Not Ready For This
Nov. 2nd, 2009 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
Over the past couple of nights we've been watching What the Bleep Do We Know as dinner entertainment. We're about an hour into the 'Theatrical Release' version. At first, I was a tad annoyed because I didn't realize it was a documentary. Within the first ten minutes, I was completely absorbed. We only watched about 20 minutes the first night, and another half hour or so tonight. I don't think I can handle much more than that in one sitting. There's so much to absorb. It's very heady stuff.
For all of my mathematical difficulties, quantum theory is remarkably easy for me to grasp. What's amazing to me though, is how quantum theory seems to be where the spiritual world and the scientific world kiss & make up. The scientists in the little interview blurbs are talking about things like 'entanglement', which is the concept that everything is connected (and as they were explaining it in oh-so-scientific terms, I almost started bawling because it set off the chills & made my hair stand on end). Separate two particles a million miles apart, do something to one particle, and the other responds instantaneously. Are the particles communicating? Maybe. Are the particles connected? Definitely. One guy talked about how much energy potential a quantum particle has - and it's a miniscule thing, compared to atoms it's the stuff of which atoms are made - but yet it has the energy potential of billions of suns. All of a sudden, the Large Hadron Collider took on far more sinister tones - imagine a quantum bomb - I'm sure out there, someone already has and is working on it in a lab somewhere.
They talk about the Schroedinger effect & how the observer effects the outcome of an experiment merely by observing & Rob almost fell off the couch (I'm familiar with Schroedinger's cat, though - I think it's a Cheshire cat, and it is, or might not be, in that box over there. I always wonder to myself if Schroedinger had a dog). They also talk about time, and about an experiment in which a neuroscientist did brain surgery on conscious patients & found that the brain actually sends impulses backwards and anticipates physical contact before it happens, making it seem as though the contact & the brain's response occurs instantaneously. Of course, it raised the question for me of is the brain thinking backwards in time, or is it sensing interference with the aura before physical contact is made?
Then there was another experiment, done with simple electronic devices. The devices were first wrapped in tinfoil (which is hilarious to me) & were placed at the center of a table with four well-trained and experienced meditators sitting around it. The four would cleanse the table and device and the surrounding area, and then enter deep meditative states, and when the four were ready, one would state an intention for the device, such as 'this device will raise the pH level of a container of water 1 point'. After the intention was stated, the meditators would imprint this purpose on the device for a specified amount of time, and then at the end, would mentally just let the device go, releasing it. The device would then be placed in an electrostatically neutral package & shipped to another location. The device would be used in accordance with whatever it had been 'programmed to do'. And the devices would do it. That blew my fucking mind.
And that was about all I could handle for tonight.
Rob then started blabbering on about, if the universe is constantly expanding, what, exactly is on the outside of the universe that it is expanding into?
Because my brain is fried and incapable of rational coherent thought, I told him, "you're off the map, matey. Here there be monsters".
For all of my mathematical difficulties, quantum theory is remarkably easy for me to grasp. What's amazing to me though, is how quantum theory seems to be where the spiritual world and the scientific world kiss & make up. The scientists in the little interview blurbs are talking about things like 'entanglement', which is the concept that everything is connected (and as they were explaining it in oh-so-scientific terms, I almost started bawling because it set off the chills & made my hair stand on end). Separate two particles a million miles apart, do something to one particle, and the other responds instantaneously. Are the particles communicating? Maybe. Are the particles connected? Definitely. One guy talked about how much energy potential a quantum particle has - and it's a miniscule thing, compared to atoms it's the stuff of which atoms are made - but yet it has the energy potential of billions of suns. All of a sudden, the Large Hadron Collider took on far more sinister tones - imagine a quantum bomb - I'm sure out there, someone already has and is working on it in a lab somewhere.
They talk about the Schroedinger effect & how the observer effects the outcome of an experiment merely by observing & Rob almost fell off the couch (I'm familiar with Schroedinger's cat, though - I think it's a Cheshire cat, and it is, or might not be, in that box over there. I always wonder to myself if Schroedinger had a dog). They also talk about time, and about an experiment in which a neuroscientist did brain surgery on conscious patients & found that the brain actually sends impulses backwards and anticipates physical contact before it happens, making it seem as though the contact & the brain's response occurs instantaneously. Of course, it raised the question for me of is the brain thinking backwards in time, or is it sensing interference with the aura before physical contact is made?
Then there was another experiment, done with simple electronic devices. The devices were first wrapped in tinfoil (which is hilarious to me) & were placed at the center of a table with four well-trained and experienced meditators sitting around it. The four would cleanse the table and device and the surrounding area, and then enter deep meditative states, and when the four were ready, one would state an intention for the device, such as 'this device will raise the pH level of a container of water 1 point'. After the intention was stated, the meditators would imprint this purpose on the device for a specified amount of time, and then at the end, would mentally just let the device go, releasing it. The device would then be placed in an electrostatically neutral package & shipped to another location. The device would be used in accordance with whatever it had been 'programmed to do'. And the devices would do it. That blew my fucking mind.
And that was about all I could handle for tonight.
Rob then started blabbering on about, if the universe is constantly expanding, what, exactly is on the outside of the universe that it is expanding into?
Because my brain is fried and incapable of rational coherent thought, I told him, "you're off the map, matey. Here there be monsters".
