How Thoughts Turn to Things: Through the Lens of Quantum Biology (Part X)
An Article Series Exploring the Quantum Science Behind the Mind-body Connection
This article series delves into the question of whether our thoughts create our personal reality. Many of the world’s most successful people are walking examples that we can achieve anything we set our minds to. To better understand how and why our minds are so powerful, we dive into the exciting field of quantum biology — the intersection of quantum physics and biology.
The marriage of these two fields of science is a relatively new concept. While its implications to the real world are infinite, one of the things it can help us understand is the power of our mental focus — including our thoughts, attention, and beliefs.
Quantum biology could be the science that finally helps us recognize how every mental act translates into our physical actions and thus directly influences the quality of our lives.
The book “Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology” by scientists Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili is a wonderful introduction to the field of quantum biology. This article series follows the book, chapter by chapter, and applies its findings to the topic of how the quantum world could be responsible for our thoughts turning into things.
FINDING HARMONY AMIDST CHAOS
In the last article in this series, we explored the origins of life through the lens of quantum biology. We learned how, despite the miniscule odds, non-organic matter like stardust can form living organisms.
It is through the quantum world that life is able to sustain itself. It is also at this level where our thoughts create our reality as the movement of electrons causes changes in physical structures.
Sometimes we strive hard to bring more order into our lives. Yet even the laws of physics show how apparent disorder contributes to a much larger underlying order.
Today we dive into the last (10th) chapter of “Life on the Edge.” Here, we’ll discuss how seemingly random or chaotic occurrences are part of an orderly quantum process. We just have to be courageous enough to look under the surface of appearances.
THE THREE LAYERS OF REALITY
The closer we zoom in to analyze any physical object or event, the more order we find. At first blush, the vibrating molecules in a single drop of water may seem to be moving around randomly — sort of like billiard balls just bouncing off one another.
Yet if we examine the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen that make up these molecules, we see a perfect dance of electrons and protons shifting from one form into another.
In the last chapter of Life on The Edge, McFadden and Al-Khalili describe the three layers of reality to help us better understand the principle of “order from chaos:”
1) First, there is the level of Newtonian mechanics/Classical Physics. This is the world of flying airplanes subject to the laws of motion and falling apples subject to the laws of gravity.
Here, we can see matter and its movements with our eyes. We find it easy to label these things and events as a “normal” part of our reality. There seems to be an order that we can logically understand.
2) Next is the level of Thermodynamics. At this level, the motion of particles seems to be random. It is the motion of these particles that governs the behavior of the matter we see at the level of Newtonian mechanics.
The example provided in the book is one of a steam engine. While water itself appears orderly and solid (or at least fluid), the motion of the molecules inside the water seems to be random. But it is this “random” movement of hydrogen and oxygen that turns water into steam through the resulting release of energy.
3) Then there is the most fundamental level — the world of Quantum mechanics. This is where particles are ruled by orderly, yet “strange” quantum laws.
They can be in multiple places at once (superposition), they can travel through objects instantaneously (tunneling), and they remain forever connected throughout all of cosmos(entanglement). The quantum world is also subject to the observer effect — the ability to be altered simply through the act of measurement or observation.
“Although there is plenty of disorderly molecular motion inside living cells, the real action of life is tightly choreographed motion of fundamental particles within enzymes, photosynthesis systems, DNA and elsewhere. Life has built-in order at a microscopic level and so order from chaos cannot be the only explanation for life’s fundamental distinguishing features.” — Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili
NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T
Due to the limited nature of sensory perception — which is physical in itself — we are not able to see what happens at the quantum level. The behavior of the quantum world appears “weird” to us because we are so used to seeing reality through the filter of decoherence.
This is the state at which the quantum world turns into the classical world as described in part IV of this series.
We are the middle ground of reality. What’s “out there” and what’s “in here” intersects at the level of our perception. When we turn our attention towards something, we collapse the field of possibilities into one particular state — at least from our point of view. In this decoherent state, particles seem to move in “random” motion.
This is where the power of thoughts and mental focus comes in. When we turn our mental attention towards any particular aspect of reality, we bring that aspect into existence in our personal reality.
YOU BRING WORLDS INTO EXISTENCE
Without you reading these words right now, they wouldn’t exist in your reality. It is the interaction of your eyes with your computer or phone screen that brings them into your world.
Shift your attention to the other side of the room and you have altered your personal experience in that moment. The words are still there…but unless you’re paying attention to them, they might as well not even exist.
When you use your brainpower to focus on life’s possibilities, you bring them closer to your personal reality because you allow your brain to notice those opportunities.
When you focus on thoughts about what’s wrong and what’s missing, you’re putting a filter on your brain that magnifies experience or events that match those thoughts. We explore the science behind this in part VI of this series.
CHANGE YOUR LIFE BY FINDING THE CAUSE
We often see the effect of our thoughts and behaviors only once they rise up to the Newtonian level. Yet the cause always springs forth from the quantum world.
In terms of the quality of our personal lives, the causal level is one of the “mental realm.” Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, habits, and attitudes are equivalent to the quantum layer of reality.
Our society has a habit of trying to resolve things at the surface level without looking deeper to try to resolve the cause. We don’t understand how things happen. We ascribe them to chance or luck. Perhaps a large part of this is that we simply don’t have enough knowledge about the quantum world yet.
We see “coincidences” or “miracles” when all of these things are a manifestation of the universe’s intelligent order at the quantum level.
We are only now beginning to understand this order through the lens of science. This is where quantum biology has the power to help us drastically improve the quality of life on all levels — for all sentient beings.
TAKING OUR POWER BACK FROM OURSELVES
Not realizing that we affect our lives on a fundamental level through our thoughts, we write ourselves off as less-than powerful participants in the creation of our personal reality.
This disempowering attitude leaves many people seeking solutions to their problems somewhere outside of them. This further reinforces the idea that they aren’t in control of their lives.
We all have an intuitive understanding of these quantum laws. Perhaps at some point in your life you’ve realized that the “coincidences” that have happened have been too perfect to be absolutely “random.” Just google the odds of YOU being born…nearly zero.
Yet here you are, you perfect and wonderful human being!
BUILDING A NEW MODEL OF OURSELVES AS HUMANITY
As a collective, we haven’t been able to agree on a model that explains all of the wonderful “coincidences” and “secrets” of life through a shared language. Every culture has its ideas about life through its philosophies and religions. Underneath the barrier of language and past experience, they all point in one direction.
And this is where science is so powerful. It speaks in a language that is not colored by our differences. It is also one of the reasons quantum mechanics seems to be elusive — it is best described in terms of mathematics that take years of study to understand. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
If we wanted to, we could all learn the basics ideas of quantum mechanics just as we learned the basics of Newton’s laws of motion in middle school. We could then use this knowledge to better understand ourselves, our connection to one another, and our ability to create our lives.
As McFadden and Al-Khalili state in this last chapter of Life on the Edge, “quantum physics is the bedrock of physical reality…its mathematical framework is absolutely logical and consistent and accurately describes the way the world is at the level of fundamental particles and forces.”
Even though our thoughts may seem to just be a random part of the universe, they are emanations of electromagnetic energy. If we were to examine them on an individual and collective level, we may be able to see how they contribute to the type of world we are creating through our actions.
BRING THE MAGIC BACK INTO YOUR LIFE
The quantum world shows that there is no line between the “objective” world out there and the world within. No matter how much our circumstances change, if our mental focus remains the same, we will always feel stuck.
Physics highlights that life simply cannot get stuck. Life is a continual process of death and rebirth as subatomic particles blink in and out of existence.
Even when we look at the mass of a proton, only 1% of it can be accounted for by the quarks that make it up. The remaining 99%? One theory suggests that it’s made up of the strong nuclear force. According to science journalist Stephen Battersby, the strong force is carried by a field of virtual particles that pop into and out of existence.
You are made of subatomic particles that continuously pop in and out of existence. If you aren’t magic, then what are you?
It’s time to stop denying how wonderfully magical this universe really is.
It’s time to stop denying how magnificent you are — because you are an absolutely vital part of it.
“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.” — Niels Bohr
I would like to close this series with one of my all-time favorite quotes by Rumi: “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
PREVIOUS ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES
SOURCES
“Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology” by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili, 2016, Broadway Books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations/
RECOMMENDED READING if you’re interested in the science behind the mind-body connection: The Dancing Wu Li Masters — Gary Zukav The Tao of Physics — Fritjof Capra Evolve Your Brain — Dr. Joe Dispenza Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself — Dr. Joe Dispenza The Biology of Belief — Bruce Lipton Buddha’s Brain — Rick Hanson, Ph. D The Universe in a Single Atom — Dalai Lama The Divine Matrix — Gregg Bradden Finding Flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Physics of God — Joseph Selbie No Self No Problem — Chris Niebauer, Ph.D
