My Thoughts on Tom Campbell and the Mandela Effect

This past month I was fortunate to be able to talk with physicist Tom Campbell during a special live broadcast of International Mandela Effect Conference (IMEC) Open Tables.  Tom reviewed ten examples of the Mandela Effect, and remembered things differently for five of them.  Toward the end of our conversation, Tom discussed four factors that he considers to be involved in the Mandela Effect phenomena. Tom said, “I thought about it a little, because I knew that’s what you guys were about, and I found four different things that contribute to it. So I don’t think it’s just one thing, I think there are several things that lead us to this.”  

You can view this part of our mini-conference with Tom Campbell in its entirety in Tom Campbell’s Big TOE, Virtual Reality, and the Mandela Effect, or starting at about time marker 1:19  to start at this part of the conversation.

(1) Observers have Individual Subjective Realities

The first thing Tom mentioned is that reality is only in the mind of the observer.  Tom states:

“Well, every observer has his own reality because it’s his interpretation of the data that he gets.  So for one there is not a reality ‘back then’ that existed, there is no ‘master reality,’ that exists.  It only exists in the minds of the players, and the players all have a somewhat different reality, because they interpret the data they get.  So there isn’t a reality that is kind of the right answer to what it was.  So that’s one thing.  So just looking from a perspective of consciousness, there is no ‘the reality that was.’  It doesn’t exist–never has existed.  It’s a bunch of individual realities.  And now we can look at it and see what we in general, most of us you know, saw or heard.  So there’s that idea that there is no right answer to what it was; we all have our own reality.”

I love how Tom starts contemplating the Mandela Effect with this notion of Subjective Reality (in contrast to Objective Reality), since this is a view of the quantum paradigm that I feel is at the heart and core of both quantum physics and reality itself.  Physicist George Weissmann and I wrote about this in our paper, The Quantum Paradigm and Challenging the Objectivity Assumption. The really BIG idea here that is paradigm-shifting in the extreme is that quantum physics shows us quite clearly that there may be no such thing as objectivity, or ‘one true reality.’

(2) Pattern Matching in Consciousness

This next factor that Tom Campbell considers as involved in people experiencing the Mandela Effect has to do with the way consciousness operates with attributes of perception, and how we perceive and remember, with pattern matching.  Tom elaborates:

“We perceive things and remember things in our memory.  This is just kind of the fundamentals of the way consciousness works, we work with pattern matching.  That’s kind of the fundamental way we do things.  We work on pattern matching, and what happens is we’ll get a new image, we’ll go into our data bank to find a pattern that fits it.  Now if we can find an exact fit, oh great, we’ll put that out.  But if we can’t find an exact fit, we’ll pull out anything that even fits a little bit.  If it fits sort of well, we’ll pull that out, and that what it’ll be.”

Tom then shares his experience with people frequently calling his wife a similar, yet incorrect name, that starts with the same letters.  Tom’s wife’s name is Pamela, yet frequently when they go out and meet people, even after she’s introduced herself as Pamela, a few minutes later, someone will say, “Oh, Patricia.”  So Tom is pointing out that we might be fooling ourselves with some examples of what we think are Mandela Effects, that actually have more to do with the fallibility of our minds and memories.

In the more than 20 years of research I’ve been conducting in this field of the Mandela Effect and reality shifts, I’ve been careful to winnow out cases in which this kind of mental error occurs.  I’ve also referenced this past year the work of Tony Jinks and his book, Disappearing Object Phenomenon: An Investigation, since he made a comparison of experiencers of personal Mandela Effects (or DOP, or reality shifts), and found no statistically significant differences in mental functioning and processes of experiencers versus non-experiencers.

While I’ve witnessed cases of what Tom calls pattern-matching, and what researchers like Elizabeth Loftus refer to as false memories, I have been careful to include first-hand reality shift reports in the hundreds of pages in the Your Stories section of the realityshifters website where experiencers are certain they are not simply mis-remembering.  Elizabeth Loftus was surprised to learn that she was ‘mis-remembering’ some things when she appeared on the Mandela Monthly show with Moneybags73 and the Ripon Rabbit in July 2020.

(3) Collective Consciousness

The third factor that Tom Campbell considers as involved in people experiencing the Mandela Effect has to do with the way collective consciousness operates with attributes of perception, where we are part of a group or community.

“Another thing we should think about that’s in this thing too is there’s a thing called collective consciousness.  Collective consciousness is any group of people who have a connection who feel they have a connection together.  They basically form a collective consciousness.  So you have have a collective consciousness where you work with all the people you work with, there’s a collective consciousness that goes with that.  Or if you do child care, there’s a collective consciousness that goes with that.  You have a collective consciousness with your nation; you have one with humanity.  You know, Carl Jung called these archetypes. They’re basically collective consciousness pieces that you identify with and you connect.  Well, the collective consciousness is just the vector sum of all the consciousness that are in the membership that are in the group.  So you get stuff out of that collective consciousness, and you take it on.  So you know you become more like that.  Now you affect the whole, but you only affect the whole a little bit, because you’re one person and there’s maybe 10,000 in your collective, so you don’t affect the whole that much, but the whole affects you more.  So you work for IBM and after you’ve been there 4 or 5 years, guess what?  You start wearing blue shirts, you start dressing like they do, you start talking like they do, you start having the same interests that they do, because it’s part of the collective consciousness.”

This is really interesting, since it helps to clarify how sometimes we might see someone start to remember something as a Mandela Effect, and then within a few minutes we might witness them “take the download” or succumb to the “Mr. Smith Effect” where suddenly they say that actually, it seems to them that what they remember is whatever matches the current historical records.  Sometimes, we might even notice the influence of the collective consciousness groups we belong to if we start remembering something more than one way.  It can feel like we remember both, yet know that’s impossible, since we must have only had one previous timeline of choices and events.

(4) Paranormal Likes to Open Our Minds

This fourth factor involves the way the Cosmos engages with us in order to get our attention and open our mind to new and expanded possibilities.  Tom incorporates the idea of the fundamental consciousness, or Larger Consciousness System (LCS) here:

“Sometimes the LCS can change things up on us just to get our attention and open our mind.  It likes to do that.  For instance, crop circles.  You know you have crop circles and overnight, one night… totally dark, maybe a few lights running around, no sound.  And the next morning, you’ve got 34 acres covered with a very complex design that isn’t just straight lines.  It’s all kinds of curves and things that would probably take a surveying crew of 20 people like three weeks to lay it out with their transoms if they were trying to do it.  So the system does things like that just as a wake up calls: ‘Hey! Think out of the box!  Reality is not just this little thing you think it is. Open your mind.’  You know there’s more going on here than you’re aware of.  Well again we jump to conclusions and make up the first thing comes to our mind, ‘Oh, aliens did it–you know, the aliens must be doing those things.’  Well, not necessarily.  You know the Larger Consciousness System triggers lots of people with paranormal experiences, just to open their minds.  I got triggered to open my mind with an ability to debug software.  I know a lady who a week after her mother died, she got a phone call from her mother–the phone rang, she picks up the phone and it’s Mom, telling her that ‘I’m okay. I just wanted to let you know everything’s fine,’ and of course she was freaked out, so she took the phone and slammed it down onto the receiver, because she thought somebody was messing with her, and what a cruel joke it was.  And then she realized that wasn’t the case at all–she just hung up on her mother who was trying to get in touch with her.  So people have these kinds of things.  The system goes out of its way to help us see bigger pictures, because only when we see bigger pictures do we start becoming seekers and start learning and growing.  So the system does that all over, so part of the Mandela Effect that was my fourth one is that the system often plays these sorts of games just to rattle us a little bit–to get us to open our mind, and think out of the box, instead of just being stuck in this little materialist groove.  And it just does that to individuals and it does that like in crop circles to whole populations and it does other things as well.  So a lot of the extraterrestrial things that people see you know, with spaceships landing in their yard and chatting with aliens and so on–all the system has to do to create that is put that data in their data stream.  That’s it.  And then it’s there, it’s real.  They interpret it, and it wakes them up and after that, they’re different people.  They start researching.  They start wanting to understand things.  So that’s part of the Mandela Effect.”

This concept of getting our attention is something I discuss in my book, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World, and it is thoroughly covered in the book Contact Modalities: The Keys to the Universe by Grant Cameron and Desta Barnabe.  Clearly, one of the biggest messages I’ve gotten when asking the Cosmos, “Why do these things such as reality shifts happen?” is the simple two word answer:  “Be Cause.”  This is a time of  Great Awakening, where we can step into our larger consciousness ‘shoes’ with some truly wonderful reality shifting and quantum jumping capabilities.

How good CAN it get?

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Cameron, Grant and Barnabe, Desta.  Contact Modalities: The Keys to the Universe.  2020.

Campbell, Thomas W.  My Big TOE:  Awakening.  Lightning Strike Books.  2003.

Jinks, Tony.  Disappearing Object Phenomenon:  An Investigation.  McFarland & Co.  2016.

Larson, Cynthia.  Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. 2012.

Weissmann, George, and Cynthia Sue Larson. “The quantum paradigm and challenging the objectivity assumption.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 13, no. 2 (2017): 281-297.

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You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters

Can We See Quantum Phenomena?

One of the common assumptions about some of the ‘weirdest’ aspects of quantum phenomena, is that we don’t need to be concerned with it, since it happens in the realm of the very, very, astonishingly small.

Our everyday life experience tells us that macroscopic systems obey classical physics, and we’ve even received reassurances from brilliant physicists that we need not concern ourselves with the possibility of quantum effects in daily life.  It’s understandable that we then naturally expect that quantum mechanics must reproduce classical mechanics results in the macroscopic range–which is known as “the correspondence principle,” that physicist Niels Bohr established in 1920.   Proponents of this premise have presumed for the past century that any transition from quantum mechanics to classical mechanics operates according to a kind of coarse-graining mechanism, whereby measurements performed on macroscopic systems that have limited resolution, and are unable to resolve individual microscopic particles will behave classically. 

As discussed in my book, Quantum Jumps: scientists now confirm we can see quantum phenomena at macroscopic scale! “It is amazing to have quantum rules at the macroscopic scale. We just have to measure fluctuations, deviations from expected values, and we will see quantum phenomena in macroscopic systems”

Can we see quantum correlations at the macroscopic scale?

How Quantum Correlations Can Survive

Researchers Miguel Gallego (University of Vienna) and Borivoje Dakić (University of Vienna and IQOQI) were surprised to discover that quantum correlations survive in the macroscopic limit when correlations are not independent and identically distributed (IID) at the level of microscopic constituents.

This idea of independent and identically distributed (IID) is the key here, since it is often presumed to be generally true in experimental laboratory settings.  When quantum measurements are taken and calculated for the corresponding correlations, experimental designs typically involve a large number of repetitions, since the key assumption is that each run of the experiment must be repeated under exactly the same conditions, yet independently from other experimental runs.  Experiments are designed with the idea in mind that they ensure that each quantum random “coin toss” is fair and unbiased, so the ratio of “heads” to “tails” comes out evenly, with either “heads” or “tails” expected 50% of the time.

As it turns out, this assumption, that plays such a pivotal role in the expectation that there exist only classical physics happening past some macroscopic limit.  What these recent research results show is that what is really going on is that macroscopic groupings of clusters of quantum particles that are “coarse-grained” together interact with each other, with Borivoje Dakić stating:

“The IID assumption is not natural when dealing with a large number of microscopic systems. Small quantum particles interact strongly and quantum correlations and entanglement are distributed everywhere. Given such a scenario, we revised existing calculations and were able to find complete quantum behavior at the macroscopic scale. This is completely against the correspondence principle, and the transition to classicality does not take place”

What Are the Implications?

While we have long presumed the wide, wonderful, weird world of quantum physics to operate either alongside or within the classical realm, the real truth of the matter is that we’re seeing ever-increasing evidence to suggest that classical theory and physics might best be viewed as a special case within the bigger quantum reality.

By appreciating the possibility that quantum logic is primary in the natural world, we see how humanity stands to benefit from embracing the innate quantum logic implicit in everything. We can thus envision how the addition of quantum theory ushers in a new view of all areas of study, including:  biology, psychology, sociology, cosmology, statistics, and history. The idea that quantum phenomena occur at all levels—not merely at microscopic quantum levels—indicates we are able to develop a more functionally predictive and naturally based quantum perspective that promises to completely revise our worldview.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dakic, Borivoje Dakic & Gallego Miguel.  “Can We See Quantum Correlations at the Macroscopic Scale?”  PhysOrg.  23 Sep 2021.  https://phys.org/news/2021-09-quantum-macroscopic-scale.html

Larson, Cynthia Sue. “Primacy of quantum logic in the natural world.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2015): 326-340.  http://realityshifters.com/media/Larson2015PrimacyQuantumLogic.pdf

Larson, Cynthia.  Quantum Jumps:  An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity.  2013.

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You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters

Does Quantum Uncertainty Drive the Truth Wars?

A friend of mine recently wrote, “Never has it become more apparent that you can be standing next to another person and be existing in two completely alternate realities.” 

Those of us nodding our heads in recognition of the reality of this statement may wonder whether we might be literally living in different worlds.  Are some groups of people seeing completely different facts and information?  How can we best navigate this time when facts and scientific studies can often be found to support opposing sides of various issues?  Sometimes, the facts and data can appear to be 100% contradictory, with one person saying yes, something is absolutely good, and another person saying no. 

Why are We so Divided in our Beliefs?

Ross Pittman, founder and editor in chief of Conscious Life News recently wrote to me:

I’m hoping you can answer a question that has been bugging me for the longest time regarding our “fractured times.” Why are we so divided on our beliefs?  …  You’ve written and made a video about (there being) NO OBJECTIVE REALITY.  Is it possible that both sides experience the reality they believe is true?  That is, their truth is THE truth for them.  I would love your thoughts on this. 

This topic runs far deeper than meets the eye, and deserves closer examination.  From my more than twenty years researching and reporting on reality shifts, quantum jumps, and the Mandela Effect, I naturally recognize the possibility that just as we might remember past events differently from friends or family members who were standing right next to us at those times, we also might literally be seeking–and finding–completely different, yet equally scientifically valid facts.  

Certainty is a False Friend

Peter Lee opens his book, “Truth Wars” with the statement: “Certainty is a false friend in the quest for truth.” [1] While we often unconsciously associate the concept of truth with certainty, this statement makes sense from a quantum physics perspective (such as Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle).  And even before this new Quantum Age began, the western concept of the scientific method incorporates the concept of constantly seeking truth via ever-evolving scientific models.  Ideally, scientists do not ever rest on laurels of success, but rather engage in the higher calling and pursuit of genuine knowledge, based on reproducible scientific studies.  

Disinformation in the Post-Truth Era

The idea of disinformation has been around for quite a long time–so the observation of seemingly huge dichotomies between ideas of truth is nothing new.  Typically, when the topic of disinformation comes up, it’s associated with terms like ‘alternate facts,’ denial, and post-truth.  Author Lee McIntyre invites us to ponder how we’ve ended up in a “post-truth era, where ‘alternative facts’ replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence.”  McIntyre points out that the term “post-truth” can be traced back to the 1990s, when it first appeared in a political story in a magazine. Peter Lee states toward the beginning of his book, “Truth Wars”:

We live in an age of crisis.  There are many types of crisis, of course, but the three that serve as the focus for this book–climate change, military intervention and financial crisis–are widely claimed to be global in scale and potentially apocalyptic in severity.  These crises all have one thing in common: they each provide political leaders with the incentive and justification to increasingly govern the lives of millions, even billions, of people through the enactment of policy and the allocation, or withdrawal, of resources.  They add a new dimension to Harold Lasswell’s famous aphorism that politics is about who gets what, when, and how, because such decisions are based on specific truth claims and the policy priorities that emerge from them. [2]

Lee McIntyre, author of “Post Truth” provides us with further insights into these classical views of this topic, in his description of some fundamental roots of post-truth:

“I think that the main root of post-truth is science denial. This started in the 1950s with cigarette companies going into panic mode when scientists were about to publish a study that showed a link between cigarette smoking and cancer. They decided to “fight the science.” They hired their own experts, did bogus studies, bought full-page ads in newspapers, and got the word out that “no conclusive link between cigarette smoking and cancer has been established.” Well that’s actually true because—due to the problems with inductive reasoning—no conclusive causal relationship has ever been shown between ANY two things. What this did, though, was create doubt in the mind of the general public, and that was the point. The cigarette companies rode this wave of doubt for the next 40 years as they sold cigarettes. And the blueprint for this sort of science denial was then used for other science denial campaigns against acid rain, the ozone hole, evolution by natural selection, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and climate change. Without all that, I don’t think post-truth would have been successful. People learned to doubt facts and truth in general because they started with doubting scientific facts and truth about science. Add to this cognitive bias, the decline of traditional media, the rise of social media, and a dash of postmodernism, and you had a perfect environment for post-truth.” [3]

These factors are certainly concerning on a number of levels, yet we still haven’t gotten to the true core of the way we might sometimes be witnessing parallel realities right in front of us, in this environment where some groups are operating with completely different values, perspectives, and agendas. 

What if there is no such thing as Objective Reality?

There is something going on with respect to news that a recent Physics Experiment Challenges Objective Reality–which I feel deserved to be the biggest news story of 2019.  These scientific experimental results suggest there may be no such thing as objective reality, at least in the way that western collective consciousness typically presumes this foundational idea.  Yes we can (and do) find what we are seeking.  And yes, this does mean that we sometimes seem to be living in different worlds.

When I think of the way quantum physics disrupts many common assumptions–including scientific assumptions–the first thing that comes to my mind is the title of a wonderful paper published in 2015 in Contemporary Physics by physicists David Jennings and Matthew Leifer, No Return to Classical Reality.  Jennings and Leifer audaciously start their paper with the fighting words,

“At a fundamental level, the classical picture of the world is dead, and has been dead now for almost a century.”  [4]

This seemingly brash statement is fully backed by demonstrating that there exist fundamental phenomena of quantum theory that cannot be understood in classical terms.  And as the authors state,

“We now have a range of precise statements showing that whatever the ultimate laws of Nature are, they cannot be classical.” 

I’ve touched on this topic before, and written about it in my 2015 paper, Primacy of Quantum Logic in the Natural World. [5]  Support can be found for the primacy of quantum logic in the natural world in the cognitive sciences, where recent research studies recognize quantum logic in studies of: the subconscious, decisions involving unknown interconnected variables, memory, and question sequencing. 

So if Nature follows quantum, not classical, laws–what are the implications for us in daily life? 

The Wigner’s Friend Paradox

One of the many perplexing aspects of quantum physics is something known as the “Wigner’s Friend” idea, in which one person conducts an experiment, and a second person observes the first person.  While it may seem clear from contemplating this thought experiment that we may not be able to adopt other peoples’ observations as being equally valid to our own, what’s recently rocked the quantum physics research world is that scientists in Austria and Canada have proved that not only can we not expect our observations to match someone else’s–we can’t even trust our own observations from the past. 

This recent Popular Mechanics article demonstrates that news of the published quantum physics experimental results by Proietti and team in 2019 is a story that is not going away anytime soon: It’s impossible to tell if this story exists, according to quantum physics.  If anything, this is one of those experiments that will more likely continue to grow in significance, as scientists grasp the full implication of what has been demonstrated. 

New Thinking Required in this new Quantum Age

We tend to see what we were looking for–even what we were unconsciously seeking.  The so-called “confirmation bias” can be seen to have its roots at the core of quantum physics, where it is better known as the Observer Effect.  If we take the ideas from quantum physics seriously as impacting every level of reality, and not purely “the quantum realm,” then we should expect to witness even the most bizarre quantum behaviors in our daily lives.  These would include quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance;” as well as quantum tunneling; superposition of states; delayed choice (where future decisions influence the past); and quantum teleportation. 

Now that we see there may be fundamental underlying qualities to the Cosmos by which elements of quantum physics could be driving the Truth Wars, most of us at this point are saying, “But we don’t want Truth Wars! What can we do to create a stable sense of peace?  The key to finding optimal outcomes and ‘end games’ lies in envisioning and focusing our attention and energy on potential possibilities that have more to do with what we are grateful for, rather than what we are anxious, angry, or despairing about.  If we insist on focusing our attention on those who disagree with our views of historical facts and scientific findings, or on proving that we can find better facts and findings than those we disagree with, there is high likelihood that Truth Wars will persist.  Now that we are entering this new Quantum Age, we’ll thrive best when adopting a Quantum Age mindset, as described in my book, Quantum Jumps:

What’s most amazing to me about the Quantum Age isn’t so much about the quantum computers as how radically our concept of rational thinking is about to change. The seemingly simple transition from bits to qubits takes us from our westernized binary view of True-False logic into a wild and woolly realm of True, True-and-False, Not-True-Not-False, and False. We’re entering a weird, wonderful world of possibilities in which we’ll discover that just because we think something is a certain way doesn’t mean it will stay that way, or that others will experience it that way. Our legal systems will be transformed, and historians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and biologists will recognize alternate histories as being a natural part of existence. Medical professionals will learn to view spontaneous remission as a naturally occurring process, and will encourage people to adopt states of mind that facilitate quantum jumps in healing. Our views of unbiased observers and impartial judges will be forever changed as we appreciate how information can travel anywhere instantaneously, and how everyone and everything is interconnected. The Quantum Age invites us to radically transform our view of who we are and how we work, play, love, and heal in our everyday lives. [6]

Tired of the Truth Wars?
Let’s Thrive in Uncertain Times
with Gratitude and Kindness

At this time, humanity needs to care more for one another, regardless of seeming divisions, remembering that each of us can shift to a positive perspective.  We need to care more for others than we have before.  We need to step up to the challenges of living through uncertain times with kindness and love, as we’ve been taught by perennial wisdom teachings across all continents and in all religious.   We can rise above most any circumstances, through the power of observation.  We can choose Revhumanism in apocalyptic times.  And of course one of my favorite ways to get and stay focused on optimal outcomes, is to ask my favorite question: 

“How good can it get?”

 

[1] Lee, Peter. Truth wars: the politics of climate change, military intervention and financial crisis. Springer, 2016.

[2] “The Uncertainty Principle,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  12 Jul 2016 revision.  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/

[3] McIntyre, Lee. Post-truth. MIt Press, 2018.

[4] Jennings, David, and Matthew Leifer. “No return to classical reality.” Contemporary Physics 57, no. 1 (2016): 60-82.

[5] Larson, Cynthia Sue. “Primacy of quantum logic in the natural world.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2015): 326-340.

[6] Larson, Cynthia.  Quantum Jumps:  An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity.  2013.

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You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

 

RealityShifters

 

My Conversation with FutureMe

I received a surprising email message this week, from myself, exactly one year ago.  The message read:

“Dear FutureMe, I’ve been sheltering in place for more than five months, and all travel plans have canceled. It’s hard for me to imagine what you’re going through now, but whatever it is, please trust that all is well, and you have a great deal of love and support! And always remember to let God do the ‘heavy lifting.’ It’s enough each day just to show up, and do what you are able to do, and care for who and what you are able to care for.”

Feeling Connected through Time

I had forgotten I’d sent myself this message, and in the moment of reading it, felt myself connected through time and space to what I was going through and how I was feeling at the time I wrote it.  The day I sent this message to FutureMe, was the same day I recorded my video, Nature’s Message Now on August 28, 2020.   There was much going on that I made no mention of, including a variety of challenges–including the realization that I was experiencing dozens of symptoms that were a match for longhaul covid.  I can hear the shortness of breath I was dealing with in the videos I created every month in 2020, providing auditory proof that there was something different going on that year.  That was a time of great uncertainty, and yet I drew strength even as I sent love and blessings forward in time. 

 

On the 2021 receiving side of reading this message sent to me by my 2020 self, I felt a bit of something akin to time-travel jet-lag.  The jarring juxtaposition between my emotional states in 2020 and 2021 felt very intense, as I felt both loved by and loving toward my 2020 self. 

What a Difference a Year Makes

Here is a photo of me taken on August 25, 2021, prior to a live-stream broadcast of IMEC’s Open Tables for the International Mandela Effect Conference, What the Mandela Effect Means to Me.  I noticed after finding this photo taken closest to the date when I received the email from FutureMe that I did NOT plan this–but it looks like I chose to wear the same outfit both days, one year apart!  I had chosen to wear exactly the same outfit I was wearing on the date I sent the message one year forward.  This kind of coincidence seems divinely guided, as if a higher level of self realized what fun it would be to see how I was looking on both the day I sent the message, and the day I received it. 

We can rise above most any circumstances, through the power of observation–through choosing which aspects of life we are viewing, and from which point of view and sense of self.  And of course one of my favorite ways to experience the power of observation, is to keep asking my favorite question, “how good can it get?”

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You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

 

RealityShifters

 

The Power of Observation

How might your life change if you recognized that observing might be the most powerful thing you could do?  We acknowledge experts based on what and how they observe, yet we seldom recognize the full power of observation.

Much like breathing, observing is something we often take for granted, yet cannot live without.  We can only live for a matter of minutes without breathing–and in certain situations, the same can be said of observation.  We depend on observation in order to make choices about the food we eat as well as every choice we make. 

How we do this deceptively simple thing has everything to do with the level of consciousness we experience.

Role of the Observer

 

Tremendous significance has been ascribed to the act of observation and the role of the Observer, in the realm of quantum physics.  The definition of “observation” within quantum physics is:

“an act by which one finds some information–the value of a physical observable (quantity).” 

This very specific definition is focused on the relationship between observation and information, with awareness that the choice of how and where and what is being chosen for observation. 

The presence or absence of Observers, as well as the nature of what is being observed have an impact on the observations being made. This has been experimentally demonstrated in the double slit experiment, which is recognized as the most elegant scientific experiment.  Observation in quantum physics experiments has been associated with such ideas as “the observer effect,” whereby what is observed in a quantum double slit experiment appears to be influenced by the type and location of an observer or observational device.  

While it may seem obvious that observation involves some form of consciousness, there is a surprising lack of consensus agreement about what that entails.  

Observation and Consciousness

One of my favorite ways to contemplate the connection between observation and consciousness is by considering some of the insights of Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, a great philosopher and one of the inventors of Calculus. 

Leibniz pointed out that a key quality of consciousness is that it necessarily involves both a first-order primary perception, and a second-order awareness of the first level perception.  Our ability to recognize, for example, that when we feel something touch our nose, and we open our eyes to see what it is, we can realize that the sensations we perceive and the visual input can provide us with information regarding what is currently happening.  If we feel a sense of being threatened, we can respond protectively; if we feel a sense of curiosity, we can respond inquisitively. 

Leibniz recognized the importance of being an observer of one’s own first-order perceptions–with awareness that this very ability to acknowledge something we so often take for granted can actually be viewed as the foundation of consciousness itself.  We begin to wonder if artificial intelligence asks questions, will nature answer?   with hopefully an emphasis on how good it can get when we begin collaborations with A.I.

The Power of Observation

Most of us are familiar with the expression, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” with awareness that each person’s aesthetics can be quite individual and unique.  What is not so well known is that almost all desirable qualities can be said to be “in the eye of the beholder,” and we tend to see much more of whatever we focus our attention upon.  We can become inadvertent experts on what we focus our attention on, regardless whether it’s something we’d actually enjoy experiencing, so we would be well advised to focus our attention on sustainable positive values such as:  peace, balance, harmony, joy, and love. 

Alignment of our own levels of observation is an inside job, meaning it starts by recognizing areas of ideological inflammation, where we cannot tolerate certain ‘triggers’ or stimulation–yet thrives by focusing primarily on our overall health as incorporating a much larger sense of self than we typically claim.  When each of us is bigger than any personal or environmental insult, we need not fall into knee-jerk reactionary and possibly overly dramatic responses, but rather can relax into knowing we are intrinsically safe, loved, and accepted with love and kindness just as we are.  This kind of re-centering is an inside job, and must start by loving all parts of ourselves.  We thus can rise above old patterns and tendencies to fall into victim consciousness, patterns of us-and-them thinking, or chronic anxiety regarding some large problem that we must help resolve.  All such drama can truly be risen above, when we claim a sense of higher self awareness that is our true birthright. 

We can rise above most any circumstances, through the power of observation.  And of course one of my favorite ways to experience the power of observation, is to feel how much we truly need to know how good can it get?

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You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

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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, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

 

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How to Prepare for Jedi VS Empire ‘bots’

A friend just posted something interesting related to both of the two talks I gave about Identity and Artificial Intelligence, “It’s the crossroads of Human history.  One road leads to A.I. and it’s merging with humanity and the other leads to evolution of average people to X men without using machines.  At some future destination there will be Empire and Jedi among the ‘Bots.'”

So how do we prepare for Jedi VS Empire ‘bots?

I was struck by two pivotal moments when I was interacting with the audience while giving the keynote talk at the West Coast Dowsers conference at UC Santa Cruz this month.  In the first moment, one person after another came up to ask a question at the microphone along the lines of, “Can just one person really make a difference?”  And time and again I replied, “Yes.  One person really can make a difference.” Much of the key to this realization involves recognition that the classical view of reality consisting primarily of physical “stuff” cannot truly be the actual nature of the world.  We’re learning that classical physics is a special case within the larger set of quantum physics–and within quantum physics, Observers can and do influence events.

In the second moment, people came up to talk to me after my keynote presentation, expressing a sense of newfound hope that despite current social atmospheres of division seeming to segregate people into groups of “Us” and “Them,” it really can be possible for us to be respectful with one another, rather than assuming ‘others’ to be untrustworthy, profane, oppressive, offensive, guilty, primitive, or evil.  We stand to benefit from listening to what others have to say, rather than shouting over them.  We can overcome artificial divisions by appreciating that we are not our thoughts, and we are not our feelings–we are the one who sees and hears and feels these thoughts and feelings.   

When we appreciate that we can look for–and find–evidence of quantum jumps and reality shifts on the macroscopic scale, we can see the world with less fear and greater appreciation for the miraculous way we experience living in such a remarkably fine-tuned universe.  We see scientific evidence that:  our cognitive processes behave according to quantum logic, where relationships between events and observers matter.  We see that there has been a doubling of the placebo effect over the past 30 years.  We see the field of embodied cognition is taking off, with our abilities rising to support our actions as, for example, we feel happier because we smiled.  We see scientists having trouble reproducing their experiments in what’s been called a “reproducability crisis.”  We see evolutionary jumps, rather than slow gradual change in our fossil records.

Physicist Dr. Henry Stapp provides us with a clue as to how we are connected to Nature with the questions we ask: “The Quantum Zeno Effect says that the answers follow your questions–that by posing the questions fast enough, you can make the answers agree with what the questions are you ask.” 

Jedi VS Empire ‘bots

I feel that one of the reasons humans love stories like the Star Wars movies is that we find in our stories a sense of meaning and purpose for our lives.  When we view the world of Jedi knights and Empire soldiers from a viewpoint of the importance of retaining the essential spark of our humanity, we can feel grateful that we are always able to take an imaginary step back from any situation and constellation of events, to view it from the point of view of Observer who is observing the observers.  And when we ask optimizing, open-ended questions from this vantage point–such as, “How good can it get?” we truly can see just how much more wonderfully unlikely a world we and our future generations can live in.

You can watch the companion video to this blog post at:

 

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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, Gaia TV, 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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Observation, Identity and Influence

Quantum physics depends on observers selecting how and where measurements are obtained–unlike classical physics which has no such requirement for an observer.

The idea of observation and the role of the “Observer” are key to the study of quantum mechanics, since the selection of how and where a measurement is made affects what is subsequently observed.  There is a special meaning to the word ‘Observer’ in quantum physics, in which selection of a method of measurement of a quantum system influences what is subsequently observed.  Methods of measurement include people at some point, so we play the role of Observer when we choose what we look at and how we look at the world.

This aspect of quantum physics is sometimes referred to as “the observer effect” and “the measurement problem.”  The so-called ‘measurement problem’ is related to the Observer and has been called the most controversial problem in physics today, because in the realm of Quantum Mechanics, there appears to be no singular fixed reality that is exists when nobody is looking.

Intriguingly, there can exist layers upon layers of observers–such that it can be possible for someone observing an observer to ultimately influence events–such as Schrodinger observing a cat inside a box of poison (such that the cat can be envisioned to be existing in some state of being both alive and dead)–or someone observing someone observing the cat inside the box with the poison.

Quantum Steering

Many physicists have recently been discussing the idea of quantum steering–of how one observer might be able to influence the outcome of an experiment being observed by another observer.  The concept of quantum steering, or EPR-steering, was first proposed by physicist Erwin Schrodinger as a thought experiment in which remote observers of a quantum system share entangled particles.  In such a scenario one observer might then be able to direct–or steer–the state of another’s system when performing a measurement on their system.

In hypothetical experimental quantum steering situations, one individual who is often called “Alice” for purposes of these discussions might influence the observations of of a quantum system by another observer, “Bob.”  Related areas of research involve determining if this kind of influence is one-sided; whether Bob can tell when he is being influenced; whether such influence can occur even if Alice is known to Bob as ‘untrustworthy’; and how strong such influence might be.

What I find especially intriguing about these topics at the dawn of this new Quantum Age is awareness of ways that each of us actually can remotely influence others we are entangled with.

Turtles All the Way Down

Once we recognize the possibility that each observer’s questions–and subsequent measurements–can influence what is happening, we come to realize we’ve entered into a situation where someone observing someone observing can have an effect on the outcome of what is being observed.  This concept was popularized by the physicist Eugene Wigner, who presented a variation of Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment, “Wigner’s Friend,” in which an observer watches an observer of a cat enclosed in a box with a vial of poison that could be released by a quantum mechanism–thus trapping this hypothetical feline in a state of quantum superposition–of being simultaneously alive and dead.

The issue in this case of observers influencing other observers’ observations is that it’s easy to see how there might be no end to the chain of observations.  We thus can find ourselves in the unenviable position of not really knowing the ‘true observer’ of an event.d

These topics are important because some of the most interesting conversations getting to the heart of consciousness recently are happening where multi-disciplinary fields of science meet technology to create artificial intelligence and quantum computing.  Such discussions are necessary for designing how our next generations of computers and robots will operate.

You can watch the companion video to this blog post at:

 

___________________________

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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