"You create your own universe as you go along."
—Winston Churchill
Every thought you have has an impact on the universe. That is what this book is about. Is it true? When you think of things do those thoughts have any real connection with the rest of the universe? I truly believe so, and I'm going to spend the pages of this book explaining to you why I believe this.
There are new discoveries about the brain, new theories about quantum physics, an understanding about how the universe came about (at least the known local universe), and a modern understanding of quantum computing that has led me to a conclusion that I'd have never thought I'd come to. Your thoughts really do interact with the universe at the level of quantum physics.
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
The mind is everything. What we think we become."
—Buddha
I've never been a big believer in the various self-help philosophies out there proliferating across the globe. And, to tell the truth, I used to be quite skeptical about all those "power of positive thinking" people. But heck, I grew up in north Alabama, the Deep South of the United States, and it is a well-known phenomenon to all Southern grandmas that if something bad hasn't happened lately, then it is only a matter of time before it does. Sometimes it seems that my grandma's and my parents' generation get the happiest when a disaster occurs, so they can spring into action to talk about it and gossip and to cook everything in the house! If it had been a while since the last friend or family car accident or house fire or work incident, then there was always tornado season to look forward to. Where I'm from, we have two of those seasons a year!
It is quite reasonable to see how I could grow up having a considerably skeptical mind toward the positive thinkers out there. I mean, didn't they know that there was some sort of mayhem, destruction, or disaster lurking just around the corner?
To top all that off, I'm also a scientist and an engineer. I've been going to school all my life, it seems, and I turned forty in 2008. I have a doctorate in Optical Science and Engineering, a Masters of Science in Physics, a Masters of Science in Aerospace Engineering, a Masters of Astronomy, and a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering, and I'm a licensed professional engineer in the state of Alabama. So I've been trained not necessarily be a skeptic, but to at least ask a hell of a lot of questions about, well, just about everything. So when my young daughter asks, "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why is the grass green?" mommy usually smiles and says, "Go ask your father." And after an hour or so of explanation, drawing charts and graphs on the sidewalk with her sidewalk chalk, and showing her models and simulations from Mathcad on the computer, my daughter usually goes back and asks her mother again. One day she'll learn. I hope not.
I'm also a writer. I've written or co-written about a dozen science fiction novels and two textbooks. Of course as a scientist I've written or cowritten over two dozen scientific papers on various scientific topics ranging from lasers to quantum physics to rockets and spacecraft for interstellar travel. One of the textbooks was a fun exercise in defending the planet if we were ever attacked by aliens. I'm not a UFO- conspiracy person, but I write a lot of action science-fiction novels about alien invasions, so I thought it would be cool to write a text on how we'd survive for real if it really happened. Besides, an invasion from superior forces from outer space is just another bad thing that could be looming around the corner! Don't tell my grandmas; they'll be awfully disappointed if the invasion never comes around the corner.
Of course, we're not being serious: my coauthors and I found the odds of such a thing occuring to be almost impossible to calculate, so don't fret over it.
My other textbook is a college-level textbook on rocket science and engineering. That one took a lot of work—a LOT of work. And writing it only deepened my desire to follow the scientific method in all things in life.
I have worked for over twenty years now for a multitude of Department of Defense research programs, NASA projects, private industry, and even the U.S. Intelligence Community. It has all been a lot of fun, hard work, and has shaped me to think like a problem solver.
Now, I'm not telling you all this to brag or get you to buy my books or anything like that—though feel free to buy my books if you'd like. My background story is given here to bolster the credibility of this book and the ideas within it. I'm a skeptical Southern boy. I'm a scientist. I'm an engineer. I'm a writer. Keep that in mind.
The reason for telling you all this is that I have made a personal discovery—a revelation, if you will—that by controlling your thought process and thinking in the right way, you do indeed have the power to influence your world through your thoughts!
Before I get into the details of why and how this works, I need to discuss a little more about how I came to this conclusion, and to do that I have to talk a little more about my personal life.
After all, most truly life-altering, Earth-shaking discoveries and revelations are not from so-called "eureka moments," but instead come from a lifetime of work, study, and personal growth. But then again, sometimes those damned eureka moments will sneak up on you and surprise the living hell out of you, too!
My discovery was partially a long-growth effort of screwing up and learning what I'd done wrong, then starting all over from the beginning . . . or at least from somewhere way closer to the beginning than I would have liked. But there was also a eureka moment.
In fact, there were three.
In high school I was always doing stuff other than school, because to me school was too darned easy. Little did I realize that my smalle county public school was not equipping me very well for engineering school at Auburn University. My first few quarters at Auburn, I seriously struggled just to pass where high school had been really easy. Why?
I always assumed it was because I had never truly learned how to work hard enough or study properly. So I knuckled down and really hit the books. But still, for the first couple of years in undergraduate college, I struggled throuh some of my classes. Interestingly enough, the classes that I really wanted to take, like Quantum Physics were considered to be the hardest classes—and those were the ones that I made As in. Here I was, a borderline B-C student, making As in the hardest classes. Well, maybe some of that was due to the fact that I was seventeen, in college with pretty girls, and, dare I say it, beer. But with a little perspective on that part of my life, the beer and ladies were not the real problems.
I wanted to be in those harder physics classes. That is where I thought the real study, the real life, of being a scientist or engineer could be found. Those cutting-edge classes were sexy to me. It sure wasn't in the mundane courses that taught us how to hook electrical wires up to motors or basic radio-communication circuits. Heck, I'd done most of that in my high-school science-fair projects.
No, it was in the details of how the universe worked, what was on the inside of the inside of atoms, and quantum physics and General Relativity described the very fabric of reality, and how the electric and magnetic fields somehow miraculously traversed the nothingness of space, of that fabric, even if there were nothing there, a nonexistent fabric, between the stars. It was how we were all made of the same stuff that the stars were made of. It was alluring, as much so as the beer and in it's own way, even more intoxicating.
For a teenager to say that studying these subjects was as alluring as partying is hard to believe, I know. But that is the way I felt, even if I hadn't fully realized it at the time.
So, why did I do better in some classes and not the others? Well, again with perspective, I believe it was my attitude. I really wanted to be there. I really wanted to absorb everything I could about those topics. I had a positive attitude. Hmmm . . .
As far as the other classes were concerned, I remember saying things like, "I hate this class" or "the instructor doesn't like me" or "he's just trying to fail us". I had a very negative attitude. But fortunately, I wanted to be a scientist so much so that I trudged my way through the muckiness of my attitude and graduated.
I went to work for the army studying the quantum physics of lasers and optics and attended graduate school, working on my first masters degree in physics. My attitude barely changed, and there was always beer. Then I discovered playing guitar and singing in garage rock 'n roll bands, which was another good reason to blow off my studies. But I managed to finish that first graduate degree, and then something wonderful happened—something that changed me forever . . . for better or for worse.
I got married. Over the next few years, I became more focused and finished a doctorate, then continued on to get two more graduate degrees. My day jobs were working out pretty good, and my wife and I seemed to be learning from our life mistakes and maturing into smarter adults. I know that sounds awfully squishy for a scientist and an engineer. But it is true.
Then one day I was reading a science fiction novel. When I finished it and set it down, I made the statement, "This book is horrible, and there was no science in the science-fiction!" My wife looked up from what she was doing with an annoyed expression on her face.
"If you think you can do one better, then get up and write one yourself." Now, most of you probably think she was being sarcastic. But she actually said it matter-of-factly, and then nonchalantly went back to what she was doing, as if it were the most natural and obvious idea in the world.
That simple statement would change my life.
A few minutes passed while I sat there, pondering what my wife had just said. Then I got up and walked into the study. I opened up a blank Word document on our computer and started typing. Six months later, I had my first science-fiction novel. Less than a year later, a big science-fiction publisher bought it and its sequel, which was nothing more than a proposal.
But what's most relevant to our discussion is my wife's positive affirmation, which was far more powerful than my critical statement about somebody else's work. With just one positive statement, my wife started us down the road to changing our lives. Of course, she was already heading in the right direction, and, as usual, I was dragging up the rear.
That sequel, the one that was merely a rough proposal, ended up being really important as well. That book came to me in a flash. I knew that the title would be The Quantum Connection. I also knew that the underlying theme would be about quantum computing and how, like bits in a quantum computer, our universe is connected through a sort of quantum consciousness. Oh, there were plenty of action sequences, hot chicks, cool aliens, and big explosions, but the underlying big idea of the book was that we are all connected to each other through quantum physics.
This is actually true. We know that at least the known part of the universe that we can see was once so small that it was a teeny-tiny point. All the stuff in the universe we see now—the galaxies, the stars, the black holes, the planets, the space between them, the asteroids, the oceans, the skies, the dirt, the grass, the trees, that rock over there, and all of us—was once a single tiny point all connected as one infinitely dense thingy. In physics classes, we call that thingy the Big Bang Singularity. Through physics, we attempt to write a mathematical equation for this singularity. We don't really know exactly how to write it yet, but we're all thinking and working on it.
But the point is that everything in the universe was once all just one thing. Then, for some reason—call it God, a universal will, happenstance, accident, or whatever suits you—it expanded into the universe we see today about fourteen billion years later.
All the stuff from that singularity point spread out and congealed into all the stuff in the universe we see now: the galaxies, the stars, the black holes, the planets, the space between them, the asteroids, the oceans, the skies, the dirt, the grass, the trees, that rock over there, and all of us. We are all a part of the universe.
To be clear: I don't mean that we all are in the same universe; I truly mean that we are all part of our one single universe, and it all began from one singularity point. Therefore we are all physically connected to and entangled with everything and everyone else that is a part of our universe.
Scientists don't really know the full extent of this connection and entanglement, as we are just now devising experiments to study it, but we know it is there. It is this underlying universal connection—this quantum connection—that my second novel is about.
I started working on this novel back around 2002 or so. I researched and researched the details of this quantum connection to the point where I really understood it. I understood so much that I did some actual experiments with it in my day job. I even invented a quantum data bus for a computer for that novel that I don't recall having seen anywhere else. I really began to understand the concept and the physics of it.
Now I've never been really religious. I will spend a little time discussing this from an historical perspective, but very little time. But suffice it to say, whenever the subject of religion would come up, I'd always point out that I was a scientist, and that I'd believe in God when I met him. Until then, I wouldn't have enough evidence to say if he did or didn't exist. Again, I'm a scientist.
But an odd thing was happening to me as I wrote The Quantum Connection: I was beginning to believe that there was some overall quantum connection throughout the universe that connected us all. I was beginning not only to believe in it, but to see it as a scientific reality.
A few years went by and I wrote more books, did more science, worked more, and became a father. Life was good. And then I had two eureka moments—almost within a week of each other—that seemed absolutely connected even though they had nothing to do with each other.
The first was that I had been at a science-fiction convention lecturing on various things. I had one panel on "How to Write Hard Science in Science Fiction," and there was another on "Sex in Space." (That last one was a real big hoot.) Then I was on two panels discussing nanomachines and modern physics. Somehow in both of these we spun off into the very small parts of the brain and why or how things happen there and if it was related to this quantum connection. Then one smart guy in the crowd asked if I had ever heard of some new work by this neurologist and a physicist, a famous one whose name he couldn't recall. Apparently the neurologist and the physicist had come up with some new data suggesting that the brain actually works on a quantum scale and not like a neural network as we had previously believed. I had to admit that I had not. I also had to admit that the thought excited the living hell out of me.
That night from the hotel room I put my Google fu to the test and quickly found the two men in question and the new work. The two men were Stuart Hameroff, M.D. (turned out he was an anesthesiologist, not a neurologist), and Sir Roger Penrose, Ph.D. Their theory is called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (referred to as Orch OR).
I will get into the details of this theory later on in the book (don't worry, there's no math involved), but the basics are that the brain works like a quantum computer and interacts with stimuli through quantum physics.
In quantum computers we set up a question that might be as simple as asking, "Square?" Then we interact that question with the database around it. Instantly, the question will "cohere" or "reduce" to the thing in the database most like it (i.e., anything with a square shape) and cause all the other possible answers to "decohere." In other words, with quantum computers, like things will stick around and unlike things will vanish.
What's even more interesting is that these things don't have to touch each other to do this, they just have to be quantum connected. In physics speak, we say that their mathematical wave functions are entangled.
But before we get too weighed down in quantum physics, the important eureka moment for me was that our brains could be quantum computers! I immediately started with a flood of ideas about this. I stayed up all night reading papers on the Internet about Orch OR. If Orch OR theory turns out to be right, then our brains truly are quantum computers!
That means that every thought we have sets up a "quantum question" in our brain (this question is called a "quantum state," by the way). Then it interferes that state with the perception of the universe our brain has stored in it from our lifelong stimulations (sights, sounds, dreams, feelings, smells, touches, you name it), and the state causes a reality or observation to occur or reduce into being.
For example, imagine seeing a red sports car go down the street. Immediately your brain sets up the visual state of the thing you just saw. It then interacts that visual state with all your memories and instantly you know the visual state is a red sports car. The like memories, "cohere," or stay, and the unlike memories—say of an orange baboon or silver train or white horse—"decohere" (i.e., go away).
One of the other intriguing things about this phenomenon of quantum connectedness is that not only is the action instantaneous it doesn't matter how far apart the states are separated physically. The connection can truly be from one side of the universe to the other, and the action still happens instantly. Seriously. I'm not making this up. This is well-established physics that has been around since the 1920s or so.
So this night was my second eureka moment.
A week or so later, my third eureka moment occurred. I came home from work one evening, and my wife told me that I had to see this episode of Oprah that she had recorded on the DVR.
Now, I don't typically watch Oprah Winfrey, although I do see her as the epitome of the American dream. She came from nothing and grew to be one of the most influential women in the world. So I respect her immensely.
I asked my wife what the episode was about and she responded that I'd just have to watch it. And like I did when she told me to go write my own book, I listened.
We sat down on the couch and fast-forwarded the show through the intro to the start of the programming. There were several folks there talking about this new book and DVD coming out called The Secret.
Now, once again, I want to remind you that I'm a skeptical Southern boy, a scientist, an engineer, and a writer who isn't very religious, and have never been a big believer in self-help stuff. So I sat there with an eyebrow raised like Spock from the original Star Trek series.
"We are mass energy. Everything is energy.
EVERYTHING."
—The Secret
Then one of these people kept talking about how the universe is made of energy and that we are all energy and that there was this so-called "Law of Attraction" out there that says that like attracts like. One of them even used the example that it was like a magnet.
That's when I cringed. Magnets don't work that way, and neither does electrical energy. Opposite polarities of magnetic poles and electric charges attract, not like ones. The north pole of a magnet attracts the south pole. A positive electric charge attracts a negative electric charge. It's probably where the old expression "opposites attract" comes from.
Obviously, these people weren't physicists or engineers. But this wasn't the Discovery or History Channel, so I cut them a little slack. I kept listening and thinking that maybe they just don't quite understand how to say what they were trying to say. I sat patiently and gave them a chance. And I am very glad I did!
After watching that episode of Oprah, I put The Quantum Connection, the brain being a quantum computer, and this Secret together into one big picture in my head. I realized that these The Secret people were right about the positive thinking and Law of Attraction philosophy being prominent throughout man's history. Great thinkers and philosophers throughout history have written about the concept, well, for about as long was we have records, and it could very well predate that. I started surfing the Internet and reading more and more about these philosophies. I dragged out my old philosophy textbook from undergraduate school and flipped through it. Maybe, just maybe, these people had observed something but didn't quite understand how to explain it.
"Always remember, your focus determines your reality."
Qui-Gon Gin from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
"Every thought we think is creating our future."
—Louise Hay
A few days later my wife recorded another episode of Oprah. This one had a lady named Louise Hay as the guest. And again, my wife told me I needed to watch it with her. So I did.
I remember telling my wife after watching the episode that I felt as if I'd been sitting there and listening to Yoda talk for the last hour. If this philosophy that Louise Hay was discussing had any real scientific basis to it, then I was on the verge of my own next physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual revelation.
It was all fitting together. The pieces of the universal puzzle that I'd been studying since I was old enough to read were falling into place before me. My life's work was amalgamating into something greater than each of the pieces of experience and understanding that I had attained.
We bought the DVD of The Secret. We watched it several times. I read books by the stars of the show. I read and listened to books by Louise Hay. We bought her DVD, You Can Heal Your Life, and watched it. I educated myself on this philosophy. I couldn't sleep for weeks, I was so excited by the promise that modern quantum physics and this ancient life philosophy held for me, for humanity.
I put together a detailed briefing about the human brain, Orchestrated Objective Reduction, Quantum Connectedness, Quantum Computers, and The Secret philosophies. I found where leaders of nations, religions, science, medicine, and even generals throughout history had made statements that fit right into what this group of gurus was teaching. I continued to joke with my wife that they all sounded a lot like a roomful of Yodas, Obi-Wan Kenobis, and Qui-Gon Jinns. But it wasn't a joke, or some made-up sci-fi world: this was real. And I really liked what I was hearing.
I've presented the material I put together at several science fiction conventions, at book signings, and in rooms filled with colleagues of mine that are well-respected physicists and engineers. And every single time I've given this lecture, I get nothing but praise, excitement, and enthusiasm. And every single time, I find a new bit of information about a philosophy or theory that fits right into this universal understanding.
For example, at one science-fiction convention there was an author there who was a Wiccan. Now, I know about two things about Wiccans, and one of them is how to spell it (though I had to look that up), and the other is that I think Stevie Nicks is one. Okay, I know nothing about Wiccans. My grandma would have probably assumed that they worshiped the devil and told me to stay away from them.
But I had known this author for a while, respected her opinions, and knew she was smart. We had been friends for a couple of years, but I had no idea of her religious beliefs before that moment.
So she told me that Wiccans get together in their coven (or whatever they call it) and plan what they are going to perform magic on, and then they focus on what they want to happen. She told me about how they have to keep their mental focus and how they must visualize what they wanted in a certain way with a clear mind, or it wouldn't work. And she told me that it didn't matter how far away the coven was from what they wanted to effect. Then she smiled and said, "I'm glad that science is finally catching up with what we Wiccans have always known."
At the time I was like a deer in headlights and had images of those freaky girls from the movie The Craft rather than the lovely Samantha Stephens running through my head. I politely nodded and promised to think about what she had told me. And I kept my promise.
Another time I gave the backyard-barbecue version of my presentation to my neighbors from a lawn chair over a few beers and bottle rockets on Independence Day. One of my neighbors smiled and said, "Sounds a lot like praying to me."
Suddenly what my Wiccan friend had said hit home. I started really thinking about the teachings of every religion, philosophy, metaphysical belief system, and even science-fiction and fantasy ideology that I could come up with. They all seemed to have a basic "ask and ye shall receive" aspect to them.
Every day, I felt more and more excited about what I had discovered. Humanity's great thinkers throughout history had somehow tapped into the quantum connection without knowing why it worked. Many studies have shown that people who pray or meditate are physically, mentally, and emotionally more fit than those who don't.
I was really looking at the universe differently now. I was looking at life differently. I was looking at humanity differently.
Humanity could really be on the edge of understanding a bigger reality. And I don't mean understanding that there is something more, but instead understanding that there is something more and how to tap into it.
And that is why I decided to sit down and write The Science Behind The Secret. My life's journey to this date has led me here, and I feel I need to not only tap into this quantum connection, but help others understand it.
I will explore a lot of the topics I've presented in lectures that I've given over the past couple of years, as well as some new ideas from the cutting-edge of quantum physics. While it's true that most people who discuss quantum physics have been studying math and physics for years, there are core concepts and ideas that require no math whatsoever (unless you want to show your work . . .). I will try my best to explain the concepts without the math to best of my abilities. No, wait, Yoda would say, "There is no try. Only do or do not." And I recall one of those The Secret folks saying, "Trying is failing with honor." So I will not try. I will explain this concept with as little math as possible.
I am taking great pains to explain these concepts in a way that nonscientists can understand, because I feel they should be shouted from every rooftop, taught in every school, told to every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth, and spread across the universe. Because, as I've discovered through a life of study, Your Quantum Brain Gives you the Power to Change your World!
"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."
—Albert Einstein