Scientific Proof: Reality is Really Weird!
by Lonny J. Brown • Peterborough, NH

Wavicles?

It all started a century ago, when the world's leading physicists wanted to figure out exactly what light is. One theory said light is propagated as a wave of energy, similar to the concentric ripples of water on a lake. Another postulated that light is particulate; it hits our eyes in a stream of tiny bits, called photons. The race was on to discover which of these descriptions of the true nature of light was correct, and one simple science experiment was supposed to settle the question definitively.

The famous Double Slit Experiment was predicated on the fact that waves and particles create different interference patterns when projected on a screen through either one or two openings. Skipping the technical details, suffice it to say that nature threw analytic science a major curve when it revealed that light is both wave-like and particle-like, depending on how you look at it! This baffling new property of elemental particles was named complemenarity, and historically, it meant goodbye forever to the objective, predictable, logical, “common sense” world we thought we inhabited. Physics finally bumped head-on into metaphysics, and neither would ever be the same.

Real Nonsense

Welcome to the weird world of quantum mechanics, where uncertainty prevails, observations are inseparable from the observer, energy particles “know” where their predecessors went, they can be in two places at once, and routinely come in and out of existence. In 1905, Albert Einstein announced to an astonished scientific community that matter is actually energy, bound by an enormous nuclear force proportional to the speed of light multiplied by itself. This discovery - expressed in the elegantly simple formula, E=mC2 - profoundly changed humankind's understanding of reality. The young German genius also proclaimed that there is a cosmic speed limit, time slows down approaching it, and space itself warps around the massive celestial objects within it.

The most massive objects of all are also the most incomprehensible. Black holes are so infinitely dense at their core (called a singularity) that the very laws of physics that produced them are violated and obliterated. These types of exceptions to the rules should duly impress people searching for “miracles” in this world. They’re everywhere! Indeed, creation itself is the greatest implausibility conceivable! If theoretical cosmologists are correct, there may be a dozen extra dimensions of reality in our 14-billion-year-old universe, and up to an infinite number of variations in a grand “Multiverse” that is spectacularly larger, older, and more mysterious than ever imagined. (Now, are you sure you know which way is up?)

Now Is Forever

As if to compensate for this dizzying view of our immense and expanding universe, science is simultaneously coming tantalizingly close to resolving all the known forces into their fundamental nature. Just as matter and energy were revealed to be interchangeable, and electricity, magnetism, and light all turned out to be facets of the same energy, the Grand Unified Field Theory will re-combine these in turn with the sub-atomic forces plus gravity, as they must have been at the very beginning of creation. We may be close to discovering the single simple mathematical formula for Genesis.

Of course, this ultimate Theory of Everything must also inevitably include the one last phenomenon in creation not yet addressed by classical cosmology: life itself. After all, sentient awareness also exists right alongside atoms, photons, and the trillions of unseen neutrinos passing through us all the time. Universal Awareness may be the “hidden variable” that accounts for observable anomalies like quantum entanglement (by which two related particles “know” each other’s state, instantaneously, at any distance). It could also explain the healing power of prayer, telepathy, and other transpersonal phenomena.

Such counterintuitive behaviors of nature are a lot easier to grasp if nature itself is seen as an experience in your mind. This perceptual figure/ground reversal allows us to see existence as one great big idea in the universal super-awareness. The mystics have said it for centuries: we live in a subjective, responsive world, where attention and intention determine experience, and anything is possible because everything is imaginable.

The original and prevailing over-mind is sometimes called God, which is problematic nomenclature if you think that It excludes you. Who wrote the laws of nature? You did! We all did, and we're still adhering to those laws, as well as bending them, breaking them, and making new ones. Yes, we live in a magical universe, and we’re all magicians. There may be no up and down, but there's always the Here and Now, and you're in It. Enjoy!

Lonny J. Brown is the author of Enlightenment In Our Time (BookLocker.com), and the online column, “The Holistic Mystic” (TheMetaArts.com). His writings on holistic health have appeared on AOL’s Alternative Medicine Forum and in Alternative Health Practitioner, Yoga Journal, and many other progressive publications. Brown teaches holistic health, mind/body healing, and stress reduction courses at hospitals, schools and businesses throughout the US. www.LonnyBrown.com, lonny@holistic.com.