A New Quantum Scientific Method: Enabling Positive Possibilities for Our Lives

By Phil Petersen Ph.D.

Quantum theory forces us to consider the usual scientific method invalid in several ways. It even questions the basis of scientific logic: cause and effect. The current scientific method ignores individual experience and the different states of awareness we go through in the sleep states of the brain.

Phil Petersen, Ph.D., explores how to open science to study these states and better understand how the uncertainty of quantum theory applies to them and our waking state. He asserts that this helps us understand how to enable positive possibilities for our lives.

The book will appeal to those who meditate or believe in the power of positive thinking as well as those who are open to questioning the very foundations of science. Readers will learn what historys greatest thinkers, including Francis Bacon, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Albert Einstein, and others, have said about the reality of the world in which we live.

Discover an intriguing argument for reconsidering and replacing the scientific method to explore different realms of consciousnes and enjoy spiritual awareness and healing with the insights in A New Quantum Scientific Method.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jan 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781504394987

Phil Petersen Ph.D.

Phil Petersen, Ph.D., earned a masters in physics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of California. He taught astronomy and physics at Montana State, Utah State University, and Solano College. He is a certified Kalos Health facilitator and operates the website bodymindandpassion.com. He is also the author of The Quantum Tai Chi and The Quantum Shield.

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Copyright © 2018 Phil Petersen, Ph.D.

Interior Graphics/Art Credit: Dr. Phil Petersen

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-9497-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-9499-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-9498-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018900091

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/03/2018

CONTENTS

Prologue

Introduction

Chapter 1:   Reality and Observers in the Brain States

Chapter 2:    The Old Scientific Method and Steps toward a New One

Chapter 3:    Categorizing Realms of Reality and Generating a New Science of Them

Chapter 4:    Quantum Generation of a New Life

Chapter 5:    The Quantum Staircase of Consciousness

Chapter 6:    A Deeper View of Reality and the Brain States

Chapter 7:    Accessing the Brain States While Awake

Chapter 8:    Creating Quantum Miracles: Healing, Wisdom, and Synchronicity

Chapter 9:    World Changers and How to Become One

Chapter 10:  Creating with a God-Particle Field of Consciousness

Chapter 11:  Accessing Infinite Possibilities for Your Life

Chapter 12:  Karma and the Arrow of Time

References

PROLOGUE

In 2011, I had just finished writing a new book. I gave it the title The Quantum Shield: Protecting Your Life from Destructive Thoughts and Feelings. I brought a copy of my unpublished manuscript to Wayne Dyer’s lecture in San Francisco and talked with him about its ideas for about ten minutes prior to his lecture. He was so enthusiastic about my ideas that he talked about them for about the first forty minutes of his lecture.

His enthusiasm was a large part of what inspired me to continue and write this book, which has involved about five years of thought and revision.

What had been holding me back was the sense that I didn’t have the academic credentials to become well-known for my ideas, even though I had a PhD in astrophysics from the University of California at San Diego.

This should not have been the case. The problem was my extreme ideas. After all, I was a professor in the early nineties, teaching physics at Montana State University, but I was booted out because I taught outside the book, suggesting things like Newton’s Laws were not laws and his three laws of motion come from his second law—one law. After teaching physics for about a year at Utah State University, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to be closer to my son. I could only find teaching jobs at community colleges in the area.

So, after feeling down for not being a university professor, I effectively patted myself on the back and, in the last four years, took my ideas to the next level, finding a quantum staircase of possibilities in my understanding of the states of the brain and mind. Realizing that this could change our approach to life, science, and consciousness, I began to write about this staircase.

I thought I had completed the book, but more was to come. I realized that we only performed detailed scientific studies in our waking or beta wave brain state. Within us is a much more unlimited world. In exploring how we feel recharged when we have deep sleep (with delta brain waves), I realized that we recharge our possibilities when we attain it.

It was like climbing a mountain and resting on a new cliff at a higher level (I loved doing that physically). However, there was another cliff at a higher level. My study of the brain states led me to realize that if quantum possibilities made the tiered levels of consciousness possible, then I should think more deeply about how quantum theory questions our methods in science.

I found severe defects in our current scientific method. Certainly, our dreams don’t obey Newton’s laws. We could push something without getting a kickback. Quantum theory doesn’t obey cause and effect. Einstein didn’t like it because he thought God doesn’t play dice with the universe! However, it is the only rock foundation of physics.

I also realized that everyone experiences their states of consciousness differently and that different rules must apply to everyone. That plays a role in this book, A New Quantum Scientific Method.

Perhaps the most helpful thing for the readers could be the enabling of positive possibilities by enabling all the states of consciousness in the waking state. This can be done by meditation, affirmations, visualizations, and more.

This book should appeal to those who meditate or believe in the power of positive thinking. More and more people on our planet are signing off on the value of those things. You could call them metaphysical or self-help oriented. However, I seek to shake the foundations of science and interest scientific readers in my book, hoping it will break through their scientific glass ceiling.

What makes me qualified to present such a challenge? Perhaps my academic history will make that clear. I got my master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania studying the quantum particle physics of time reversal with Nobel Prize winner Robert Schrieffer. Then I started my PhD adventure under another Nobel Prize winner in particle physics, Chen Nin Yang, at State University of New York at Stony Brook.

At age forty-three, I finally got my PhD in astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego, by computer-modeling quasars (big black holes, eating fast, at the centers of ancient galaxies). I produced the first 3-D workable models.

I then taught as a professor of physics and astronomy at Montana State and Utah State University before settling in as a full-time Solano Community College professor of astronomy. However, what will probably matter to you more is what is in the book. Let’s get started!

INTRODUCTION

The truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.

—Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

The scientific method we have used for so long was well formulated in about 1620—over four hundred years ago—by Francis Bacon in his book The Advancement of Learning. Every semester, as I teach astronomy and physics at the college level, I am amazed that almost no students know who gave us our current scientific method! I consider Bacon’s ideas of experimentation, thorough testing, and openness to changes in theories to have generated our current scientific age. To me, they are the most important ideas in the past thousand years.

The current basic scientific method is to gather facts, formulate theoretical hypotheses that explain them, then test them in all possible ways and revise them, if necessary.

However, what if we were to formulate a new scientific method and test it? Wouldn’t that be reasonable application of the current scientific method?

First, quantum theory forces us to reconsider our basis for the advancement of science and, I would suggest, reformulate it. Quantum theory forces us to consider the usual scientific method invalid in several ways. Also, an understanding of brain wave states can suggest changes toward a larger picture of truth. In addition, quantum theory offers the possibility of differing personal truths that are not recognized in current science.

Challenges to our current scientific method:

1.    There is no well-defined nature out there.

The foundation of the scientific method says that we first must gather information about nature. That was Aristotle’s approach to science. However, quantum theory says that our observations change nature by narrowing the possibilities of the observation, say, of an electron. There is no well-defined universe out there for us to observe. This is true not only at the atomic level; it has been demonstrated on a much larger scale. For example, uncertain macroscopic quantum states have been created in physics experiments. Superconductors are just one example. In them, at a very low temperature, an extremely large number of electrons bind in pairs, so they act like protons. The pairs all have spin up or spin down, but it could be either way before we measure it. No way to predict it, and the superconducting fluid could be the size of a windowpane or more.

An excellent illustration of quantum reality, and its influence on our reality, is the Schrödinger’s cat mind experiment. In our thoughts only, a cat is hidden in a box with a radioactive source that has a 50 percent probability in a half hour of producing detectable radiation that triggers the killing of the cat. Quantum theory says that before we open the box, the cat is both possibly alive and possibly dead at the same time. There is no law or scientific theory that can predict when the decay will occur and whether we will experience Schrödinger’s cat as alive or dead.

This is a violation of the scientific principle that every effect must have a cause (or causes). Causality, a key ingredient in the current scientific method, is denied. It is also an indication that we may have free will in our choice of whether to open the cat box or not. Some call the inclusion of quantum random probability and observational choice quantum causality.

The traditional scientific method sends us on a search for causes of what we experience. Quantum theory indicates that this is an incomplete venture.

Other examples now exist. In 2013, the US government announced it would be creating a quantum computer to handle all the information it gathers on everyone throughout the world. Quantum computers consider and maintain possibilities rather than realities. Often, macroscopic quantum states that are uncertain exist in them. Quantum computers register possibilities, not realities—like Schrodinger’s cat.

2.    The description of the flow of time is defective.

In the currently accepted scientific method, scientists formulate hypotheses for why what we observe is the way it is. It is causal and thus time dependent. We imagine observations and experiments that test these hypotheses, implicating cause and effect. Then we complete them.

Thus, the scientific method is a process laid out in time. Gathering information precedes hypotheses, and hypotheses precede tests.

However, quantum theory suggests possible quantum reflection into the past. We can open the box with Schrödinger’s cat in it, and it will become dead an arbitrary amount of time in the past. Its bodily decay may even be testable. There have been experiments, mostly microscopic, confirming this idea.

However, what if, before we open the box, we formulate a hypothesis as to how the cat might die? What if the cat is found to have died before we formulated the hypothesis? We can’t predict that the cat will be dead at that time. I call this Schrödinger’s Cat in the Hat. The mind affects what we observe.

3.    Different hypotheses required to explain behaviors of quantum parallel worlds.

What if the information we gather relates to an imagined world—thrown together by the collective imagination—what Dr. Arnold Mindell and many others call consensus reality or CR? The idea, which now has some scientific evidence, is that what we call the universe is just a dream, much of which is shared by others. After all, there is a burst of brain waves about half a second before an external, highly stimulating event occurs. I have experienced this myself, seeing a stoplight change in my mind about a half second before it does. Today, my grandson was sleeping in my arms and jiggled wildly about half a second before my wife slammed a door.

Quantum theory suggests we could call the possible dream worlds quantum parallel worlds, an idea conceived by physicist John Wheeler in the 1950s. He said that all possibilities in a quantum observation exist in parallel quantum universes. If it is a dream, then the universe we experience is not stable and may change its rules with time. Consensus reality is often changing!

An example of this is the evolution of Robert Boyle’s idea (in the late 1600s) that matter, or mass, is conserved in a chemical reaction. Later in 1808, John Dalton gave the idea of indestructible atoms. Scientists continually thought this to be disproven by experiments on chemical reactions for about thirty years! Finally, experiments chimed in with matter conservation! This was the foundation of basic chemistry. However, even that has changed in about one hundred years. We now know that mass is lost and gained in nuclear reactions. They seem to obey Einstein’s E = mc², as was proven in fission observations by Lise Meitner in 1938 (no Nobel Prize, because she was a woman). That is a complete turnaround! Matter can be created and destroyed! Nuclear physics demonstrates that. Scientists now expect any revolutionary theory to be thrown out, eventually.

This idea that the direction science takes morphs the world we experience was suggested by Francis Bacon in his 1620 book The Advancement of Learning. However, he didn’t incorporate it into his scientific method. Nevertheless, it was a fundamental principle of the alchemy he practiced. This might be called the placebo effect of a convincing theory.

In certain dream worlds, the tree in the forest would not fall even if sawed. An example of this was the dream I had recently in which I lectured to a crowd of people as I levitated above the floor, lying on my side. The law of gravity was violated.

In science, we must be open to the fact that our explorations may prove wrong what we currently believe to be laws. So far, that’s been true for all of them, even Newton’s law of gravity, which is violated near a black hole singularity. It is also believed things could levitate above a streaming white hole—the other end of a wormhole!

Does the unique dream world we experience have rules? It is consensus reality, a useful term, particularly in psychology. We share experiences in CR, although all of what we experience is not shared. A large portion of what most people live through makes sense to most of us. We go to work, get married, have children, grow old, and have bodies with certain shapes.

4.    We cannot test all possible predictions.

Karl Popper, in the early 1930s, explored the idea that theories cannot be absolutely proven. All we can do is test as many predictions as possible. Another way of stating it is that a theory must be falsifiable. For example, the universe is infinite is not a valid theory, because we are not able to disprove it.

If experiments or observations don’t agree with the predictions, scientists abandon the theory. Stephen Hawking adds, Or rather, that is what is supposed to happen. In practice, people are very reluctant to give up a theory in which they have invested a lot of time and effort. They usually start by questioning the accuracy of the observations. If that fails, they try to modify the theory in an ad hoc manner. Eventually the theory becomes a creaking and ugly edifice. ¹

Thomas Kuhn gave us the concept of the difficulty of paradigm shifts. Science tends to stick with concepts like everything is made up of atoms and particles. This is applied quite often to brain science and neuronal firing. However, quantum theory suggests there is more to the foundation of matter. Even macroscopic objects can have an uncertain state, movement, and even location. This is called the uncertainty principle. Quantum theory even suggests that there is a very small probability you or I could walk through a wall. In addition, are we just robots, or do we have choices? This is a big question.

5.    Scientists rely on confirmation of a scientific observation and lend no validity to a single observation.

A great example of this is that only one scientist has observed a magnetic monopole (a north or a south magnetic pole) in nature. Blas Cabrera recorded the event on the night of February 14, 1982. It is sometimes referred to as the Valentine’s Day Monopole. This is thought to be invalid proof that they exist naturally, even though there is a theory that the big bang should have produced many of them.

This brings to question hallucinations. Are they really delusions? Or are they manifestations in individually valid worlds? Quite a few people have experienced what they believe are alien visitations, for example, and some claim to have