects, despite possibly having a statistical intermediate, through processes such as bifurcation. By extrapolation, one can argue that all historical processes, from flipping a coin to being picked up as a hitchhiker, are indirect consequences of quantum uncertainty and that we walk in an inflated quantum world.
Supporting this world view is the fractal quantum non-linearity of bio-molecular systems. We have already noted that large molecules such as proteins form fractals. The non-linearity of electron charge interaction has, as a direct consequence, the development of a spectrum of bonding types from the strong covalent and ionic links down to residual weak bond effects which permit the formation of the complex supra-molecular assemblies seen in living organisms. These non-linearities consequently support a fractal organization in which systems inherit emergent properties appearing on differing levels of scale.
Computational Intractability and Freedom of Choice
The evolving nervous system has a two-fold computational dilemma: Firstly, predicting the open-environment, the key to survival, leads to computationally intractable problems in which conventional computation requires exponentiating time, clearly impractical to an organism confronting immediate life-or-death decisions. The travelling salesman problem - finding the shortest route around n cities is an example which theoretically grows super-exponentially like (n-1)! Probabilistic, dynamic or distributed processing approaches are required for even approximate solution in polynomial time. Certain logical propositions can also be formally undecidable.
Chaotic dynamical systems are also classically unpredictable. Although they can be simulated over short time scales, and sometimes more rapidly than the original process (rapid simulations), sensitive dependence will ultimately cause a divergence between simulation and reality. Consequently it is very likely that biological nervous systems have found alternatives to conventional computation which do not involve temporal impasse.
Recently an efficient form of quantum parallel computing involving wave function superposition has been devised, which is pertinent to the model here (Brown, 1994). In this approach wave functions are made to interfere so that they represent the results of numerical or logical calculations. Measurements of the wave function averaged over a number of reduction events leads to a calculation of a superposition of states. A large number could in principle be factorized in a few superimposed steps, through periodicities in the wave function, which would otherwise require vast and time-consuming classical computer power.
Secondly there is no single strategy for survival - the problem does not have a unique solution. Although survival of each individual is a unique historical process, it has at every point many potential avenues, some of which will be productive and some unproductive. Survival thus has more to do with deciding a viable course of action than finding the optimal solution to a problem. Antonio Damsio's (1994) Elliot with prefrontal damage affecting decision-making, planning and prediction with no other cognitive impairment illustrates this difference dramatically. Despite scoring normal on brain function and personality tests, his decision-making deficit had led to severe social problems.
Returning to quantum mechanics, we have a fundamental problem. Because quantum mechanics can only predict outcomes as probabilities, the theory cannot determine what actually happens. Schrödinger's cat paradox illustrates that we experience what I would term the principle of choice. When a cat is subjected to a Geiger counter device which could trigger its demise from a radioactive decay, we always find the cat either alive or dead. Quantum theory, by contrast, finds it both alive and dead with differing probabilities.
The Everett many-worlds interpretation puts this position at its clear extreme by saying all quantum outcomes become probability universes and all happen. All quantum calculations then become descriptions of a bifurcating universal wave function. There is then no collapse of the wave function, and no principle of choice. However our experience depends on unique histories which are the consequence of choices. We do not experience all the probability universes, but only that the cat is either alive or dead. Our subjective world thus looks like collapse of the wave function does occur.
This suggests that, to fully understand the nature of the conscious mind, we may require a deeper theory of the quantum world which unravels the principle of choice. Without this, quantum theory, despite its potentiality for parallel computing, may not help us understand the mind, because it claims free-will is merely a random variable. Although this might coincide with Edelman's Darwinian view of neural selection, it provides no hint of an answer to the relation between consciousness, cognition, intention and quantum uncertainty.
Transactional Supercausality
Several so-called hidden-variable theories have been developed, which attempt to explain the probabilistic aspect of quantum theory in terms of a deeper causality. Quantum non-locality remains a hot topic in physics in the light of the Bell's theorem experiments. In such experiments, a pair of spatially separated particles in a single wave display correlations which cannot be maintained by information exchanged at the speed of light (Clauser & Shimony, 1978; Aspect Dalibard & Roger, 1982).
Once we know for example the polarization of one of two correlated photons, the other immediately (without requiring the time light takes to cross the apparatus) has complementary polarization. However neither has their polarization defined until the first measurement takes place, because the statistics violate Bell's inequalities governing all locally-causal processes. This gives rise to the possibility that there are many types of non-local association hidden in the probabilities of quantum mechanical predictions.
King illustrates an approach which he believes shows what the conscious brain may be doing, based on the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (Cramer, 1986, King, 1989). This will require us to explore how space-time may be linked so that information is mutually shared between future and past in a relatively symmetrical hand shaking way which underlies the sequential nature of time we are familiar with. It will involve some elementary modern physics.
The four forces of nature are known to be mediated by radiation-particles or bosons which are termed virtual because they exist only for an interval determined by the uncertainty principle. Just like the many-worlds explanation, all possible virtual particles exchanged between the charged electrons add up exactly to the force between them. By contrast, with a real photon, like the ones we see, the boundary conditions require a single particle of positive energy to be exchanged. The collection of all possible interactions thus reduces to one real interaction upon measurement.
In addition to representing the force between the two electrons, each virtual photon must have both an emitter and an absorber to satisfy the uncertainty relation in a finite space-time interval. A real photon of positive energy can be created from a virtual one, if energy is pumped into the electromagnetic field, for example by oscillating it as in a radio transmitter. Since virtual particles can become real ones, real particles should also be subject to the same rules requiring both an emitter and an absorber. This is consistent with the universe emerging from a single wave function as a quantum fluctuation through the cosmic inflation arising with symmetry-breaking of the forces of nature.
One way of explaining quantum non-locality is through a hand-shaking space-time interaction between an emitter and its potential absorbers. The transactional interpretation does just this by postulating an advanced wave travelling back in time from the [future] absorber to the emitter. This interferes with the retarded wave, travelling in the usual direction from emitter to absorber to form the exchanged particle.
Because both waves are zero-energy crossed phase waves, they interfere destructively outside the particle path but constructively between the emitter and absorber. The emitter sends out an offer wave and the absorber responds with a confirmation wave. Together they form a photon, just as an anti-electron (positron) traveling backwards in time is the same as an electron traveling forwards. Electron-positron creation-annihilation are actually advanced and retarded solutions to the same interaction.
Although the transactional interpretation is completely consistent with quantum mechanics, it leads to some very counter-intuitive ideas. When we see a distant quasar, in a sense the quasar radiated the photon we see long ago, only because our eyes are also here to perceive it. In a sense the quasar anticipated our presence and, despite its vastly greater energy, it may not be able to radiate without that presence and the other potential absorbers in its very distant future.
This would imply that non-locality is observer dependent in a way which prevents any single observer having access to all the boundary conditions and hence logical prediction of the outcomes. This would prevent the universe from being computationally or deterministically predicted, but it would not prevent quantum non-locality from displaying relationships in which future states had an influence through being boundary conditions.
In the transactional interpretation, wave function collapse corresponds to a collapse of a transaction between all potential emitters and absorbers to a single transaction between the emitter and the selected absorber. Although this hand-shaking interaction looks "random" to the observer, it may really be a complex system interaction manifesting the principle of choice, which varies in a pseudo-random manner because it is linked to many other space-time states of the universe. Because it has boundary conditions involving future states of the system, it cannot be predicted from the initial conditions and temporal determinism fails.
We are left with a description in which correlations in wave-particle reductions operating in a manner consistent with quantum computation schemes may display an indirect predictive feature, which is unavailable to classical systems, because the initial conditions are insufficient to determine the quantum outcomes. King (1997) denotes this transactional supercausality, or transcausality.
Transcausality differs from Clerk Maxwell's proverbial kinetic demon in that it conforms to the probability interpretation of quantum mechanics for each measurement, despite possibly reflecting non-local correlations. It thus does not violate any physical laws, such as making one side of a barrier hotter and another cooler by selectively letting through the fast molecules (which is anyway made impossible for a Maxwell's demon by quantum uncertainty). Neither can such non-local processes can be regarded as computations, because the initial conditions provided any observer are incomplete boundary conditions. Transaction may also explain the arrow of time as a reflecting boundary condition at the origin of the universe, giving rise to a real retarded positive-energy universe.
The Evolutionary Origin of Conscious Brains
Nervous systems may thus have evolved in the following steps (King, 1996): (1) Chaotic excitation as a universal sense organ: In terms of the theory, the single eucaryote cell became chaotically excitable, because this provided a universal sense organ, responsive to quantum perturbations by chemical orbital interactions [smell], membrane solitons and phonons [sound] and incident photons [light]. Quantum sensitivity is well known in the senses of modern nervous systems. Similar arguments apply to sound and the sense of smell e.g. in the detection of pheromones, where a single molecule may be sufficient to provoke a response in the organism.
Chaotic excitability would have made the single cell in a direct sense conscious of its surroundings in the sense that its global dynamical state would be sensitively responsive to its environment, however the theory also hypothesizes that chaotic excitation also provided access to a non-computational form of predictivity based on quantum non-locality, in which future states of the system leave their mark on a pattern of related transactions in a coherently excited cell, with a time scale determined by the lifetime of exchanged excitations. Even a time scale in milliseconds would provide a critical advantage. Consciousness thus also becomes conscious anticipation.
(2) Space-time anticipation in nervous systems: Multi-celled nervous systems would then have evolved to utilize this form of space-time anticipation in a manner compatible with and complementing computation. The basis of this is the many-to-many neuron tree structure which provides a holographic transform of the information, and fractal rendering of the system and its instabilities down to the level of the synapse and ion channel. Chaotic neurosystem oscillations allow for linked sub-populations of neurons to enter a coherent oscillation through bifurcation.
Bifurcation into a particular stable or chaotic attractor could thus perform a computation through a superposition of states as outlined in the previous discussion on quantum computation. In the indeterminate or unstable case it could go further and generate a unique anticipatory choice through quantum non-locality. [Relates to the CRP process of natural healing when consciousness deconstructs to the groundstate of chaotic consciousness.] (3) The quantum-inflated brain: The subjectively conscious brain then emerges from the unusual non-local space-time properties of quantum chaos.
The structure of the brain can be described in terms of three dynamically-interacting components: (1) The entire cortex is activated by basal brain centres, whose ascending distributed pathways fan out across the cortex and provide the activation that supports waking alertness and modulates light and dreaming sleep. These act in very much the way an energy parameter does in any dynamical system. (2) The cerebral cortex along with its connections to the thalamus.
The cortex is broadly divided by the Sylvian fissure between parietal and temporal sensory and association areas on the one hand and the frontal areas on the other, which involve motor action and its abstraction in terms of intentionality, decision-making and survival aims - all future-directed. (3) Linking these is a set of feedback loops, broadly termed the limbic system, which provides a central connection between the frontal areas, emotion and the capacity to store and access experiences in sequential memory as realized in the hippocampus.
The mammalian cerebral cortex supports a distributed representation of reality, in which different aspects of experience are processed in parallel in a modular manner. The independent representation of movement and colour (Zeki, 1992), as well as modular representation of specific attributes such as facial expressions, music, verbal articulacy and semantics, along with the capacity of such areas to adapt and change their functional assignments under stimulation, illustrates how the cortex is organised as a distributed dynamical processing system.
Just as spatial representations and sensory impressions are part of an internal model of reality constructed by the brain, our experience of time is similarly a constructive process. This is illustrated by the experiments of Libet (1989), in which the subjective timing of a conscious sensation refers it backwards in time to the initial sensory stimulus, a short interval before the cortex actually became activated.
The use of phase coherence in central nervous processing is essentially similar to making a quantum measurement through beats, the basis of the uncertainty principle. Phase coherence could thus provide globally the space-time relationship implied by the transactional interpretation.
Much of cortical structure, particularly including the role of the frontal lobes can be explained in terms of developing a space-time model of reality, in which time is represented, in terms of the past in memory systems and the future in terms of much of prefrontal organization, forming a dynamic model of will, action and choice in much the same way sensory association areas abstract sensory input. A critical aspect of this space-time modelling is being able to consciously anticipate a prospective situation and comprehend it as a sequential event, spanning past, present and future.
Some of this anticipation involves planning and logical choice, but a considerable part is involved in being able to run a smooth simulation of experience from the past, through the present, into the future. MacLean (1991) describes this as follows: "It was as though premeditation required not only the ability to plan, but also the step by step memory of what is planned, or as one might say a 'memory of the future'." MacLean suggests that the cerebellum might function in coordination with the cerebral cortex as a rapid dynamical simulator. These principles however extend to the cerebral cortex itself just as meaningfully.
The nature of choice and decision-making in transactional supercausality requires detailed philosophical investigation. The system is physically indeterminate, and possesses the basis for free-will in the principle of choice. However, in the transactional interpretation, quantum non-locality allows contingent future states to form part of the boundary conditions.
Free-will may thus involve a mixture of genuine freedom to determine future outcomes as a watershed decision is made and a type of temporal sensitivity for the future contingencies in which free-will is another kind of temporal sense, feeling for the possibilities already laid out by the non-local interaction. The nature of such free-will may remain causally paradoxical for a given observer, because free-will is not simply a random variable but a non-local phenomenon partly dependent on contingent future states.
Cognition can be modelled in the following way, which is similar to Freeman's model for olfaction. The problem sets up stable boundary conditions, just as sensory input does in sensory recognition. The brain then generates a chaotic excitation which explores the space of possible configurations. A solution arises when the resulting chaotic excitation bifurcates to form a stable self-consistent attractor.
If a series of small bifurcations occur resulting from successive [quantum] computational steps, we would say the conclusion was arrived at deductively, but if however a major global bifurcation is required to reach self-consistency, an intuitive leap of understanding may result. The transition from chaos thus models the sudden moment of insight - the "eureka", deductive cognition, sensory recognition and decision-making. Computational predictivity is thus complemented by conscious anticipation enabled through quantum transaction and manifested in the transition from chaos.
Conclusion:
Conscious Anticipation and the Physical Universe Consciousness is not just a globally-modulated functional monitor of attention as Crick (1994) might have us believe, but a dual aspect to physical reality. Although subjective consciousness, by necessity, reflects the constructive model of reality the brain adopts in its sensory processing and associative areas, the internal model is not sufficient to explain the subjective aspect of conscious experience.
Conscious experience underlies and is a necessary foundation for the physical world view. Without subjective conscious experience, it remains doubtful whether the physical world would have an actual existence. It is only through stabilities of subjective conscious experience that we come to infer the objective physical world model of science as an indirect consequence.
For this reason, subjective consciousness may be too fundamental a property to be explained, except in terms of fundamental physical principles, as a dual manifestation of quantum non-locality, which directly manifests the principle of choice in free-will. The evolution of the brain has depended not only on understanding the environment, but on competing with individuals of the same species and others for survival under unpredictable and changing situations. To quote Richard Leakey (1994):
If .. individuals were able to monitor their own behavior, rather than merely operate as computerlike automatons ... by extrapolation they might be able to predict the behavior of others under the same circumstances. This monitoring ability ... is one definition of consciousness, and it would confer considerable advantage in those individuals that possessed it. Chimpanzees ... experience a significant degree of reflective consciousness. ... In humans, mind reading goes beyond simply predicting what others will do under certain circumstances: it includes how others might feel.
Survival in crisis depends as much on hunch, mind reading and quick reaction as on computational deduction. Despite emerging one and a half million years ago, the genus Homo took until approximately 35,000 years ago to begin the explosive manifestation of culture. From the unchanged tool making during the long intervening period, it is difficult to conclude that computation, as such, was even a feature of the human mind until culture developed, let alone a prominent aspect of animal behavior. It is likewise difficult to reduce the hunting of a leopard or the flight of a gazelle to anything other than conscious anticipation.
While one may acknowledge that computation is implicit in the functioning of all neural nets, even humans, despite having 10^10 neurons and 10^15 synapses and representing the pinnacle of cognitive evolution are inefficient computers by comparison with a simple pocket calculator. The natural conclusion is that evolution has promoted conscious anticipation, rather than computation per se as its principal instrument of selective advantage.
The potential quantum basis of conscious anticipation leads to a stunning re-evaluation of our role in the universe. Far from being the most fragile and improbable of physical systems, the conscious brain may manifest the most fundamental aspects of quantum reality.
Furthermore these aspects arise from the re-interaction of the four wave-particle forces which originally emerged through cosmological symmetry-breaking, to form their ultimate non-linear interactive structures - the large supra-molecular complexes of cell-biology. It may be that only in such structures can the cooperative effects of quantum non-locality be fully realized, making us, despite our long and tortuous evolutionary history, literally a manifestation of quantum cosmology.
"We almost never think of the present, and when we do, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future". (Pascal )
A model of the mind-brain relationship shows novel biophysical principles in brain function generate a dynamic possessing attributes consistent with consciousness and free-will. The model invokes a fractal link between neurodynamical chaos and quantum uncertainty.
Transactional wave collapse allows this link to be utilized predictively by the excitable cell, in a way which bypasses and complements formal computation. The formal unpredictability of the model allows mind to interact upon the brain, the predictivity of consciousness in survival strategies being selected as a trait by organismic evolution (King).