From Quanta to Qualia: What Nature Is

Really Telling Us
Deepak Chopra, Special to SFGate
Updated 2:47 am, Monday, December 17, 2012

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/chopra/article/From-Quanta-to-Qualia-What-Nature-IsReally-3947331.php#ixzz2L1Zykdbv
http://www.deepakchopra.com/blog/view/903/from_quanta_to_qualia:_what_nature_is_
really_telling_us
Written by Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed
Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D.,
Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and
Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital
(MGH).
What would it take to make the universe a living thing? What would it take to make it
human once again, a secure home for us instead of a cold, meaningless place? What
would it take to give God meaning and a future? As disconnected as these questions
may seem, they are on the minds of some farseeing thinkers. And the deeper one looks,
the more it appears that all three issues a living universe, a human universe, and a
universe that holds a place for God start to merge. If they actually do merge, nothing
will ever be the same again. Not just science but everyday existence will be completely
overturned. Modern society will move from the brink of collapse to a new, humane
living entity, one that honors the true nature of humans.
There have been great physicists who were deeply religious, such as Sir Isaac Newton,
or who had a religious feeling when confronting the universe, such as Albert Einstein,
but God isnt the right place to start with these huge issues. God, in fact, is a red herring.
No matter who or what created the universe, its here now, and we have to relate to it.
How? One of the oldest ideas, which can be found in every culture, holds that Nature is
a mirror. We relate to it by seeing ourselves, but not passively. Messages are constantly
going back and forth about birth and death about constant change and the bond between
our life and Nature itself. To the ancients, a natural disaster fire, flood, or earthquake
showed that Nature was angry. If Nature was appeased, the harvest was good and the
sun shone.
It was unquestioned that the universe meant something, and usually it meant that a
loving deity had created a special place for his children. Its astonishing how quickly a
timeless worldview was utterly brought down by science. The demolition project that
included Darwin, Freud, Einstein and particularly Laplace and the mathematicianphysicists of the Age of Enlightenment, doesnt need retracting. In the old version of
classical physics we relate to a completely mechanistic universe devoid of purpose. In

the more modern post-classical science, a universe that operates through random
chance, perfectly meshed with evolution operating through random genetic mutations.
The mirror has shattered. We no longer see ourselves because theres nothing
meaningful to see, no purpose, no Creator. Even more absurd in the view of science is
the notion that Nature is sending us messages from the collision of quarks to the
collision of galaxies, nothing is happening out there to reflect human existence.
Quantum physics, on the other hand, opened the door to consciousness, to a
participatory view of the cosmos and us: The randomness of quantum processes is
coupled to the profound view that no phenomenon is a phenomenon unless an act of
observation takes place. The observers, us, even our extensions of ourselves in the form
of measuring devises, are all coupled to the phenomena we study. Moreover, the
randomness of quantum phenomena is coupled to the ability to make choices, the very
concept of free will. We make choices as observers and Nature, although appearing to
be random, makes choices to respond to us. The quantum world forever broke away
from the narrow, mechanistic world of Laplace: Solid physical objects became clouds of
invisible energy, the certainty of cause-and-effect turned into probability waves, and
time and space became flexible, to the point that a cubic centimeter of empty space
contains enormous virtual energy while the arrow of time can turn on itself and go
backward. The reliable world of the five senses was undercut by the quantum world,
where nothing known to the five senses holds true. It seems totally impossible that the
gap between the two worlds could ever be closed.
Yet it cant remain open, either. Human life, and the evolution that led to its present
form, is meaningful, not random. It is filled with purpose, intelligence, creativity, and
values like love and compassion. If you start at the purely physicalist level, you cant
get there from here. No one has explained how so-called physical matter and energy
acquired purpose, meaning, and all the rest; we are a species with no foundation. We
can only relate to the mindless cosmos with a shrug of the shoulders. Electrons and
hydrogen atoms floating in the bleakness of outer space bear no resemblance to the
electrons and hydrogen atoms in your brain. Are they the same? If yes, it would imply
that all particles possess some form of sentience. If they are not, then the science on
which both are based is contradictory. Their random activity somehow turned into the
most orderly, intelligent, creative activity in the known universe. How?
Lets say we want to take this question personally, instead of leaving it to professional
mechanistically-minded scientists. Reality is an interesting topic, but it becomes a
fascinating topic when its your personal reality. If you knew where your own
intelligence came from, why you are alive, where you are going, and what the next leap
in your evolution will be, everything would change for you. In their pursuit of a Theory
of Everything, the holy grail of modern physics, mechanistically-minded scientists
swept under the rug and even neglected a Theory of Me, an explanation for why each of
us matters. That, in a nutshell, is whats at stake.
We are immensely excited by a new science that can fill the gap created by the quantum
revolution, the next natural evolution of quantum science which we call qualia science.
The word quantum was plucked from the Latin dictionary to give the strange new world
of subatomic physics a tag. In the same way, qualia, which is Latin for qualities, is a
tag for a world that is as far-reaching as quantum physics but pointing in the opposite
direction. Quanta are packets of energy, an innocuous term that wound up having

explosive effects. Qualia are the everyday qualities of experience light, sound, color,
shape, texture whose explosive effects are barely hinted at.

You experience the world as qualia. Its the glue that holds the five senses together. The
scent of a rose is a qualia (well use singular and plural as the same word), so is it
velvety texture and its crimson color. Looking at everyday experience through the
perspective of the brain, psychiatrist and neural theorist Daniel Siegel reduced reality
in here to SIFT: sensation, image, feeling, thought. No matter whats happening to
you right this minute, your brain is registering either a sensation (Im hot, this room is
stuffy, the bed sheets are soft), an image (the sunset is brilliant, I see my grandmothers
face I my minds eye, my keys are on the dining room table), a feeling (Im pretty
happy, losing my job makes me worried, I love my kids), or a thought (Im planning a
vacation, I just read an interesting article, I wonder whats for dinner).
Qualia are everywhere. Nothing can happen without them, which means that if you see
the universe using a human brain, reality consists of qualia. If there is a reality that
exists outside what we perceive, it is inconceivable, literally. Once you subtract
everything you can sense, imagine, feel, or think about, theres nothing. Because qualia
are subjective, they directly attack the objectivity of modern science. Because
experience is meaningful, qualia attack the model of random, meaningless Nature. Yet
even more is at stake.
Since the only way we know reality is through experience, qualia, not quanta, are the
building blocks of Nature. Quantum physics undercut the notion of solid physical
objects while attempting to retain the physical universe. At the same time it opened the
door to consciousness. It opened the possibility of the conscious universe. Qualia
science takes on the next, natural step, shows how the conscious universe operates. The
physical universe needs to be tossed out as a frame of reference and following quantum
physics, we need bring in the active participatory role of consciousness through the
operation of qualia .
In its most outrageous claim, qualia science declares that only subjective
experience is reliable. So-called objective measurements are a disguise for
the total fluidity of experience. The objective studies of the quantum haps
are immersed in subjective moments of experience, qualia. The universe we
carefully measure is merely the reflection of the human nervous system.
Even a die-hard materialist (the preferred term is now physicalist) like
Stephen Hawking, who has no doubt that the universe exists out there as
a given, admits that science doesnt describe reality. Science measures
things and events to deliver data according to a mathematical scheme.
Another physicist, Freeman Dyson, says, Life may have succeeded against
all odds in molding a universe to its purposes.
There is the key: We have created a human universe. Behind the mask of a
cosmic machine whose parts can be calculated and tinkered with, the
universe is humanized. There is no other way it can exist, in fact, since

nothing out there can be experienced except in our own consciousness.

We are following the trail pioneered by the British physicist David Bohm,
among others, when he wrote, In some sense man is a microcosm of the
universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe.
The mirror of nature is back, in other words. Strangely, by dismantling the
certainty of time, space, physical objects, and cause-and-effect, quantum
physicists paved the way for a paradigm shift they could never have
predicted. The cosmos has meaning, as we wish to show in the next few
posts.
(To be cont.)
Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, is the author of, God: A Story of Revelation
(Harper One).
Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational
Physics, Chapman University, co-author with Deepak Chopra of the
forthcoming book, Who Made God and Other Cosmic Riddles. (Harmony)
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of
Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging
Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), co-author with
Deepak Chopra of the forthcoming book, Super Brain: Unleashing the
Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual
Well-being. (Harmony)