Foundations of Mind V conference: The New AI Scare?

The Foundations of Mind V (FOM5)”The New AI Scare?” conference was hosted by the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS) by the CIIS Center for Consciousness Studies in San Francisco on Nov 3-4, 2017. It featured presentations by: Henry Stapp, Fred Alan Wolf, Seán Ó Nualláin, Cynthia Sue Larson, Stanley Klein, and Beverly Rubik. This fifth Foundations of Mind conference was scheduled to coincide with and celebrate the release of Henry Stapp’s new book, “Quantum Theory and Free Will.”

People registered through Foundations of Mind (FOM) participate in an ongoing series of conversational threads in areas related to consciousness, quantum interpretations, neuroscience, and higher education.

Aamod Shanker

Quantum Mind

Aamod Shanker presented ideas from traditions of eastern mysticism, particularly those describing vibrations (spanda) from Kashmiri Shaivism, and yogic ideologies of Patanjali, together with principles from wave/quantum mechanics, electromagnetics and principles of symmetries, structure and logic. There was a great deal of spirited conversation about this topic, with discussion about there being many words for consciousness in the east.

Kiril Popov

Reality, Truth, and Computation at the Boundary

Kiril Popov talked about the importance of boundary conditions, and design principles for the mind. There is a requirement that intelligent beings predict things before they happen, which requires memory. Boundary interfaces provide a kind of building block, with access to fields becoming possible via boundary conditions.

Brian Swimme

Mind and World 
Session chair Brian Swimme discussed cosmogenetic consciousness, and what that entails. He encouraged conference participants to experience a visceral sense of wonder with respect to speciation events that some scholars speculate are based on not just genetic mutations, but conscious intention and activity as well. When viewing evolutionary developments through this lens, we can thus recognize important distinctions between evolution of the bison and the horse, which evolved very differently from a common genetic ancestor–by attending to different streams of attention and intention. We can hypothesize that what gets brought forth through evolution is what it’s all about.

Menas Kafatos

Menas Kafatos Commentary on Quantum Theory and Free Will

Menas Kafatos presented a summary of important points from the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics as described in numerous publications by Henry P. Stapp and summarized in his new book, “Quantum Theory and Free Will: How Mental Intentions Translate into Bodily Actions.” Nature has values, including life–so we might ask how our values express themselves in a physical universe. Our universe is quantum on every level, although it appears classical, and the observer role is central in quantum physics.

Henry P. Stapp and Seán Ó Nualláin

Syamala Hari on Voluntary Action, Conscious Will and Readiness Potential

Syamala Hari discussed neural correlates of consciousness, neural models, and ways to interpret quantum mechanics in such a way that intention does activation.

 

Henry Stapp and Cynthia Sue Larson

If Artificial Intelligence Asks Questions, Will Nature Answer?

Cynthia Sue Larson considered how Henry Stapp’s orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that when a question is asked, Nature answers–and then pursued this line of thinking to contemplate what happens if Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) asks a question. The impact of such a dialogue between AGI and Nature were explored, with consideration of humanity’s optimal role.

Stan Klein

Stan Klein on New Approaches to the Measurement Problem

Stan Klein provided an introductory overview of Quantum Electro Dynamics as necessary foundational groundwork prior to reviewing the importance of recognizing the selection problem in quantum physics. When we consider a moveable cut, we may well ask, “Who is the observer?”

Tania Re

Tania Re discussed research findings from the field of ethnogenic healing, with support from quantum physics indicating there is growing evidence to recommend consideration of psychotropic substances for therapeutic use.

Seán Ó Nualláin

Reterritorialization and Mental Health

Foundations of Mind founder Seán Ó Nualláin described the issues facing Ireland based on the background presented in his book, “Ireland, A Colony Once Again.” Since the 1990s, there has been a disturbing trends including encroachment of state, increasing suicide rates of the Irish populace, and a kind of illegal status quo–resulting in a Good Friday agreement that brought peace, and also a result that Ireland became a state with no land.

Phillip Shinnick

Phillip Shinnick discusses nature’s influence and mind training in QiGong

Phillip Shinnick described some of the research he has done to address difficulties in inorganic and organic measurement of QiGong energy. Mind and Qi appear to be separate, and Qi does not need mind activity to ‘do its own thing.’ Man cannot govern Dao Yin (nature), but rather nature is involved, and teaches us. Practicing QiGong produces measureable energetic effects, and changes the way we observe reality.

Wolfgang Baer

Wolfgang Baer

Wolfgang Baer presented a talk about “why I’m not afraid of A.I.,” introducing his Cognitive Action Theory where activity is at the center, and action does the activity–rather than emphasizing roles of ‘observers’ and ‘things.’ From this perspective, we feel we are together when we are moving together, and experience is explained by process. From this view, each of us is an event that contains time. We thus live in a world of interacting action cycles–a multiverse of persons.

Vipul Arora

Vipul Arora

Vipul Arora described how observations are essential building blocks of the world. We can quantify experiences in time according to predictable relationships in kinematics. We notice primary properties, or aspects of experience, which are different from emergent properties, and in so doing, we might well ask whether we can distinguish between different sources (tungsten, mercury, sodium lamps). Speech recognition started with higher emergent properties, but those results are limited and moving toward lower emergent properties. We see that limitations of detectors can undermine the importance of primary properties.

Fred Alan Wolf

Fred Alan Wolf

Fred Alan Wolf discussed self-referential consciousness, quantum mechanics, and Gödel numbers to demonstrate that minds can do what automatons cannot do, by transcending rules. There is something about ‘Gödelization’ that shows it is an unalgorithmic procedure, with measurements that are inherently unalgorithmic. Put in other words, we can’t consistently mathematize quantum wave function collapse.

 

Stan McDaniel

Stan McDaniel

Stan McDaniel talked about the philosophy of continuity, time, and opposition of the dominant paradigm consisting of mechanistic reductionism, physical time, and neoDarwinism. Stan pointed out that memory is used for two things: remembering, and bits of data stored somewhere. This leads us to consider whether a computer can look at it’s own memory, whereas humans are involved in a state of functional reciprocity with nature and the world.

Beverly Rubik and Harry Jabs

Beverly Rubik & Harry Jabs

Beverly Rubik talked about ways Artificial Intelligence can automate obtaining human health information from bio-well finger scans, and then potentially also provide specific balancing frequencies that have been shown effective in reducing stress and improving health. Harry Jabs described ways that A.I. might emulate humans, though robots lack emotions and also will lack a human biofield.

Karla Galdamez

Karla Galdamez

Karla Galdamez described her study of intention at a distance as a source of information transfer and wave function collapse in a recent experiment. This particular experiment involved a Zen meditator in an electromagnetically shielded room, and a remote helper, connected via internet. 

 

 

 

Additional photos and news announcements from the Foundations of Mind IV conference can be viewed at the Foundations of Mind facebook page.

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics as the host of her radio show Living the Quantum Dream, and as a guest on numerous shows including: the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC, Gaia TV, and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Foundations of Mind IV conference: Quantum Mechanics Meets Neuroscience

The Foundations of Mind IV (FOM4)”Quantum Mechanics Meets Neuroscience” conference was hosted by the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS) by the CIIS Center for Consciousness Studies in San Francisco on January 27, 2017. It featured presentations by: John Hagelin, Stuart Hameroff, Ruth Kastner, Henry Stapp, Russell Targ, Jack Sarfatti, George Weissmann, Elizabeth Rauscher, Leslie Allan Combs, Fred Alan Wolf, Shelli Joye, Seán Ó Nualláin, Cynthia Sue Larson, Stanley Klein, and Chris Cochran. This fourth Foundations of Mind conference was scheduled to coincide with what would have been Walter Freeman III’s 90th birthday.

People registered through Foundations of Mind (FOM) have joined in numerous conversational threads in areas related to the quantum paradigm, consciousness, quantum interpretations, neuroscience, and higher education.

Seán Ó Nualláin

Neurodynamics

Foundations of Mind founder Seán Ó Nualláin began the conference by talking about the history of Foundations of Mind, starting with a humble initial budget of $55 a few years ago. In just a few years time, Foundations of Mind has grown to an organization that has created over a hundred peer-reviewed papers–with 79 papers published in just the past three years–all the while providing researchers full rights. The tremendous success of Foundations of Mind is obvious when witnessing the exponential increase in online views and downloads of it’s published research papers, with over 28 million views of all papers published through Cosmos and History in 2015 alone.

Ó Nualláin shared insights and breakthroughs associated with Walter Freeman III’s work that will likely continue for many years to come. Ó Nualláin elucidated the differences between Pribram and Freeman’s work from his unique perspective of having had the opportunity to work closely with both of them. Ó Nualláin explained how Pribram’s holonomic approach arises from consideration of the “microscopic” level–such as individual neurons–while Freeman’s research focused on mass action at the “mesoscopic” level. Ó Nualláin emphasized Freeman’s point that a critical mistake neurologists often make is in supplanting ‘neural fields’ with ‘neuron doctrine,’ as he called for a return to neural field research. Ó Nualláin emphasized that there are important clues to discerning between consciousness and awakeness that can be found in gamma synchrony, with characteristically brief (about 3 seconds at most) synchronous states attained through meditation that requires less energy than other mental states. 

Shelli Joye

Tuning the Mind 
Shelli Joye presented a talk about how quantum field theory can be applied to the electromagnetic field, resulting in quantum electrodynamics. A hypothesis of consciousness residing in the frequency domain is congruent with David Bohm’s implicate order, which appears to provide support for experiences of mystics and psychonauts.

Chris Cochran

Wolfgang Pauli’s Background Physics

Chris Cochran talked about conversations between physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung mostly centered on the topic of Pauli’s dream interpretations. The notion of background physics was presented as a method of psychoanalytic interpretation applied to foundations of quantum mechanics–comprising a practice of self knowledge that emerges in relation to knowledge of quantum mechanics. One of the more interesting conclusions from this rather unique quantum interpretation is that Pauli took complementarity to express the impossibility of final determination of the categories of ‘physical’ and ‘psychic,’ resulting in a conclusion of it being an impossibility for there to be mere ‘physical’ grounding for science. Cochran reminded us of Carl Jung’s suggestion to note that “Only from his wholeness can man create a model of the whole.”

Stuart Hameroff, Jack Sarfatti, and Cynthia Sue Larson

Consciousness in the Universe

Stuart Hameroff presented the “Orch OR” theory that he and physicist Roger Penrose devised to provide a physical explanation for where consciousness might be found to reside. Hameroff began his talk by describing how most modern science is based on an ‘integrate and fire’ neural model that has led to brain mapping, which so far has not been very fruitful. When Penrose suggested the idea that microtubules might be capable of processing information along the lines of a kind of biological quantum computer, we gained an idea for how human memory might work. Hameroff noted that consciousness is definitely not a computation, stating that Penrose used Gödel’s theorem to show conscious understanding is non-computational. Penrose points out that ‘self-collapse’ is consciousness, and we can imagine our conscious minds as something akin to an orchestra warming up.

John Hagelin

Search for Consciousness

John Hagelin presented a summary of recent theories and evidence refuting the
“objective” or “OR” component of “Orch OR.” Hagelin asserted that the OR portion of Orch-OR needs a closer look, since once it is considered in light of recent developments in theoretical quantum physics, the OR portion doesn’t stand up. Hagelin was quick to point out that this does not mean that quantum mechanics does not play a role in consciousness. He continued that he feels the absence of any mechanism suggests that there might not be any wave function collapse; instead we may have the emergence of a multiplicity of parallel viewpoints via decoherence within a single wave function, all operating within a single universal consciousness.

Lively Discussions

A lively panel discussion with Stuart Hameroff, Stan Klein, Henry Stapp and John Hagelin followed the morning sessions, with Ruth Kastner stating that the matter of the collapse of the wave function needs to be addressed, and advising against “shoving the collapse under a different piece of furniture in the room.”

Russell Targ

Nonlocal Remote Perception

Russell Targ talked about the long and successful history of the remote viewing program that he managed for many years at SRI, and showed a movie clip from the forthcoming documentary film, Third Eye Spies. Targ discussed some of the more remarkable discoveries from nonlocal remote perception (aka “remote viewing”) such as he oversaw at SRI in the 1970s. Targ emphasized that “remote viewing is so easy that even a scientist can do it.”  Targ’s ability to provide prompts to those learning to do remote viewing for the first time proved especially fruitful, such as asking a viewer to “show me the surprising images that come into your mind.”

Stan Klein

Testing Psychic Phenomena

Stan Klein presented his talk on, “Using Psychic Phenomena to Test Walter Freeman’s Devotion to Connecting Neuropil to Hard Problems.” Stan made a call for more and better experiments investigating findings in psychic phenomena in the future.

How Hippies Can Save the 2nd Quantum Revolution

Cynthia Sue Larson introduced the afternoon sessions devoted to presentations by Ruth Kastner, Elizabeth Rauscher, George Weissmann, Fred Alan Wolf, Henry Stapp, and Jack Sarfatti.

 

Cynthia Sue Larson and Ruth Kastner

Science Hasn’t Disproven Free Will

Ruth Kastner presented a different perspective on the topic of free will than the currently prevailing view amongst most quantum physicists–that there is no such thing as personal choice; it’s all probabilities. Kastner contends that we do have free will, as she guided us through an exploration of considering oneself as a ‘quantum system’ in a ready state. It’s clear when envisioning this scenario that each person is enormously complex while existing in an open (rather than closed) state. Choices are not really quantum observables, and each choice option is not represented by an eigenvalue. It is thus physically inaccurate, for example, to call a choice made by Hitler a “quantum defined observable.” Kastner reminded us of a quote by Freeman Dyson, “… mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when they are made by electrons.”

Elizabeth Rauscher

Paradigm Shift Number II Ready to Happen

Elizabeth Rauscher talked about how she and George Weissmann initially formed the Fundamental Fysiks Group at UC Berkeley in 1975 to delve deeper into the mysteries of quantum physics beyond the “shut up and calculate” point of view. Quantum concepts were explored with talks by David Bohm and some Nobel prize recipients. Rauscher discussed the idea of quantum reality, showing how EPR fits in with Bell’s Theorem, and what happens as our previously accepted notions of reality fail. Rauscher explained how there is a notion of approximate reality associated with the quantum realm, sandwiched between improbabilities, in a narrow slice of physical ‘exact reality.’ Rauscher provided an overview of subjective versus objective aspects of reality, and the value of precognition in bringing information from the future back to the past, as described in more detail in her books and papers.

George Weissmann and Elizabeth Rauscher

The Quantum Paradigm

George Weissmann discussed the nature of paradigms, and the way presuppositions are implicit unconscious assumptions that often have a dangerous way of sneaking into our theories unquestioned–going mostly unnoticed and ignored. Weissmann stressed that it is absolutely critical in these times to become paradigm-aware. One fundamental assumption to examine more closely is that of objectivity: that there exist such things as objects. When we challenge assumptions, it’s not the same thing as negating it, but rather challenging can be understood to be a process of questioning. In the case of objectivity, we can then keep track of subject and object with every distinction being made. Classical physics is always about ‘external things,’ while quantum is not about external things. Quantum theory is a process, and the arena is in the mind… which leads us to wonder, “Which mind?” We thus begin to gain a sense of relational quantum theory that is personal and not idealistic (mind VS matter), since experience consists of both subject and object. Dreams can thus provide us with a good metaphor for the quantum paradigm, with an implicit sense of One Mind cosmology, in which the quantum paradigm can qualitatively explain and predict.

Fred Alan Wolf

Ontology, Epistemology, Consciousness, and Closed Timelike Curves

Fred Alan Wolf discussed some ideas behind quantum computers having to do with viewing the universe as a multiverse along the lines of what David Deutsch suggests, with closed timelike curves in the multiverse, and wormholes connecting universes in the multiverse. Such a conceptualization of the multiverse transcends linear dynamics, so everything can be considered as being part of parallel universes, where previous time travel paradoxes no longer wreak the kind of havoc we’ve come to expect. Both the “knowledge paradox” and “grandfather paradox” can be resolved through chronological-respecting qubits and consistent time-looping qubits. What comes out of one wormhole thus goes into another world, with entanglement being preserved overall throughout the multiverse.

Henry Stapp

Backward-in-Time Effect in Orthodox Forward-in-Time Relativistic Quantum Field Theory

Henry Stapp pointed out that the present exists “now” and this representation of reality is represented by density matrix. Density matrix is ontological, and represents potentialities with statistical weights, evolving smoothly through time. When considering experiments such as Daryl Bem’s “feeling the future” precognitive experiments, an upsurge of conductance occurs before the stimulus is applied–which seems to provide evidence for backward-in-time causation. When considering such experiments, we must understand orthodox von Neumann quantum theory in a way that is not normally considered. We thus need to better understand ‘actual past’ versus ‘historical past’ so we understand and appreciate that history does not create us.

 

Jack Sarfatti

 

Recent Advances in Post-Quantum Physics: The Third Revolution

Jack Sarfatti advocated considering an earlier Bohmian pilot wave view of quantum physics, utilizing John Bell’s “be-ables” in conjunction with the work of Sutherland. Quantum information waves can thus be considered to actually be mental waves, so there is an ontological physical field that manifests as quantum potential, Q, as “will” or “volition.” Mental waves do not have qualia unless the matter they act on reacts directly to them. There is thus a kind of post-quantum action-reaction that has much in common with the wormholes and closed timelike curves presented by Fred Alan Wolf. As soon as you have wormholes, you have consciousness, operating in a block universe. Both future and past are located on the horizon.

Informal Conference Conversations

Melanie O’Reilly with Corca Baiscin

Conference attendees got a chance to mingle with others during breaks, at lunch, and after the conference. An evening musical performance by Corca Baiscin (pronouced Kurka Boshkin) featured vocalist Melanie O’Reilly’s beautiful Celtic jazz. “Kurka Boshkin/Corca Baiscin” combines Irish traditional music with a Celtic-Americana contemporary twist, interwoven with jazz improvisation. Corca Baiscin is the name of the ancient territory now known as County Clare on the west coast of Ireland; you can hear a sample of Corca Baiscin playing “The Tamlin” in this video clip: https://youtu.be/6QycRVt8Xf8 and Melanie O’Reilly sing “The Diamond Rocks” here: https://youtu.be/mVRqR_pjVs0

 

Some presenters and attendees continued to enjoy a meal and post-conference conversation at a nearby restaurant.

Additional photos and news announcements from the Foundations of Mind IV conference can be viewed at the Foundations of Mind facebook page.

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics as the host of her radio show Living the Quantum Dream, and as a guest on numerous shows including: the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC, Gaia TV, and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Living the Quantum Dream Radio Show

Do you know I host a radio show? I’ve surprised several people recently with news that I host the Living the Quantum Dream radio show, based out of Boston, Massachusetts, and featured on the Dreamvisions7 Radio Network. I’ve now conducted sixteen one-hour interviews with some of the world’s leading authors and visionaries presenting overviews of their unique areas of expertise in the expanding field of quantum consciousness. I created this radio show because there’s much more to reality than we learned in school!

We’re fortunate to be living at a time of changing paradigms, as we prepare to leave materialism and move toward quantum consciousness. While materialists have long claimed that at some future point in time, we will be able to discover how the mind will be understood as being a product of ‘mindless matter.’ In actuality, the discovery of quantum physics in the early 20th century eliminated materialism as a possible foundation for objective truth–though acceptance of this discovery has been slow to be globally recognized and understood.

Living the Quantum Dream explores the logic of quantum physics in a down-to-Earth way that is of practical benefit for your daily life. Learn how you can improve your life with such quantum phenomena as: entanglement, coherence, teleportation, and superposition of states with your host, Cynthia Sue Larson, best-selling author of “Quantum Jumps” and editor of the monthly www.RealityShifters ezine, in conversation with some of the world’s leading thinkers and visionaries. Discover how ancient wisdom shares much in common with new findings in the fields of philosophy, psychology, biology, medicine, and physics—and find out how you can change your life for the better today.   http://dreamvisions7radio.com/living-the-quantum-dream/

You can download and listen to Living the Quantum Dream shows as podcasts whenever is most convenient for you. These interviews make great listening for getting into the ‘quantum consciousness zone.’ Here’s the list of what’s available so far, so you can pick one or two you’d like to start with to begin expanding your Quantum Consciousness quotient:

Conscious Attention with Carlos Montemayor
Carlos Montemayor talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about the similarities, differences, and overlap between consciousness and attention–and why this matters. Montemayor describes how evolution helps us better understand why consciousness and attention truly are separate processes. Montemayor also delves into the fascinating world of memory, dreams, and perception, exploring implications of human rationality based on recent scientific studies. This discussion also touches on the meaning and experience of time, and how a better appreciation about cognitive processes might assist the legal process.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/conscious-attention-with-carlos-montemayor/

Dying to Know God with PMH Atwater
PMH Atwater talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about common characteristics to near-death experiences (NDEs), including insights from adult and child experiencers. PMH and Cynthia discuss their experiences with NDEs and some of the transformative effects that provide one with a sense of true identity, meaning, and purpose. PMH talks about her recent book, “Dying to Know You: Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience,” and recounts some near-death experiences. PMH shares a meditation exercise we can all do any time we need to restore balance and harmony in our lives.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/dying-to-know-god-with-pmh-atwater/

Conscious Creation at the Movies with Brent Marchant
Brent Marchant talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about the principles characterizing conscious creation, and how they appear in cinema. This fascinating interview delves into a discussion of how movies provide us with examples of how we formulate beliefs, go beyond surface perceptions, and understand our relationship to the world in spirit in our lives. Marchant shares examples of stories that teach us how we can harness the power of choice and free will, face our fears, evolve our beliefs, and benefit from our interconnectedness.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/conscious-creation-at-the-movies-with-brent-marchant/

Pressure Points and Korean Martial Arts History with Barry Harmon
Martial arts Master Barry Harmon talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about pressure points, Ki, healing, and self defense–including some of the most important aspects of Ki and pressure point principles. Harmon describes how he first became interested in pressure points and martial arts, and how personal self defense has much more to do with protecting oneself from disease and bad lifestyle. Harmon shares some surprising aspects of Korean history, including how monks were able to successfully protect Korean peasants and villagers from Mongolian invaders, and the artistic and scholarly side of ancient Hwarang warriors.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/pressure-points-and-korean-martial-arts-history-with-barry-harmon/

Perception, Truth, and Reality with Donald Hoffman
What if the world we see isn’t actually the true reality? Donald Hoffman talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about his interface theory of perception, in which what we typically assume to be “out there” is not necessarily reality–but rather something akin to the desktop user interface on a computer. And just as we don’t need to execute machine language commands in order to send an email or delete a file, biological evolution has been proven to favor perceptual fitness over truthful completeness and accuracy of perception. As Hoffman writes, “… to experience is to construct, in each modality and without exception,” and new findings in quantum physics and quantum biology increasingly provide scientific evidence to show this is true.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/perception-truth-and-reality-with-donald-hoffman/

Creating a Life Economy with John Perkins
What is an “Economic Hit Man” and what difference have they made in our lives? John Perkins talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about how he and others worked as Economic Hit Men to cheat countries out of trillions of dollars while spreading the structure and value of “death economy” greed-based values. Perkins provides insights as to how the deadly EHM cancer he and others helped create has recently spread more widely around the world and here in the United States to become the dominant system of business, government, and society today–and what we each can do to make a positive difference.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/creating-a-life-economy-with-john-perkins/

Consciousness and Agape with Eva Herr
Eva Herr talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about her books, “Consciousness” and “Agape,” and the need for more discussion and agreement amongst consciousness researchers and scientists about what the terms “consciousness” and “mind” really mean. Herr shares the extraordinary feeling of love and oneness from epiphanies as well as how to make it through dark nights of the soul, and discusses the importance of methylation for optimal mind-body-spirit functioning.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/consciousness-and-agape-with-eva-herr/

Quantum Cognition with Jerome Busemeyer
Do humans think more like quantum computers than classical computers? Cynthia Sue Larson talks with Jerome R. Busemeyer about the new field of quantum cognition and his book, “Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision.” Busemeyer describes how he became interested in investigating the ways quantum logic and theory provides a fundamentally different–and in many cases more accurate–foundational model by which to better understand how humans think and make decisions. The order and context of events turns out to make a significant difference in the decisions we make, which helps explain why people sometimes answer very differently when we change the order of the questions that we ask.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/quantum-cognition-with-jerome-r-busemeyer/

A Quantum Handshake with John G. Cramer
Cynthia Sue Larson talks with John Cramer about his new book, “The Quantum Handshake,” presenting his transactional interpretation model involving a quantum “handshake” through time. John explains how his transactional interpretation clarifies otherwise baffling experimental scientific results, and presents new ways of better understanding quantum theory, shedding new light on the mysteries of entanglement, non-locality, and wave collapse.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/a-quantum-handshake-with-john-g-cramer/

Developing Intuition and Your Spiritual Business
Cynthia Sue Larson talks with Dr. Lisa K. about how we can develop intuition and her most recent book, “Grow Your Spiritual Business.” How can we know the difference between intuition and imagination, and what can we do to access intuition when we need it most? How can we make the most of limited resources to launch and ensure success for spiritual businesses without pushy sales campaigns that can turn off sensitive people? Lisa K. explains the scientific basis behind intuition, and shares tips for attracting customers who resonate with your message.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/developing-intuition-and-your-spiritual-business/

Life on the Edge with JohnJoe McFadden
Cynthia Sue Larson talks with Dr. Johnjoe McFadden about his most recent book, “Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology,” and exciting developments on the front lines of quantum biological research. How do migrating birds know where to go? How do we smell the scent of a rose? How do our genes copy themselves with such precision? McFadden reveals how quantum mechanics plays an integral role in understanding all of these mysteries, while sharing what most inspires him about the revolutionary new field of quantum biology.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/life-on-the-edge-with-johnjoe-mcfadden-2/

Eight Laws of Positive Change with Stephan A. Schwartz
Cynthia talks with Stephan about how to be an agent of personal and social transformation, with insights and discoveries shared in his book, “The 8 Laws of Change,” and insights as to what we can do that can positively transform the world. Despite a trend toward neo-feudalism, there is much we can do to become more aware and find the leverage points where we can make the biggest difference. Stephan shares insights gleaned from thousands of views of our future, describing how much of what has been remotely viewed has become reality.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/eight-laws-of-positive-change-with-stephan-a-schwartz/

Exploring the Mystery of Consciousness with Peter Russell
Peter Russell talks with Cynthia Sue Larson about how science has been so far unable to predict that any living thing should be conscious, working from assumptions of the physical world being the real world. Russell talks about the benefits of adopting a different set of foundational assumptions of consciousness being primary. Russell offers advice for scientists, psychologists and computer programmers at this time of global paradigm change to embrace the metaparadigm that consciousness is primary. Russell describes a form of meditation that requires no effort and offers wonderful rewards, and describes what he knows for sure that can positively transform the world.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/exploring-the-mystery-of-consciousness-with-peter-russell/

Original Thinking with Glenn Aparicio Parry
Cynthia Sue Larson talks with Glenn Aparicio Parry about his most recent book, “Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature,” delving into different ways of viewing original thinking, the elements, and time. Glenn talks about his experiences with indigenous elders, ceremonies, and dreams, and shares insights about how we can benefit from experiencing expanded awareness in our lives.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/original-thinking-with-glenn-aparicio-parry/

Experience One Mind with Larry Dossey
Cynthia Sue Larson talks with Dr. Larry Dossey about his most recent book, “One Mind: How Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters,” and recent evidence suggesting that our mind is nonlocal in space and time, transcending human consciousness with no apparent boundaries. Recent experimental research presents overwhelming evidence for the presence of One Mind in fields including remote viewing, random number generator influence, presentiment, and precognition.
http://dreamvisions7radio.com/experience-one-mind-with-dr-larry-dossey/

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra and on the Living the Quantum Dream show she hosts. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Mandela Effects, Flip-Flops, and Reality Residue

We have a human need to look for evidence when we see something anomalous like a reality shift or Mandela Effect. Those seeking evidence of Mandela Effects, also known as reality shifts, find reassurance in others who remember the same alternate histories–that indicate that we are most likely living in not one, but rather many, worlds. But are there other ways we might be able to see some kind of verification that reality shifts are real?

In addition to finding support from others whose memories of facts and events are similar to ours, we can also find further supporting evidence that reality shifts are real in flip-flopping reality shifts / Mandela Effects. Flip-flopping reality shifts provide one with the opportunity to see something change back and forth from one state to another, each time seeming as if it’s always been that way. Noticing such shifts can be especially helpful for providing someone who is unsure whether their mind is playing tricks on them, or a reality shift / Mandela Effect has actually occurred.

One of my recent experiences with a reality shift, aka “Mandela Effect,” has to do with Abraham Lincoln. I recently heard that Abraham Lincoln apparently had a living descendant up until the 1980’s. This was news to me, because when I was recently reading Lincoln’s biography, I remember feeling how sad it was that Lincoln had no living descendants of any kind. And now I’ve just heard that he did have living descendants, according to our current official records and history–which is very cool!

One of the more interesting aspects of reality shifts that I’ve observed over the past 20 years I’ve been studying the reality shift phenomenon is the way that some shifts sometimes flip-flop back and forth between a couple of noticeably different possibilities. Usually the period of time in which I observe this flip-flopping is within a few minutes, days or weeks–after which point things seem to settle down. Many readers of my RealityShifters ezine have also reported this phenomenon, and also noted that there is window of time in which the switching back and forth occurs, after which a kind of stabilization takes hold.

Rain Gutter Flip-Flops  

Right now in October 2016, my next door neighbors currently don’t have leaf guard protectors over their rain gutters, but that has not always been the case. I was surprised one day to look out my dining room window and see something I’d not noticed on the adjacent roof–a beautiful leaf-guard system installed atop the rain gutters on my neighbor’s roof. I did a double-take, while wondering how they’d managed to install such a classy system seemingly without having made any noise. I figured I must have just been away during the installation time, which surely would have been noisy, and left it at that. A day or two later, my gaze naturally wandered along the outlines of my neighbor’s roof, and I was stunned to notice that the rain gutter leaf guard system was gone!

Dog Cataracts Flip-Flops  

I find it helpful to know ‘facts’ can be in a flip-flopping state when, for example, helping intentionally vote for our elderly family dog not having cataracts when he was in his teenage years. When I first noticed his eyes looked like they were developing cataracts, I had an instant emotional reaction of “No!” while feeling a sense of certainty that his eyes would be just fine–and then the next time I looked at him, his eyes were indeed just fine. A day or two later, another family member reported to me that there was sad news–our dog was developing cataracts in his old age. I replied that our dog sometimes looks like he has cataracts, but then his eyes can be seen to be perfectly clear when we look at his eyes again. Fortunately, I live in a house where reality shifts are an accepted part of daily life. Once we’d all agreed this was the case, our elderly dog ‘locked in’ the reality with clear vision and he had no further evidence of cataracts. So, sometimes it helps to have people to assist in bringing greater coherence to a favored, healthier reality.

Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World

Door Lock Flip-Flops  

I include this reality shift flip-flop that I experienced one time while camping in my book, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. I was camping in August 1998 when I noticed that several times after carefully locking all the car doors, I’d return to the car shortly afterward to find a car door unlocked. Sometimes it would be the back right door, sometimes the back left door. I felt flustered, because my intention was to keep the car locked, since my purse, money and valuables were inside! After the first time this happened, I made a concerted effort to double- check the doors were locked. The first door to appear unlocked was the left, then the right door appeared unlocked, and then the left again! I felt consternated but also intrigued. Fortunately, the times this happened I had only been gone from the car for a short time—less than an hour—and the times I was away from the car for more than an hour, it was still locked when I returned to the car.

Benefitting from Reality Shift Flip-Flops

While making Gravenstein apple pie for a neighborhood block party this month, I was sad to see that we seemed to be out of nutmeg. I hoped there’d be a little bit of nutmeg in the spice cupboard, but after having checked just about every spice container on the shelf, I couldn’t find it. I visualized that my preferred place for the nutmeg would be on the front left-hand side of the cupboard, as I verified both visually and by shifting spice containers in that area around that it wasn’t there. Since I am well aware that it’s possible to close a cupboard door, do something else for a bit, and come back to sometimes find an item that wasn’t there before, I did just that. I shut the spice cupboard doors, and walked over to see if I might find the nutmeg on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t there, and I returned to the spice cupboard to open the doors and check again, looking where I hoped to find it in the front left section. I then shut the cupboard doors and repeated the process of busying myself with another inspection of the kitchen counter. I did this whole sequence two or three more times, and then Voila! The nutmeg spice container was on the front left-hand section of the spice shelf, just where I’d hoped to find it originally!

Thoughts about “Reality Residue”

The term “reality residue” is used to describe lingering “smoking gun” evidence of alternate histories that are no longer part of the official historical record. Such anomalies might include, for example, a videotape case or label showing a film title the way some people remember it to be, rather than how any authorized example of such things now exist.

The general idea about “reality residue” is that “other realities” are “out there” and “we are in the real reality.” This kind of old-school conceptualization about what it’s like to live in a multiverse gives people a sense that “some people have come from certain timelines,” rather than the idea that just possibly there IS no “real reality.” Instead, consider the idea that who we are is not so much any physical embodiment of ourselves as it is our conscious awareness–the aspect of ourselves that cannot be created, destroyed, or measured the way scientists surely wish possible.

Some people think if you just go back far enough in time, that you’ll see evidence before the “timeline shift” or whatever they’re thinking happened, that you’ll see evidence before that happened. What I have instead found over 20 years of research–and that doesn’t mean it’s definitive, it’s just what I’ve experienced, and what people have written to me–is usually there’s a consistent history in whatever official history reality you’re in. So the official history might include people like ourselves–Mandela Effect experiencers, reality shifters, who say, “Yes, I’ve written a description of it, I’ve drawn a picture of it, I’ve simulated what I think I saw. It’s not the real thing, but it’s what I remember.” So you’ll get people’s artistic representations of previous histories, but not the the so-called “smoking gun” physical evidence. But no worries. What I suggest people who are looking for reality residue do in addition to that–because you can keep looking; maybe someone will find something. Usually so far it’s been misprints, typos, things that you can explain away some other way, rather than massive physical evidence that’s overwhelmingly persuasive.

So what I like people to think about is these flip-flops. Look for those. A thought to keep in mind if noticing something that might be “reality residue” is to consider whether this might represent a reality flip-flop. Keep in mind that some flip-flopping can go back and forth between realities a few times, before stability returns and a particular history stays selected. And that can be very strong evidence for the person experiencing it.

The Power of Suggestion Drives “False Memories” and the Placebo Effect

Most any time you see the Mandela Effect covered in mainstream media, you’re likely to see mainstream journalists attempting to sweep Mandela Effects into the dustbin of so-called “false memories” without consideration of the possibility that alternate histories might be real. We do see more thoughtful consideration of the notion of alternate realities covered in news stories about the Placebo Effect. Intriguingly, the “power of suggestion” is credited both with creating “false memories” (which are hardly ever considered to be a good thing) at one end of the spectrum, and with empowering people to enjoy tremendous placebo effect benefits at the other. Placebo efficacy has doubled over the past 30 years in the United States of America for such areas as: spontaneous remission of debilitating health problems, reduced pain, increased stamina, greater cognitive abilities, and much, much more. The Placebo Effect is of such tremendous and growing interest that it is now being studied at dedicated research centers, such as the Program in Placebo Studies (PIPS) and the Therapeutic Encounter hosted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School.

There is a large and growing body of evidence to support the way we can harness the power of suggestion to surf between parallel possible worlds, especially at this time in history when many top scientists consider reality to possibly be a simulation. This simulation viewpoint was even shared by Bank of America Merrill Lynch last month with it’s clients, stating there’s a 20%-50% chance that we’re living in the matrix — meaning that the world we experience as “real” is actually just a simulation. This assertion is backed by scientists Elon Musk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Nick Bostrom, who wrote the thought-provoking paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”

New paradigms take time to be fully adopted, and what we are witnessing now at this dawn of the Quantum Age is the letting go of the old Aristotelian logic, with its three basic principles of: identity, contradiction, and the excluded middle. Quantum physics has pretty much completely overturned this classical logic apple cart, but the scientific method has not yet adopted the much more comprehensive and complete quantum logic.

So while the mainstream media and mainstream science take time adjusting to the new Quantum Age, we can start enjoying some of the benefits now. Just how good can it get when you benefit from reality shift flip-flops?

You can see the YouTube summary of this blog post here: https://youtu.be/d6CeYH4GiLE

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra and on the Living the Quantum Dream show she hosts. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

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Sudden Changes, Quantum Jumps

“Great things don’t happen in tiny little increments. You know they happen when someone thanks completely differently.” –quote from “Shameless,” (season 3, episode 9)

While visiting Boulder, Colorado this month, I got to thinking about the idea of how sudden jumps and big changes can occur everywhere. I mulled this over while staying at the Hotel Boulderado, which is a bit like a museum. And while thinking about history, I got to thinking about how things don’t generally seem to happen in tiny increments so much as larger ones.

I looked at historic pictures from a century ago showing a great flood when Boulder Creek flooded in the “Great Flood” of May 31, 1894. That flood is now considered to be a 100-year flood, which at the time was the largest flood the city of Boulder had experienced. “Boulder Creek on a Rampage,” the Daily Camera reported, adding “The Windows of Heaven Opened and Boulder was Submerged.” The flood was caused by a dastardly combination of steady rain combined with heavy snow melt, which fed Boulder Creek so much water that bridges collapsed, train yards flooded, and Boulder was cut off from the outside world for several days. This flood happened suddenly, and Boulder residents at the time were caught completely by surprise.

Don’t Mess with Mr. In Between

I’m intrigued that we don’t see in-between phases between such things as horse and buggy and automobile, or firemen pulling their own fire carts and fire engines. Perhaps such in-between phases do exist. But most people probably moved to the next big thing, such as the automobile. Looking at old pictures hanging on the walls at the Hotel Boulderado, I contemplated the period of time in the 1800’s when guests visiting the hotel arrived in horses and buggies and carriages, long before invention of the car–at a time when even the firemen didn’t have fire trucks. They instead pulled carts with 250 feet of hose down streets to a water plug, where they attached the hose and nozzle to put out fires–all without help from fire engines.

It turns out that nature works similarly, with big leaps to new solutions, rather than steady incremental transitions. We find evidence for such quantum jumps with E.Coli bacteria that can instantly make a huge evolutionary change and basically evolve itself into a form of bacteria that could then digest the only food presented to it that it could not eat before–lactose–which is what the scientists were giving it. So if we think in terms of evolution, a lot of us have believed, as Darwin proposed, and according to classical physics it makes sense that instead of these huge steps–these huge jumps of evolution where there are missing links–you’ve heard that phrase–we would expect to see lots of little in-between phases, where a species would evolve gradually. That is not, in fact, what we’re finding in the laboratory right now, with bacteria. It’s not what we would expect.

When we think about how quantum computers are being built and we see evidence I’ve shared previously in this blog Welcome to the Quantum Age, and in my book, Quantum Jumps, it’s clear that all quantum phenomena are quite possibly occurring at every level of reality.

You can see the YouTube summary welcoming us to the new Quantum Age here: https://youtu.be/Fg9PsQ-gq5Q

We thus start to get an idea about how quantum phenomena are likely occurring at every level of reality–not just on the ‘quantum scale.’ Which means that when I get an email from someone, as I did recently, informing me that Willie Nelson died many years ago according to this person–while in our reality at this time both the person who emailed me and myself note that Willie Nelson is alive. So the thing to think about is how is it possible that we sometimes get different reality?

The “Mandela Effect” phenomenon where we see someone alive again, such as I first reported in print in 1999 in my book, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World, has been noticed by people making reports of such things for many years. When we view the archaeological record and evolutionary jumps, we see possible signs that many evolutionary leaps might be quantum jumps. Biologists have noticed that instead of finding tiny little steps that make evolutionary changes look like a slope–they instead tend to see HUGE jumps that is more like a staircase with giant steps, rather than a smooth slope composed of much smaller intermediary steps. And the large evolutionary jumps we find is what we would expect to see in a quantum universe–a universe which primarily operates according to quantum logic, and in which quantum phenomena are observed at every level and scale.

The idea that people can “fake it til they make it” is being studied at Harvard at their new placebo research center. We’re actually seeing information coming forth from all fields of science now about this to support these ideas. And so what I’d like you to think about is the big changes in your life and the big Mandela effects you might have seen where you might have observed something that can’t possibly be true in this reality, because when you do the fact-checking, and do the google search, you don’t see that there’s been any kind of steady progress of, for example, Willie Nelson was reported dead–and “Oops! They made a mistake, and actually he’s fine.” No, there’s nothing like that. There’s not even any report that there had been confusion–aside from these Mandela effect videos, blog posts, articles, and so forth. What you’ll see is he’s always been here. There is a continuous history that goes all the way back. That’s also what I’m saying is happening in all fields of all of our sciences from cosmology, to biology, to chemistry–you name it.

I believe that we all have quite a great deal to be grateful for. And a good way to look at your life is to look back not with regret on the past, but with gratitude–especially for things you’ve had a part in. And to the degree that we can all keep asking, “How good can it get?” we can absolutely start seeing exactly that.

 

You can see the YouTube summary of this blog post here: https://youtu.be/wNgj24NchVo

 

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra and on the Living the Quantum Dream show she hosts. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

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Amazing Rise of the Mandela Effect

The phrase “Mandela Effect” has been trending upward at an exponential rate between July 2015 and July 2016, as seen when viewing a graph produced by Google Trends. Part of what is fueling the rapid increase in discussion about this phenomena is that some of the reporters writing articles about the Mandela Effect are experiencing it, too. One reporter noticed that an oft-remembered cheesy love sequence between two characters in the James Bond movie, Moonraker, no longer exists–despite his recollection (and mine) that “Dolly has braces”!

While many are surprised by the recent surge of interest in the “Mandela Effect,” those of us who have been researching and writing about this phenomenon of reality shifts and alternate histories have long been anticipating just such a rise of interest. The “Mandela Effect” is named after South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela, who became a topic of interest in the year 2010 by people noticing with surprise that he was alive at that time–since many people remembered him having died while incarcerated. I had published similar accounts of the dead being observed alive again in my 1999 book, Reality Shifts, and reporting first-hand accounts on the RealityShifters website from people all around the world noticing many dead people alive again. Observations of dead people alive again are just one of many types of Mandela Effects, with other notable examples including changes to song lyrics, movie dialogue, movie scenes, physical geography, physiological anatomy, and product names.

The Mandela Effect is one of those things most people won’t believe in until it happens to them. Like falling in love or going through heartbreak, the Mandela Effect is something you have to experience in order to fully embrace. And even then, it often takes more than one or two experiences to break through the resistance most of us have to accepting the existence of something that fundamentally challenges our unspoken foundational assumption that facts and historical events don’t change. This bias has been poetically expressed in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on:
nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.” 

Google trend graph for “Mandela Effect”

When we encounter something indicating evidence that in fact, history has changed–it feels shocking to discover some of the lines have been canceled and washed out! We seem to be approaching ‘tipping point’ where it’s getting harder for scoffers to say there’s no such thing as the Mandela Effect / reality shifts / alternate histories. The term “Mandela Effect” originated with blogger Fiona Broome in 2010 after she attended a conference where many people talked with her about remembering how Nelson Mandela had died many years earlier–though official recorded history at that time indicated no such thing had actually occurred.

Dolly and Jaws in “Moonraker”

Thanks to articles written by some Mandela Effect experiencers, the Mandela Effect shows evidence of increasing in popular awareness. Mandela Effect articles have been written by experiencers including the Lewiston Sun Journal’s Mark LaFlamme (“The Mandela Effect is Freaking Me Out“) who noticed a change on which side of his father he’s standing by in an old family photo;the New Zealand Herald’s Karl Puschmann (“Berenstein or Berenstain? The Riddle Making Book Lovers Mad“) who is certain the popular children’s books ought to be spelled “Berenstein” and not the way they’ve supposedly ‘always been spelled’ as Berenstain; and San Diego City Beat’s Tom Siebert (“Technology and Memory Down the Rabbit Hole“) who noticed a change to a memorable scene in a James Bond movie, “Moonraker,” in which the girl with the braces who fell in love with another character with shining teeth no longer has braces. I watched The James Bond film “Moonraker” several times while in college, and also remember the memorable scene in which the blonde girl named “Dolly” who wears glasses and braids shares a cheesy moment with Richard Kiels’ character, “Jaws,” when they notice how his shiny teeth complement the shiny braces on her teeth. Except now, she doesn’t have any braces on her teeth.

Taken individually–the way such observations of discrepancies between what we remember and recorded historical evidence have always been noted up until now–a single person feeling unsettled by noticing such a change would have been chalked up to their having made some kind of cognitive error. When such “mis-remembered” recollections are considered collectively, we are presented with the possibility that we are witnessing collectively agreed-upon awareness of differently remembered historical facts that we can start to take notice of.

Some scoffers have leapt to the conclusion that Mandela Effect experiencers who are noticing long-familiar words in movies, TV shows, books, and products are most likely suddenly sharing ‘false memories,’ due to the fact that human memories are not fully reliable. Such an explanation allows us to leave unquestioned some old assumptions that have quietly started to crumble at their very foundations since the advent of quantum physics just over a hundred years ago. While quantum physics shows us there can be no such thing as an objective observer, and now that two thirds of physicists recently surveyed agree that you and I and everything that exists does so in a superposition of states–we clearly need to revise both our scientific methodology and our assumptions about reality.

While I agree with the observation that human memories often do not match current historical records, it’s clear that stopping the thought process at that point is premature, and does not match what we are learning about the primacy of quantum logic in the natural world.

I’ve been researching this phenomena since the 1990s. It was originally called “reality shifts,” and first appeared in print in the book “Future Memory” by PMH Atwater to describe common (yet strange) experiences that near-death experiencers frequently have. I have been reporting on individual recollections of alternate histories involving everything from changes in books, to dead people alive again, to changes in the way motor memory works since 1999, in the earliest edition of my first book on this subject, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World, and in my free monthly Realityshifters ezine. I’m currently pursuing this Mandela Effect / reality shift topic in interviews with experts in the fields of quantum biology such as JohnJoe McFadden, quantum cognition such as Jerome Busemeyer, and quantum cosmology such as Yasunori Nomura on my blog and “Living the Quantum Dream” radio show. What I’m noticing is that this phenomenon appears to not be new, but rather we have reached a point in society where for the first time we are able to share memories with others that are different from the collective whole–and sometimes our memories show the same kind of alternate pasts that physicists such as Stephen Hawking have told us exist.

When we consider the matter of “confabulation” and “false recollections” at this dawning of the new Quantum Age, we see that we may eventually call such things “alternate recollections,” in recognition of awareness of the fact that we know that each and every one of us exists in a superimposed state, with access to many possible alternate histories, presents, and futures. The idea that the many worlds of quantum physics might be one and the same as the multiverse has been proposed by such esteemed physicists as Dr. Yasunori Nomura and Dr. Raphael Bousso of UC Berkeley, and increasing numbers of scientists are feeling optimistic that we might yet find evidence that we indeed live in a multiverse.

Finding Evidence of Many Worlds in Alternate Histories

There is an exciting human side to the subject of alternate histories and parallel worlds. While we don’t yet have technology to show photos from your past with evidence of parallel universes impinging on the very fabric of reality since the day you were born, we can look to see what kinds of evidence we are able to collect more easily. If we were feeling the effects of parallel universes, we would expect to occasionally notice that history doesn’t stay put. Occasionally, we’d have very different ideas of what happened than we’ve had before, or than others have had before. What would such alternate histories be like?

Dr. Robert A. Burton recounts a fascinating experience in his book, On Being Certain, of attending a medical school reunion dinner in which conversation turned to where people were when they heard the news that Kennedy was assassinated. Burton and his classmates had all been in their second year of medical school, attending similar classes and hanging out together. An argument broke out amongst the reunion attendees as a urologist thought they were all at lunch, an internist remembered they’d been in the lab, and a pathologist remembered being at a pub down the street from the med center. With classmates turning to Burton to be the tie-breaker, setting history straight, the pathologist and urologist both agreed on one thing as they announced in unison, “Everyone remembers the Kennedy assassination.”

If this was the first time such differences of memory related to significant events occurred, we might dismiss it as a humorous aside. But the fact of the matter is that researchers are increasingly becoming aware of what they call “false recollections.” With the advent of the Quantum Age, we may eventually call them “alternate recollections,” indicating awareness of the fact that we know that each and every one of us exists in a superimposed state, with access to many possible alternate histories, presents, and futures.

Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch conducted studies of Emory University students’ accuracy of recollections of events at the time of the Challenger space shuttle explosion, starting by collecting first-hand accounts from 106 students the day after the disaster detailing how they’d heard of the explosion, what they’d been doing at the time, where they were, and how they felt. The researchers followed up with the same students two and a half years later, and were startled to find that students achieved a mean score of 2.95 compared to a perfect score of 7. Less than 10% of the students were able to exactly match their original recollection of events, and over half of the students got a score less than 2.

The most noteworthy findings in this “flashbulb” memory study were student reactions when confronted with conflicting accounts. Many students persisted in confidently claiming that their current memories of events were completely accurate, even when confronted with their own hand-written journal entries. One student summed up what happened succinctly,

“That’s my handwriting, but that’s not what happened.”

It’s important to note that in this new Quantum Age, such cases of alternate histories are to be expected. They provide evidence of the superposition of states that we and everything around us exists within, so we can expect to occasionally see documented records from the past that differ from what we recall. In the Quantum Age, we understand that seeing our own handwritten notes that aren’t at all what we remember is one way that alternate histories become known.

 

Physicists Agree: You’re in a Superposition of States

When we understand that our belief structures are creations of our minds, we start noticing how varied individual belief structures can be from person to person. What one person considers to be realistic and matter-of-fact might seem outrageously peculiar to another. Even the idea that other people actually see images in their minds may seem outlandish to some people, let alone what those people see. When enough people shift their belief structures to look at the world in fresh, new ways, cultural paradigms shift.

Staying current with new scientific findings can help. While most non-physicists would likely see a solid physical object such as a table or a chair as only what it currently appears to be, a remarkable 2/3 majority of physicists interviewed in 2011 stated they believe that all objects can exist in superimposed states—much the way we know quantum ‘particles’ exist as energetic probabilities as much as physical particles we can measure and observe. University of Portland, Oregon, physics professor, Maximilian Schlosshauer summarized this remarkable agreement thus,

“More than two-thirds believed that there is no fundamental limit to quantum theory—that it should be possible for objects, no matter how big, to be prepared in quantum superpositions like Schrödinger’s cat. So the era where quantum theory was associated only with the atomic realm appears finally over.”

 

A Scientific Basis for Instantaneous Adaptation in Stressful Times

John Forster Cairns

The scientific assumption that organisms experienced random mutations was seriously shaken by Harvard professor John Forster Cairns 1988 proposal that the organisms themselves were preferentially producing beneficial mutations. Cairns conducted experiments with E. coli bacteria that demonstrated that in times of stress, when the bacteria were starved from food they were capable of digesting, they made “adaptive mutations” to be able to receive nutritive sustenance from a food source they’d never been able to consume before. This phenomenon in which E. coli mutated exactly the most optimal genes precisely when that mutation was required had no known basis nor explanation from established theories in genetics–and indeed seemed to contradict one of the central dogmas of molecular biology, that information only flows in one direction during transcription from DNA out to proteins to a cellular organism environment. John Cairns and Julie Overbaugh and others proposed a mechanism that what might be happening is that “the cell could produce a highly variable set of mRNA molecules and then reverse-transcribe the one that made the best protein.”

If reverse-engineering mutations by bacteria in times of starvation so they can start digesting lactose sounds crazy, it might help to know there exists a similar proven case of successful quantum biological adaptation: photosynthesis. Those who expect modern human technology to be faster and more efficient than the rustic natural world are quite surprised to learn that our best photovoltaic cells are only 20% efficient, compared with photosynthesizing plants and bacteria that regularly achieve 95% efficiency rates for transforming sunlight into energy. Plants have existed on Earth for millions of years, so it’s not too surprising to find that their natural process of photosynthesis likely utilizes quantum coherence to speed things up. In decades past, scientists believed that excited electrons carried energy randomly through photosynthetic systems in plants, hopping from one molecule to the next. More modern measurements of energy in the new field of quantum biology studying photosynthesizing plants indicates something much more efficient is going on. What appears to be happening is that electrons take advantage of the fact that energy can move not just in the material form, but in pure energy form, too, and entire systems of molecules can become entangled to allow the formation of a coherent wave that tries out different pathways simultaneously, until the most efficient route is very quickly determined. The quantum magic happens in each of a photosynthetic cell’s millions of antenna proteins that are surprisingly efficient and robust at routing energy with very little lost in transit.

University of Toronto biophysicist Greg Scholes published his findings of room-temperature quantum coherence behavior in common marine algae in Nature. Scholes describes an analogy of driving home through rush hour traffic to explain what these cells are doing:

“… you have three ways of driving home through rush hour traffic. On any given day, you take only one. You don’t know if the other routes would be quicker or slower. But in quantum mechanics, you can take all three of these routes simultaneously. You don’t specify where you are until you arrive, so you always choose the quickest route.”

 

Advantages of experiencing alternate realities

My point is that everyone is experiencing reality shifts that usually get brushed aside with the assumption from most social settings being that there has been confusion or misperception (with both parties assuming the other has made some kind of mental mistake). The reason I raise the topic of flashbulb memories in my book, Quantum Jumps, is to share the extraordinary findings of researchers who asked college freshmen immediately following the Challenger space shuttle explosion to write down where they were, what they were doing, and who they were with when they heard the news of this disaster very soon after it first occurred. Then some time later, these same students were again asked the same question before they were allowed to look at their own hand-written accounts. As some put it, “That’s my handwriting, but that’s not what happened.” Thanks to this research and stunning placebo effect results, we now have an opportunity to acknowledge that rather than explaining such reality shifts away as ‘memory lapses’ or confusion, we have always been witnessing the way quantum phenomena occurs at ALL levels of reality, and not only below the so-called “von Neumann cut.” I have a sense that research in these fields is about to lead us to a new level of awareness that facts can change–yet understanding of our true identity as being consciousness can help us best find our way forward in experiencing various possible realities.

What Would You Notice if You’re in a Superposition of States?

What would it feel like to exist in a superposition of states? How could you tell? You might notice things like: markedly different childhood memories from your siblings; spontaneous or speedy healing from illness or injury; different movie dialogue, writing in books, product names, song lyrics, TV shows, and celebrities alive again after being reported dead. In fact, this is precisely what people are reporting with such commonly recognized examples as:

• Berenstein Bears VS Berenstain Bears

 

 

 

 

• “Mirror mirror on the wall” VS “Magic mirror on the wall”

 

 

 

 

 

• Mr. Rogers sings, “It’s a beautiful day in THE neighborhood” VS “It’s a beautiful day in THIS neighborhood”

 

 

 

• Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker, “Luke, I am your father” VS “No, I am your father”

 

 

 

Mandela Effect Reports on the Rise

In addition to some of these commonly reported shared experiences of alternate histories, some people are also remembering other things differently, such as: “If you build it, they will come” instead of now, “If you build it, he will come” and “Jiffy” peanut butter instead of “Jif.” As increasing numbers of honest reporters and authors start running into their own experiences with the Mandela Effect–both the private experiences that only they recognize, and the more publicly shared varieties–we will continue the growing conversation about the Mandela Effect, and why increasing numbers of people are noticing it now.

And in the meantime, I recommend that you keep asking “How good can it get?” to harness imagination and your ability to provide yourself with self-guidance from your highest levels of consciousness. Asking this question helps ensure we are honoring a longer-term, fuller and more harmoniously interconnected optimal experience. We can trust our highest, largest, most comprehensive levels of consciousness, and in so doing we will continue to experience different pasts and instantaneous transformations as we move through these stressful times to more optimal realities.

 

You can see the YouTube summary of this blog post here: https://youtu.be/s40aoMlrGbA

 

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra and on the Living the Quantum Dream show she hosts. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

3 Qualities of Genuine Mandela Effects

Which Mandela Effects have you seen that are the real thing? Which have you seen that aren’t?

If you’ve heard about the Mandela Effect, you might be wondering how to tell when you’re face-to-face with a genuine Mandela Effect, and when you’re not, and the truth about how you can tell might surprise you!

The Mandela Effect demonstrates that facts and histories can change, and not everyone remembers things the same way. I’ve received emails from people writing, “I think I’ve experienced a Mandela Effect, but I’m not sure,” which indicates many people would like to know how we can tell when we’ve encountered a genuine Mandela Effect experience–or not.

There is understandably some confusion on this matter, mostly because open-minded skeptics and smug scoffers both at various times make the case that as French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace once wrote, “The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.” And it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to expect that we ought to be able to provide evidence for each proffered example of the Mandela Effect, if what we’re experiencing is real, right?

Ironically, one of the main reasons controversy exists about the Mandela Effect has to do with the fact that most any time physical evidence can be found of an instance suggesting parallel realities, at some point we will likely discover that this case of Mandela Effect was actually not the real deal.

So How Can We Tell the Difference?

My preferred explanation for all this is that we are observing quantum phenomena on the macroscopic scale, and there is no ‘von Neumann cut’ where we can start disregarding quantum effects. Quantum discontinuities can (and do) occur at every level. The way we are noticing these kinds of quantum jumps, reality shifts, alternate histories, and Mandela Effects is that we are finding examples where our memories do not match the official historical record of facts–the facts appear different than we remember, and there is a sense that things ‘have always been this way.’ Here is a simple three-step test you can use to discern whether something is the genuine Mandela Effect, or not:

(1) The Only “Proof” is Our Memories

Just like Chief Seattle’s excellent advice for wilderness travelers to “take only memories, leave only footprints,” it seems travelers between parallel possible worlds are able to do only that. While evidence of different memories will likely be dissatisfactory to skeptics and unacceptable to scoffers, our memory actually is the only evidence people are able to find of Mandela Effect examples when they are the genuine article. While memories have gotten a bum rap for years as being unreliable, it’s worth considering that some of the reasons that memories have been noted for not corresponding to historical recorded facts just might be that the Mandela Effect has been happening since before the dawn of human recorded history–which is what I believe is actually true. Now this is not to say that every time someone mis-remembers something or is confused as to what they remember we’re encountering a Mandela Effect–but it is to say that every one of those times actually might represent an example of the Mandela Effect in action.

(2) Side-By-Side Physical Examples Don’t Occur

One of the identifying hallmarks of the Mandela Effect is that when our attention is riveted by a possible case of Mandela Effect, we will not find simultaneous physical proof showing other realities we might remember. For example, if we recall the song on Mister Rogers Neighborhood to include Mr. Rogers singing, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” we will only now be able to find the lyrics being sung “the way it’s always been sung,” which at this time seems to be, “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood.” There will not be both versions of the song in existence, but rather just the one version–which is precisely why so many people are mystified by the change. When testing to see whether a possible example of the Mandela Effect is genuine, and we turn up a strong presence of side-by-side examples of, for example, a corporate logo in transition–then we acknowledge that this is not an example of the Mandela Effect.

(3) We Might Notice Flip-Flops

While it is sometimes possible to physically witness evidence of more than one reality, such experiences will not occur concurrently, with evidence of both presenting at the same time. Genuine Mandela Effect examples of reality shifts (that are seemingly happening randomly) and quantum jumps (that might be associated with miraculous instant changes) can sometimes be experienced as “flip-flopping” back and forth between different possible realities. Some examples of this kind of thing that I’ve personally witnessed include: business hours changing back and forth between “always being open until 10pm” or “always being open until midnight; the rain gutters on my neighbor’s house always having had leaf guards, or never having had leaf guards; our elderly dog developing visible cataracts in both eyes or not having visible cataracts. These are just a few examples–and in each case, eventually one of the possible realities was selected as “always having been true.” During these times of flip-flopping realities, we will not see side-by-side examples of concurrent physical realities existing simultaneously, but rather just one or another–even though we know we’ve seen the other realities.

 

Why Our Current Scientific Method Can’t Provide “Proof”

Our existing scientific method was founded on old assumptions that cannot function when dealing with the reality of quantum physics. When quantum mechanics first arrived on the scene around 1900, many scientists fervently hoped they would not need to deal with any revision to the way scientific studies are conducted. Quantum weirdness such as “spooky action at a distance,” quantum tunneling, quantum teleportation, quantum superposition of states, and quantum coherence were all considered part of the weird, wonderful world of the realm of the very, very small, with nothing whatsoever to do with the ordinary human experience of the world. The built-in assumptions of the classical scientific method can’t stand up to quantum physics, yet they have remained largely unquestioned and unrevised now for over a hundred years.

Material realism’s first assumption of strong objectivity asserts there is an objective material universe “out there” that is independent of us. For example, we hope to understand chemistry by studying the interaction of chemicals, and physics by studying how physical bodies interact … yet we do not consider ourselves to be in any way entangled in what we are observing. We often imagine that we can be perfect voyeurs, having no appreciable impact whatsoever on the subjects of our study. The validity of this assumption becomes questionable when we see how inextricably connected the observer is to quantum physics experiments; the observer plays the decisive role in determining what is observed.

The second assumption of causal determinism is the familiar idea that once we understand the forces causing change in a given system, we can accurately predict the effect those causes will have. We would expect to be able to predict what would happen when we roll a marble towards a bunch of other marbles, if we knew where all the marbles were and the position and speed of the striking marble. As we will see in this chapter, quantum physics challenges our ability to understand all that we need in order to make such predictions, since the uncertainty principle does not allow us to know both an object’s velocity and position. We cannot accurately make predictions in the realm of quantum physics, other than having a sense of statistical probability for certain outcomes. Werner Heisenberg proposed in his uncertainty principle that quanta must be described as waves while they travel and particles when they are viewed, and Niels Bohr added that it’s impossible to specify the observed atom’s wave function separately from it’s observing electron. Chaos theory is another challenge to causal determinism, as the universe appears to behave unpredictably at its very core.

The third assumption of locality in material realism is the concept that objects exist independently and separately from one another. We study each experimental subject with the assumption that it is separate from other objects so we can conduct different experiments in different conditions and believe that we are studying an isolated, independent subject. At odds with this assumption is the observation of some twin quantum particles that have shown separated objects can and do remain in synchronization with each other across time and space … continuing to correlate their angles of spin with each other. This was first considered in the “Einstein-Podolsky- Rosen paradox,” later verified in the laboratory, and mathematically demonstrated by Bell’s theorem.

Assumptions of material or physical monism and epiphenomenalism assert that subjective mental phenomena are simply epiphenomena of matter. In other words, the material world is the primary mover and shaker, and things we think we observe through our minds are irrelevant, “immaterial” inconsequential side effects. Quantum physics shows us the weakness of these assumptions when we consider how observers who take quantum measurements collapse quantum waves at the moment they make that observation.

Now that we know that the assumptions forming the basis for material realism are so shaken by findings of quantum physics experiments, it’s time to start refining and revising the above assumptions of material realism into assumptions that include mind along with matter, and that better agree with the findings of quantum physics.

 

Gotta Catch ’em All!

At this time when one of the more popular games is Pokemon Go, with people streaming into parks, cell phones in hand, hoping to see and capture Pokemon “pocket monsters,” people are playing a real-life game of finding possible samples of the Mandela Effect all around. Corporate logos often come up as possible Mandela Effect examples, providing excellent test cases by which to see if they pass the Mandela Effect Test. 

 

You can see the YouTube summary of this blog post here: https://youtu.be/HBCLYPiUwL8

 

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Reality Shifts and  Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including her Living the Quantum Dream radio show, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

The Mandela Effect has been with us longer than we thought

 

What are your earliest Mandela Effect memories?

The Mandela Effect demonstrates that facts and histories can change, and not everyone remembers things the same way. I’ve received emails from people writing, “I’ve noticed these changes for years, but only just now found out thousands of other people are noticing the same changes,” which gets me wondering how long the Mandela Effect has been around.

Different people pay attention to different things, so we’ll not all be equally impressed by the same changes in history, and sometimes it takes a while before we notice something strange is going on–and has been going on for a long time. There is a tendency once we start noticing something–such as that history sometimes changes–we start seeing examples of it more often. I’ve also noticed that being with others who also notice reality shifting tends to increase our awareness of it. What’s changed since the Mandela Effect became a popular meme is that collectively we now have a mental “File” to label such incidents with, other than ‘we must have been mistaken; that’s so weird.’ Now people like George Clooney and Julia Roberts and Gwen Stefani DO have something to refer to other than “that’s so weird,” when they notice, as they recently did, that the ending of the song, “We are the champions” by Queen has changed. 

My preferred explanation for all this is that we are observing quantum phenomena on the macroscopic scale, and there is no ‘von Neumann cut’ where we can start disregarding quantum effects. Quantum discontinuities can (and do) occur at every level.

Bigger than Mandela

One of the main reasons the “Mandela Effect” is grabbing peoples’ attention is that it is bigger than Mandela. The “Mandela Effect” shows those of us who’ve experienced it that facts change, and histories change. Not everyone remembers things the same way, and sometimes we also notice things change from what we remembered, and then change back again–sometimes flip-flopping more than once or twice.

No Return to Classical Reality

We can look to quantum physics for an explanation as to what is going on when we find more examples of the Mandela Effect. Rather than there being some imaginary line of demarcation where quantum weirdness no longer occurs, some physicists now suggest that quantum logic might hold true at all levels. Rather than ignoring such troublesome quantum phenomena as superposition of states and entanglement by sweeping them under the von Neumann cut, we instead need to consider the possibility that sometimes we will see macroscopic evidence of quantum phenomena in our daily lives.

No Conspiracy Required

The existence of alternate pasts was predicted by scientists such as Stephen Hawking, who has sought evidence of vibratory signatures of many possible ‘big bangs,’ for example. If and when you ever personally experience the presence of multiple possible pasts, such as some college students witnessed first-hand when looking at their own hand-written journal notes about where they were and what they were doing when the Challenger space shuttle exploded–then you might reconsider the notion of a news media or government conspiracy.

CERN came along after the fact, from the standpoint that first nations peoples have long described oral histories about how these same sorts of things (so-called “Mandela Effect”) have been happening since the dawn of time. We can see evidence of the Mandela Effect in years before we heard of it, when we remember times such as I recall having happened to me back in the 1970s, when I wanted to hear a song that I’d been hearing a lot on the radio. I couldn’t find the song any more, and it was as if it had completely disappeared without a trace. Then, many months later, I did hear the song being announced by a radio station as ‘likely to be a big hit’ as they bragged they were amongst one of the first stations able to play it. I heard this and thought to myself, “What!?! This song was being played almost nonstop by many stations earlier this year!” So if you’ve ever seen a movie or TV show or heard a song or read a book before it came out, you’ve had an earlier experience with the Mandela Effect. 

Quantum Mechanics Forbids a Single History

Thomas Kuhn wrote that a paradigm defines “the practices that define a scientific discipline at a certain point in time.”  When we notice that there is a strong possibility we are witnessing macroscopic signs of quantum phenomena as some of us recognize that we’ve been experiencing ‘glitches’ and shifts in reality for years, it becomes clear that rather than a conspiracy, we’re dealing with a radical re-visioning of reality. Thomas Kuhn described how there are four basic ways that a new paradigm influences the scientific process, because paradigms dictate: what is studied and researched, what types of questions are asked, the exact structure of the questions asked, and how research results are interpreted. Thanks to the work of physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog suggesting back in 2006 that we might live in a “top down” universe which prohibits single histories, people are increasingly becoming more familiar with the idea that we exist in a superposition of states–such as in a holographic multiverse, where we can sometimes experience various other possible realities. Nature magazine reported Thomas Hertog stating,

“Quantum mechanics forbids a single history.”

Finding Early Historical Examples

We can find early examples of the Mandela Effect easily enough, by searching through books, newspapers, magazines and research papers with keywords such as “misremembered,” “collective misremembering,” “famously misremembered,” and “historical misremembering.” We can ask elders what kinds of “mis-rememberings” were common in their youth, to hear such examples as differences in historical dates or names, or differences in what people at the same event had heard someone say, for example. We can thus find such examples as a change in dialogue in the 1942 movie Casablanca to “Play it again, Sam,” a phrase which currently is not spoken in the film.

Mandela Effect’s Invitation to Us

The Mandela Effect is inviting us to enter into a new Quantum Age, which also happens to be a new age of awareness of our true identity as Consciousness. People have an opportunity now to become aware that we are not our bodies nor our thoughts nor our feelings–but rather, our true selves and true identities are the observers of our bodies, thoughts and feelings. And as we become aware of this to the point we increasingly observe evidence of this (through witnessing alternate realities and alternate histories), we gain the ability to recognize the primacy of consciousness as creator of experience. I strongly recommend everyone develop a habit of asking, “How good can it get?” in every situation, in order to help ensure best possible experiences–for truly this remarkably unlikely universe can become even more fine-tuned than we’ve yet experienced.

 

You can see the YouTube summary of this blog post here: https://youtu.be/dL1Glpx6hQ8

 

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including her Living the Quantum Dream radio show, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

My Mandela Effect Life

Why Do I Devote My Career to Researching the Mandela Effect, Reality Shifts, and Quantum Jumps?

I’ve been delighted to see the “Mandela Effect” rocket from being a fairly obscure topic in 2010 to a matter of steadily increasing attention in 2016, since I’ve devoted my career to researching discontinuities, shifts, and jumps in reality. In case you’re wondering why I dedicate my life’s work to these topics, here is a short explanation of why I do the work I do.

Witnessing Mind-Matter Influence

I’ve noticed mind-matter interaction since childhood, though I noted this perspective was not mainstream in California in the 1960s when I was growing up. When I was a young girl watching rain falling in the garden outside our house, I noticed that when I was in a certain state day-dreamy state of mind, I could think “Stop rain,” and the rain would stop, and “Start rain,” and the rain would start. After testing this to my satisfaction several times, I ran with great excitement to show this discovery to my mother, who greeted my announcement with a sigh of resignation and evident apathy. Unable to demonstrate for my mother what had been working perfectly just moments earlier, I recognized the power that each of us has to effect mind-matter influence within supportive ‘zones.’ I subsequently made sure that I was quiet about it any time I helped our family’s car to start (back in the 1960’s, it was a relatively common occurrence for cars to not start every time), or other such things. Clearly, mind-matter interaction was not considered to be possible–yet in my daily personal life I constantly found it to be one of the most consistently reliable and supportive pillars upon which I can dependably rely.

In retrospect, I can see I had numerous “Mandela Effect” type experiences while growing up, such as the time in the 1970s following one of my family’s vacations to beautiful Dal Lake, India, when the furniture my parents had ordered finally arrived in California, was assembled and fitted with custom-made glass tops. I reminded my parents that they had promised the woodcarvers at Dal Lake that they would send photographs of the tables in our new home. My parents seemed surprised and confused at my insistence they should take and sent photographs, and I became confused, too, since my parents don’t lie, and always keep their promises. I knew I wasn’t remembering incorrectly, yet I trusted they were not lying to me, either–so I ‘let it go’ without forgetting this bizarre difference in remembered histories had occurred.

Thanks to growing up in a family dedicated to visiting some of the most remote areas in the world before they were forever changed by western expansionism, I spent several months each year of my childhood in parts of the world untouched by western ideas and civilization, able to experience firsthand the way I can communicate directly with people, places and things through intention, thoughts and feelings. And thanks to my close relationship with my most spiritual family member, my maternal grandmother, I gained a clear sense of the reality of unseen angelic and divine realms. My grandmother was a woman of exceptional faith, who frequently conversed with me about spirituality, angels, and God.

My 1982 Physics Degree from UC Berkeley

One of the main reasons I obtained a degree in physics from UC Berkeley was to get closer to the heart of the true nature of reality, after observing mind-matter interaction since childhood. Thanks to my lifelong fascination in the true nature of reality and consciousness, I decided the closest thing to a degree in those topics would be Physics, so I applied to and was accepted to the Physics program at UC Berkeley in the 1980s, and I especially loved my quantum physics classes. I am honored to have received a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley.

Searching for Reality Shifts in 1994

In 1994 I experienced a surge in what at the time I called ‘reality shifts,’ involving noticing things appearing, disappearing, transforming and transporting, as well as changes in the experience of time. In the process of exploring this topic and through my intention to experience a wide variety of these shifts, I found myself quickly doing exactly that. I observed many reality shifts without confirmation or validation from other witnesses, but found that shared reality shift experiences to be more enjoyable, since they provided the opportunity to discuss what happened. My searches for information on this topic across the very new world wide web came up empty as I began writing my book, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World to describe my observations of celebrities and a pet cat having been reported dead, and subsequently being observed to be very much alive. I included descriptions of how a bird feeder changed without anyone touching it between being empty and full, how the material of a jacket changed without anyone modifying it, and how a children’s book illustration from a book I read to my daughter every week changed to something completely different. Reality Shifts includes first-hand reports of conversations being remembered differently by people involved, and about a person’s name vanishing off a conference speaker’s list between the time of sitting down one morning and a subsequent break. Also included is a description of repeating events, similar to what people would later recognize as a ‘glitch in the Matrix.’ I published the first edition of Reality Shifts in 1999 in a three ring binder, which I made available to people attending my talks and workshops, and later sold through CafePress.

Starting RealityShifters Website and Ezine in 1999

The first version of what came to become the RealityShifters website began at thirdage.com in 1998, before the website had its official name. I chose the name ‘realityshifters’ after prompting on 17 November 1999 from Stein Online radio show host, Elliot Stein, in response to his request that I have a shorter, more easily remembered and spoken website URL. The first RealityShifters news ezine was sent out as an email to dozens of people who had signed the guestbook on my thirdage website, and I added new subscribers one by one, sending each month’s issue out as a regular email until the number of subscribers reached about 700. The RealityShifters ezine now reaches over 8,000 subscribers each month, and all issues are posted online at the RealityShifters News page on the realityshifters site.

The Power of Asking “How Good Can it Get?” 

I’ve been writing about and encouraging people to ask the question “How good can it get?” since I first mentioned it in an article published in August 2000. The big idea behind asking this question is that when we ask, “How good can it get?” we change our perspective on this world, leaving behind petty differences and bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds. Simply put, this question has the power to transform not just our perspective and the future, but it can (and often does) also influence the past. When we recognize the growing body of evidence supporting these ideas of the power of changing our subconscious narrative, we can better appreciate the power of asking my favorite question, “How good can it get?” in every situation, every day. Together, we can re-frame the global narratives of the world, enjoying getting the answers to a question we would all actually enjoy receiving the answer to.

Seeking Scientific Answers

My quest for scientific answers behind the Mandela Effect, reality shifts, and quantum jumps has been the foundation of my work as a life coach and author working in this field since 1999. As I recently wrote in a research paper I presented at the Foundations of Mind, Primacy of Quantum Logic in the Natural World,

While we have long presumed quantum logic to operate either alongside or within the classical realm, we stand to benefit from contemplating classical theory and physics as a special case within the bigger quantum reality. This paper finds support for the view of the quantum logicians who assert quantum logic to be the most comprehensive deductive logic. This is demonstrated by the derivability of quantum theory from one additional fundamental axiom beyond that required for deriving classical theory, and evidence that some fundamental aspects of quantum physics can never admit a classical understanding. Recognition that classical theory and logic is a ‘special case’ subset of the greater quantum whole invites us to completely reassess our assumptions regarding the way we view the world and what we consider to be ‘logical.’

I am delighted to have received this statement of recognition from one of my favorite quantum physics professors at UC Berkeley, Dr. George Trilling, who wrote to me in June 2014, “From looking at your accomplishments, your knowledge of physics has served you well. My congratulations on your achievements.”

Paradigm Shift Evident in the Mandela Effect 

The Mandela Effect is stirring strong emotional reactions in people who, for the first time, are startled to witness their own first-hand experiences of reality shifts, such as celebrities previously reported dead being observed to be very much alive again–including the now-famous example of Nelson Mandela being observed by many to now have died twice.

The remarkable thing about the rise of the Mandela Effect is that for the first time in recorded history, groups of people are agreeing that they collectively recall different histories. This is significant because it marks the beginning of a paradigm shift in our worldview with regard to a ‘static’ sense of historical facts, to one encompassing a new view that sometimes, facts change. This paradigm shift arrives at a point in time when some scientists seek evidence of the many worlds of quantum physics being one-and-the-same as the multiverse.

I’m excited to help facilitate humanity’s paradigm shift toward a realization of the primacy of consciousness and quantum logic in the world, through my free YouTube videos, RealityShifters website, RealityShifters ezine, blog, articles, Living the Quantum Dream radio show, and my books and life coaching.

You can see the YouTube summary of this blog post here: https://youtu.be/bMsStumSrRE

 

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including her Living the Quantum Dream radio show, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

The Power of Reframing Subconscious Narrative

Cynthia Sue Larson

Have you noticed how two people can experience the same or similar circumstances, yet they often come away with very different viewpoints regarding what happened? Most of us experience this sort of puzzling discrepancy when we were children and our caretakers described a different view of the world than what we felt had transpired. Before we learned any language, we humans automatically construct narratives by which to make sense of the world. These narratives help us develop social cognitive functioning from infancy, where we differentiate between those who are possibly helpful or harmful.

 

Reframing Narratives and Emotions

I’ve been enjoying reading Emotions Revealed by Dr. Paul Ekman, in which he describes some fascinating research including how our emotional responses to various situations can change based on our interpretation of what is going on. We humans have muscles that move in synchronization with various emotions, and the resulting facial expressions have been proven to be recognized and understood across all cultures and countries in the world. Additionally, when we make various expressions by moving particular muscles associated with various emotions, we feel the very emotions that are associated with moving those muscle groups. Part of the reason that humans depend upon accurately reading and understanding facial expressions (including micro-expressions and suppressed expressions) is that our safety and wellbeing requires us to constantly be aware of potential dangers in our environment–so we must be able to know in a microsecond whether a nearby human is showing an expression of fear or surprise, in order that we may respond quickly enough to potentially dangerous situations. Despite the fact that there is a clear relationship between globally recognizable emotions in the form of facial expressions, surprisingly, most people do not receive training in accurately interpreting facial expressions with their variety of associated emotional meanings. Thanks to Dr. Paul Ekman’s work as he describes in Emotions Revealed, we can see photographs of how people look when they are moving precise muscle groups on their faces and feeling various blends of emotions–including when they are masking or concealing deeper underlying emotions with others.

Since our emotions are primary motivating forces for most everything we do, learning how they establish a subconscious narrative for what we believe to be occurring provides us with a foundational basis for what we can do to better understand–and perhaps change–that story line. In this way, we can, for example, recognize that what we initially took to be an overly critical boss might actually care a great deal about us, and the criticisms might have more to do with our boss being afraid we might quit and leave than feeling we aren’t doing our job well enough. We can thus better appreciate the underlying subconscious narratives going on in all the people around us as well as in our own lives, allowing us to rise above the “little stuff” as we expand our sense of self and begin to appreciate the Big Questions, such as, “Who am I?” and “What am I doing here?” and rise above the day-to-day practical matters required for survival.

 

Reframing Narratives and the Placebo Effect

Excellent examples of benefits we can experience from reframing our subconscious narratives can be found in the Placebo Effect. Recent placebo studies are reporting that people can experience improvements in a wide variety of areas, including: reduction of pain, improvement in vision, improved test scores, increased levels of confidence, increased mobility in people with knee problems, reduction of Parkinson’s disease symptoms, and much more–from such things as supportive remarks, ‘power postures,’ sham surgeries, sugar pills and other placebos with no known curative powers. Researchers have even found that we cognitively benefit from placebo sleep, by telling ourselves we’ve slept well.

Some exciting news this year is that placebos are helping people relieve suffering from IBS and migraines in studies that are showing amazingly promising results–even when those receiving placebo treatment are told, “the treatment you are getting is a placebo.” While scientists in research centers such as at Harvard’s Program in Placebo Studies still seek the underlying mechanism responsible for people experiencing statistically significant improvements in a multitude of different ways, it’s becoming clear that the Placebo Effect is real, substantial, and somehow involves our subconscious beliefs–and narratives–about what we feel is happening in our lives.

And if it weren’t amazing enough that placebos can be effective even when people know they are “just receiving a placebo,” and not an actual surgery or medical intervention of some sort–in America, the Placebo Effect is increasing in efficacy over time. The percentage of people in placebo groups experiencing noticeable changes is going up decade by decade–possibly due to longer clinical trial periods, and perhaps also thanks to the requirement in such placebo studies that researchers tell study participants the truth regarding the remarkable efficacy of placebo treatments.

 

Retelling Our Own Stories

When film director Steven Spielberg gave his 2016 commencement speech at Harvard, he said, “We have to tell our own stories.” Spielberg went on to point out the importance of how each of us reaches character-defining moments in our lives in which we can hear our internalized voices of authority from our parents, teachers, bosses, and spouses indicating what we “should” do–as well as the quieter intuitive whispers and internal voices indicating what we “could” do.

In the course of working with clients as an intuitive life coach, I frequently delve into “what if” possibilities, encouraging my clients to heed the call of their hearts’ desires and feel the pull of their possible selves having the times of their lives. Simply imagining there may be another possible me and another possible you who are standing up for what we believe in, facing our fears, and pursuing our dreams is the first step in recognizing that it’s never too late to live a happy life.

No matter what situation we may find ourselves in, it is always possible to step back and observe ourselves and all others from a more expansive point of view from which we can reframe the narrative and ourselves. This kind of reframing provides us with an opportunity by which we can review memories of what we recall from past events as well as envisioned possibilities in the future–and this reframing is hardly the passive activity it might at first seem, but indeed quite possibly the most revolutionary and powerful action any one of us can ever make.

 

How Good Can it Get?

When we recognize the growing body of evidence supporting these ideas of the power of changing our subconscious narrative, we can better appreciate the power of asking my favorite question, “How good can it get?” in every situation, every day. Together, we can re-frame the global narratives of the world, enjoying getting the answers to a question we would all actually really enjoy getting the answer to.

 

 

You can see the YouTube summary of this blog post here: https://youtu.be/Yvs2cjTqeV0

 

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Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

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