DEBUNKING RSE Views of Quantum Physics

This is a thread to debate the pseudoscience that RSE promotes, versus the science of our current day.
skills
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Joined: Fri May 31, 2019 9:55 am

DEBUNKING RSE Views of Quantum Physics

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Hi Everyone

During my time at RSE, we were taught that we literally create our own reality, right down to the material objects in our world...except we don’t create other people because we all are “gods”. RSE claimed that quantum physics and quantum physicists in general support this view and used this “scientific basis” as credibility for what actually are nonsense views.

I had to spend a lot of time recovering from these teachings and would like to share what has shown me beyond a doubt that RSE is just plain wrong...mis-representing at best and perhaps lying.

I will do this by sharing historical inconsistencies with RSE's teachings, which become incoherent. I bought every CD, audio-tape, book and Fireside Series booklets that I could find, so I am able to give a historical view.

I then looked into the real science of what even the most alternative, fringe scientists say...directly themselves, not someone else's interpretation. Even these do not advocate RSE's views. The mainstream scientific community is even more rigorously totally different from RSE's views.

I provide a summary below, followed by detailed information from the scientists, as well as links to the references I utilise.

I sincerely hope this helps, at least some people.

A. SUMMARY

RSE's Changing Teachings
• In the book “A Beginner’s Guide to Reality, it says that we literally create the material reality each moment, quoting that when we roll a bowling ball down an alley, it goes from a hard rolling ball into a wave when we are not looking
• Years later, in Assay I or Assay II teachings, we were taught that says we entered this reality on earth, picking up “artefacts” (the entire world) from our ancestors and we can change those artefacts
• Years later, in “The Fireside Series” booklet “Parallel Lifetimes – Quantum Fluctations...”, it states that the collective consciousness of all humans holds the material reality in place
• RSE regularly quotes quantum physics and quantum physicists as supporting his views.

The Truth of the Science and Scientists RSE References
• We humans are NOT observers literally collapsing everyday reality into place each moment
• Objects exist even when humans are not observing them
• Some (vast minority) believe there is a universal consciousness / Nature that is the only thing that collapsed our reality into play, via the Big Bang
• Humans cannot collapse quantum objects – or anything – into reality. The world we live in already existed before we were born and every atom in our body was produced during the Big Bang
• These fringe scientists state the human brain operates in some ways only in a quantum manner – but this is just that our consciousness is exercising free will re the choices we instruct our brain to instruct our body. There is NOTHING about humans collapsing our brains, bodies or anything else into everyday reality / matter / macroscopic / biological entities
• The furthest any of the scientists go are that humans have the ability to access higher states of consciousness through specifically Transcendental Meditation...and that, at its very core, there is unity consciousness, where we are one...but we are individualised as human beings, too (simply the traditional Indian Upanishad’s view)
• I cannot find ANYTHING where any of the scientists purport that humans can have any of the supernormal powers RSE states are within our abilities.

Mainstream Quantum Physicists and Astrophysicists
• The debate about consciousness being part of “collapsing the wavefunction” was completed in 1950 and is NOT the mainstream view
• The Big Bang was the source of all creation – it does not need a God, but some may think there is some sort of Universal Intelligence or God (not the version where God is a wise man with a long white beard)...the fact is, nobody knows
• We cannot create atoms – all atoms were created as part of the Big Bang process and all elements (e.g. iron, gold, carbon) were made in nucleosynthesis of stars
• Because of the above, and that atoms essentially are immortal (or live for trillions of years in general), EVERYTHING IS MADE UP OF THE ATOMS AND ELEMENTS CREATED BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO DURING THE BIG BANG PROCESS (so, no...we cannot manifest a gold ring by using C&E!)
• Scientists do not know what consciousness really is and the views are very disparate but the main view is that consciousness is created by brain neuronal function (there are two main theories). Understanding consciousness is called "the hard problem" - one of the biggest challenges in science.

As some examples:
• Stephen Hawking, considered one of the greatest minds of our time, quantum physicist and astrophysicist quoted “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
• Lawrence Krauss (award-winning quantum physicist) was interviewed about “How to Spot Quantum Quackery” – it’s a very good, easy read on NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/how ... 6C10403763


B. DETAILS IN SUPPORT OF ALL THE ABOVE

So, what is the truth about what the most “out there” but real quantum physicists are saying (anything in bold is my highlighting and anything in brackets is my comment)?

1. John Hagelin – Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview January 2014 Transcript [John is a renowned quantum physicist and in the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know”]

Rick [interviewer] - And you know the old saying, if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? There are many people in the spiritual community who say there is no forest and no tree, unless there’s someone there to perceive it. And yet, we have this consistency to things. If you go carve your initials in a tree and then come back 30 years later, somehow those initials were retained.

John - Not only that, but another person passing by will recognize the existence of those initials too. So there is that.

Rick - Yeah, so to me it doesn’t hold much weight when people say, “The universe only manifests when it’s perceived,” because there seems to be a larger consistency to it. And I was wondering actually …

John - I agree with that.


...and later


John - When that molecule is embedded in a broader environment, in a pool of water, or something that otherwise connects to the broader macroscopic world, that kind of quantum coexistence or quantum superposition doesn’t seem to survive - it doesn’t survive - and the collapse occurs. Does it take a human observer? Probably not.


...and later


Rick - And, if Big Bang theory is correct and it was billions of years before stars had formed and exploded, and formed heavy elements, and eventually there were life forms that could actually have some perceptual mechanism, so somehow all that evolution of the universe took place without any sentient observers as we would understand them.

John - You’re right, and perhaps in my short response before I sold something short. Something is collapsing the wave function, even if human consciousness isn’t. That something is not a “thing” like a molecule, because you know, that molecule would be in a coexistence if it were allowed to be. There is apparently some kind of universal level of mind, universal consciousness, who is observing when we’re not. It’s a question of, ‘who is the first to observe something?’ Does it happen to be a human observer? It could be! Does it happen to be the broader environment and the intelligence or consciousness at the basis of that? It typically is, can be.

So the reason, I guess, I would say that it’s a universal intelligence that’s doing that kind of collapse in the absence of a human observer is because we know the mechanics of the collapse of a wave function is nonlocal and acausal. That it is simultaneously everywhere, and no local real thing, object, molecule, leaf or tree, is capable of collapsing anything universally, instantaneously. So there is an element in this equation, if it’s not human consciousness, it’s some kind of universal consciousness that’s involved in that observing process and the choices that come out of that kind of observing process.


In summary re John Hagelin:
1. He categorically states that objects exist even when humans are not observing them
2. He believes there is a universal consciousness that is the only thing that collapsed our reality into play, via the Big Bang
3. Humans cannot collapse quantum objects – or anything – into reality. The world we live in already existed before we were born and every atom in our body was produced during the Big Bang
4. Where he might be being misquoted is that he believes the human brain operates in some ways only in a quantum manner – but this is just that our consciousness is exercising free will re the choices we instruct our brain to instruct our body to action (see Henry Stapp section below, as John believes the same). There is NOTHING about humans collapsing our brains, bodies or anything else into everyday reality / matter / macroscopic / biological entities
5. The farthest he goes re human abilities is to access higher states of consciousness through specifically Transcendental Meditation...and that, at its very core, there is unity consciousness, where we are one...but we are individualised as human beings, too (simply the traditional Indian Upanishad’s / Vedanta view)
6. I cannot find ANYTHING where he purports that humans can have any of the supernormal powers RSE states are within our abilities. I do emphasise that, while he has never witnessed levitation and believes there has been no evidence of it, his guru Maharashi Mahesh Yogi has tricked people into believing it can occur. And this guru has been called into question re having sex with students, wildly changing his views on what is needed for enlightenment, so that it's incoherent, and falsely claiming levitation. .

Here is the link to the transcript of the full interview: https://batgap.com/transcripts/213_John ... script.pdf


2. Henry Stapp – From Henry’s paper “On The Nature of Things: Human Presence in the World of Atoms” [Henry is a renowned quantum physicist who worked with some of the fathers of quantum mechanics, such as Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and a later brilliant John Wheeler. Ramtha has (mis)quotes at least Heisenberg and Wheeler]. Henry is one of the few who includes consciousness in quantum mechanics, hence Ramtha latches to this but mis-represents it materially.

Full article here:

http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/NOT72C.pdf

The key theme is simply that the versions of quantum mechanics that include consciousness simply mean that there are two processes going on when a scientists conducts an experiment on a quantum mechanical system (i.e. special cases, isolated systems of microscopic particles shielded from the everyday environment...not our everyday objects like insects, pencils. Cars, planets etc).

Our minds are quantum and this quantum mind directs our material brain to ask a question, such as “is the electron’s spin up or down” (it also directs our brain to use our fingers to write down the aspects of the experiment for others to read). Nice and simple – we are not collapsing the moon from a superposition of states into the moon when we look at it! Our mind is full of potentials (i.e. we are unlimited in what we could ask), but it is through experiencing things that we learn; this learning then becomes greater knowledge for us and opens up other questions...and so on. Hence we probe reality (interestingly, Professor Amit Goswami – also in What the Bleep – says the same thing)

Re our minds being quantum, he suggests that the areas between brain synapses – where ions are sent and received – are quantum processes and that this means we choose our thoughts (hence I think people stretch this to mean “create our own reality” by collapsing the wavefunction of a car into an actual car! But he just means “potential thoughts”). Nature then decides whether the spin is up or down when we make a measurement. We do not cause this collapse (other than by having the initial idea to set up the experiment)!

Here is a paper he wrote that contains details:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9505023.pdf

For those interested in some heavier reading about this process, details are in pages 19-28. Suffice to say, here is a good sentence (page 27):

He specifically states that each probing action [i.e. setting up apparatus to detect whether an electron’s spin is up or down], initiated by an ego, influences—by means of nature’s response to that action—the macroscopic behavior of the atomic-particle based material universe. Thus our minds become endowed, by means of the quantum mechanical dynamical rules, with the power to influence the macroscopic properties of matter, without themselves being totally predetermined by material properties alone!

Page 51 - The quantum resuscitation of the causal power of our thoughts overturns the absurd classical notion that nature has endowed us with conscious minds whose only power and function is to delude us into believing that it is helping us to create a future that advances our felt values, while in actuality that future was predetermined 15 billon years ago

Page 107 -

Question: “If mind is an important aspect of reality, then what do you say about the world before life emerged?”

Answer: I was asked this same question by Heisenberg, in his solicited comments on my 1972 AJP article “The Copenhagen Interpretation”. Mentioning Plato’s notion of absolute ideas, he suggested [MM&QM p.76] that perhaps: “It is ‘convenient’ to consider the ideas as existing even outside of the human mind because otherwise it would be difficult to speak of the world before human ideas have existed.” That answer is in line with the science-based conclusion in Chapter 11, that the physically described reality represented by the quantum mechanical state of the universe is most rationally understood as an idea in a universal mind, of which our human minds are tiny partially isolated parts.

Page 112 - Universal Mind. All that we human beings really know exist are our own mental experiences. But we are relatively recent newcomers to the world revealed by astronomical and archaeological observation. Hence there is good reason to believe that there exists, in addition to these evanescent human mental elements, a more enduring reality within which our mental aspects are embedded, or from which they emerge.

In summary:
Our brain has quantum aspects
The only reality we collapse from potentials are the choices we make, with our “mind” telling the brain what to do based on knowledge built up since our birth and then nature presents back to us the experiences/outcomes of (when quantum systems are involved) quantum system experiments
I cannot find anything re superhuman powers!


3. Stuart Hamerhoff and Roger Penrose - From the “Consciousness in the Universe: Neuroscience, Quantum Space-Time Geometry and Orch OR Theory - Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff”, Journal of Cosmology, 2011”

http://www.neurohumanitiestudies.eu/arc ... usness.pdf

Roger is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor, Mathematical Institute, Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford.

Stuart is Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology, Director, Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona.

Stuart and Roger take a middle ground – consciousness is neither a product of matter, nor outside of matter...it is in between the material world and the “quantum mind” world of Henry Stapp, as follows (page 1):

Introduction: Consciousness, Brain and Evolution Consciousness implies awareness: subjective experience of internal and external phenomenal worlds. Consciousness is central also to understanding, meaning and volitional choice with the experience of free will. Our views of reality, of the universe, of ourselves depend on consciousness. Consciousness defines our existence.

Three general possibilities regarding the origin and place of consciousness in the universe have been commonly expressed.

(A) Consciousness is not an independent quality but arose as a natural evolutionary consequence of the biological adaptation of brains and nervous systems. The most popular scientific view is that consciousness emerged as a property of complex biological computation during the course of evolution. Opinions vary as to when, where and how consciousness appeared, e.g. only recently in humans, or earlier in lower organisms. Consciousness as evolutionary adaptation is commonly assumed to be epiphenomenal (i.e. a secondary effect without independent influence), though it is frequently argued to confer beneficial advantages to conscious species (Dennett, 1991; 1995; Wegner, 2002).

(B) Consciousness is a quality that has always been in the universe. Spiritual and religious approaches assume consciousness has been in the universe all along, e.g. as the 'ground of being', 'creator' or component of an omnipresent 'God'. Panpsychists attribute consciousness to all matter. Idealists contend consciousness is all that exists, the material world an illusion (Kant, 1781).

(C) Precursors of consciousness have always been in the universe; biology evolved a mechanism to convert conscious precursors to actual consciousness. This is the view implied by Whitehead (1929; 1933) and taken in the PenroseHameroff theory of 'orchestrated objective reduction' ('Orch OR'). Precursors of consciousness, presumably with proto-experiential qualities, are proposed to exist as the potential ingredients of actual consciousness, the physical basis of these proto-conscious elements not necessarily being part of our current theories of the laws of the universe (Penrose and Hameroff, 1995; Hameroff and Penrose, 1996a; 1996b).

In summary:
Again, we do not collapse quantum potentials (I.e. wavefunctions for objects like cars) reality into reality (I.e. real cars on the street)
There are no superhuman powers
The most “out there” view I could find is Stuart’s views that, because there is a brain EEG spike just before death in SOME patients, it MIGHT be the soul exiting the body.

I don’t know the answers to life’s biggest and nor do they...but we do know that they do NOT support RSE's views, even though they are at the fringe end of the spectrum, “spiritual” and happy to be in movies like “What the Bleep” and “The Secret” which have been vigorously denounced by almost all of the scientific community (including those who do and don't believe in God) who have watched it.

Hope this helps 😊
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