Index of Articles

What is Bohr's Principle of Complementarity?

Fred Alan Wolf:  According to the tenets of the complementarity principle, there is no reality until that reality is perceived. Our perceptions of reality will, consequently, appear somewhat contradictory, dualistic, and paradoxical. However, the instantaneous experience of the reality of Now will not appear paradoxical at all. It is only when we observers attempt to construct a history of our perceptions that reality seems paradoxical.

Look at the cube. Which side is facing you? At first you may see it as if you were looking up at the cube. But if you take a second glance, you may find you are suddenly looking down at the cube. As the observer, you have the choice of how you will view the cube. It is your act of observation that resolves the paradox. According to quantum physics, all paradoxes dealing with the physical universe are resolved in a similar manner by observation.

But there is yet another way to view reality. That the illustration appears to be a cube is an illusion. In fact, it is twelve connecting lines forming an abstract pattern. Though the paradoxical cube is only an analogy of the abstract world of quantum physics, it demonstrates that there is a duplicity or duality to our acts of observation. Through quantum physics, physicists have discovered that the world, like the paradoxical cube, is also capable of being realized in complementary ways. This realization is known to physicists as the Principle of Complementarity.

So when we look at the Cube, we decide what we see.

Fred Alan Wolf:  Yes. Quantum physics has taught us that we, the observers of reality are, at the same time, the participants of reality. In other words, "observation" is not a passive noun; "to observe" is not a passive verb. When you looked at the drawing you made a sudden act of creation.
That makes sense when looking at a drawing and deciding what it means. But I'm not actually changing reality, just changing my interpretation of reality.
Fred Alan Wolf:  The drawing is only an analogy. In the real world of quantum mechanics, ultimately and fundamentally we affect the universe.

How do you define dreaming?

Fred Alan Wolf:  Dreaming is an action or a play or the consequence of an evolving awareness of the world environment in which the creature is growing. I believe that dreams are important on a number of different grounds and can be looked at from a number of different viewpoints. But if we looked at it from almost a purely routinely scientific point of view as possible, we would have to say that they're vital for evolution; that they are important for creatures to develop strategies for awareness or to reprogram, or to alter programming from day-to-day environmental changes that occur. There is no simple way of defining what they are, but the current evidence is that your dreams do play an evolutionary role. That is we dream in order to become aware that we exist as a self, as an entity, as a being. And that ability to exist or to sense oneself as an entity or as a being seems to be vital for survival, and if we don't have that ability we are not able to do as well as a species. The way that this processing goes on, may be very different from the models of processing in which we consider time to be flowing in a linear way. There may be some aspects of the way consciousness works in the dream-state which are very different from the normal ways in which time seems to apparently flow for us in our current world view.

What motivated you to write The Spiritual Universe?

Fred Alan Wolf:  My motivation arises from my earliest interests in the relationship between science, magic and mysticism. In seeking the ultimate nature of reality, I came to see the answer could not be contained in a purely materialistic format. That is, the "stuff of mind" has to enter into the search for the ultimate stuff, and this means that matter-mind separation as we understand it in our day to day lives is an illusion. Now, the illusion is so tangible, real and solid that we do not want to walk against red lights and so on. But just because it is an illusion does not mean it cannot have consequences - illusions can and do. But if you are looking at the ultimate nature of reality, you find it is not material stuff. Somewhere the mind stuff - consciousness - enters into the ball game, and when one looks at that, one is lead into investigating all the studies of consciousness that have gone on parallel to and since the studies of modern physics.

I want to get to something that quantum physicists call the "observer effect." You spent a good deal of time with shamans in many parts of the world as you described in your book The Eagle's Quest.  Many of the mystics and the indigenous medicine men have talked about prophecy and manifesting reality.  They say we are affecting or manifesting reality by our collective consciousness.  In other words, we choose our outcome.  Some have put forth the theory that we can have alternate realities.  One outcome for instance, is the destruction of planet earth. The other alternate reality would be a positive one for earth.  Can the new physics explain the possibility of individual and collective human consciousness affecting or manifesting reality?

Fred Alan Wolf:  What the new physics has taught us is that nothing is as it seems. From this new point of view, the appearance of something can have as drastic an effect as, what used to be thought of, the thing itself. An example of this is the practice of certain forms of martial arts. People who have reached a certain level in a form of martial arts can manipulate physical matter by using their minds in ways we are not used to in our culture. For example, you will find a student falling over if the teacher who is training the student moves his head a certain way. The student might look like he's been knocked over by a blow. But nothing physical has actually happened. There is far more going on than meets the eye.

There's a non-material communication that seems to influence, effect, and transform matter. It actually alters the matter of the people that are in contact. When you watch certain forms of animal life like ants, bees, flocks of birds, or even schools of fish, you find that they are able to communicate with each other at a tremendous speed, far greater than their simple neural systems would ever allow.

Even in our own brains we find there are paradoxes indicating the illusionary form of the world. We're able to respond, comprehend, and be aware of the world around us at a speed that is far faster than our brains themselves can process the data. It takes longer for the brain to process the data, that is make the cognition, the conception, the recognition of sensation, than it takes for us to have the experience and know what the experience is all about. Processing the data takes time yet, we seem to be able to have the experience before our brains allow us to.

Quantum physics indicates that there is some profound relationship between observation and the physical world. The key here is to realize that the ideas of an observer and the observed are themselves illusions from a metaphysical point of view. The observed assumes a hard material object. The observer assumes a soft non-material object. The truth is there's something else going on that's neither hard or soft, neither observed or observer, but a unity that seems to have some far-reaching connection. It appears to be an observer affecting the observed by merely observing.

It appears that's what is going but that is not what is going on. It appears that there's mind and matter. And there's a mind of an observer affecting the material world. However, the material world itself is not really hard and the mind of the observer is not really soft. There is something else going on.