Brian Olshansky, MD and Larry Dossey, MD
"We are not - even though we might prefer to be - the slaves of chronological time. We are, in this respect, more elaborate, more powerful, perhaps nobler creatures than we have lately taken ourselves to be." - J. B. Priestley [1] "If the existence of the present and future depends on the past, then the present and future should be in the past." -Nagarjuna, 2nd century CE [2] |
"The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature....It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect." - Lewis Thomas [12] |
Professor Leibovici has an academic background in infectious disease and has published extensively in this field. He has previously expressed antipathy toward complementary and alternative medicine and appears generally hostile against any therapy that could be construed as "alternative." In a prior editorial in the British Medical Journal he stated:
Proponents of alternative medicine can be compared to cuckoo chicks in that they are using false signals to gain nourishment from a legitimate scientific and medical frame. Empiricists are not equipped to recognise the loud signals of alternative medicine as false. A deep model of the physical world is essential for choosing hypotheses to be tested and for learning from failures. Practices of alternative medicine that do not fit even at the far fringes of the model should not be tested in humans.[13]
Leibovici's support for these sweeping condemnations was, to us, unconvincing. He appears to believe that his version of reality grants him the authority to decree what should and should not be empirically tested. But in assessing a possibility he regards as absurd - retroactive intercessory prayer - and finding it positive, Leibovici has called his own world view into question and may have promoted himself to pioneer status in a field he rejects.
Why did he do the study? In response to comments about his published paper, Leibovici stated:
The purpose of the article was to ask the following question: Would you believe in a study that looks methodologically correct but tests something that is completely out of people's frame (or model) of the physical world, for example, retroactive intervention or badly distilled water for asthma? [14]
Yet people's models of reality are often wrong. For instance, consider the following beliefs that are now widely accepted, but which were once considered utterly implausible: vitamins do in fact prevent disease, coronary atherosclerosis is in fact a common cause of myocardial infarction (Herrick was almost laughed out of the medical profession in 1911 for asserting this possibility), vaccines can indeed be effective, and microbes do cause disease. And consider convictions that were strongly held in the past, which subsequently have been demolished: "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" (Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895); "The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication" (Western Union internal memo, 1876); "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" (Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927); and "Everything that can be invented has been invented" (Charles H. Duell, commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899). In view of the evidence that follows, we suggest that Leibovici's conviction that prayer cannot function remotely, outside of space and time, can be considered in the light of failed predictions of this sort.
Leibovici implies that if prayer could act on the past, this would violate the laws of nature. Because this is unthinkable, any study suggesting such is flawed by definition and should be summarily dismissed. The problem with this line of reasoning, however, is that we are nowhere near an understanding of the natural laws that pertain to Leibovici's experiment, such as those governing the nature of time and consciousness.
Modern physicists are not nearly as confident as Leibovici about what time is and how it operates. In fact, the world of physics is in a muddle about time.[15] When asked what time is, the legendary Nobel physicist Richard Feynman replied, "What is time? We physicists work with it every day, but don't ask me what it is. It's just too difficult to think about." [16]
Some physicists accept a view of time rejected by Leibovici, in which present actions affect past events. An example is the eminent physicist John Wheeler, as we shall see.
Our understanding of consciousness is equally primitive. As philosopher John Searle states, "At the present state of the investigation of consciousness, we don't know how it works, and we need to try all kinds of different ideas."[17] Philosopher Jerry A. Fodor agrees. He says, "Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness."[18] Sir John Maddox, former editor of Nature, affirms these views. Writing in Scientific American in 1999, he stated, "What consciousness consists of...is...a puzzle. Despite the marvelous successes of neuroscience in the past century..., we seem as far from understanding cognitive process as we were a century ago."[19] Since science is colossally ignorant about the nature of both consciousness and time, Leibovici's prohibition of retroactive prayer is premature.
Leibovici further stated:
[My] article has nothing to do with religion. I believe that prayer is a real comfort and help to a believer. I do not believe it should be tested in controlled trials.[20]
While Leibovici is entitled to his belief that prayer should not be tested, many respected scientists don't agree with him and have already conducted a variety of controlled clinical trials of distant healing and prayer. Several systematic and meta-analyses of these experiments have appeared and have generally yielded positive findings.[21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28]
What of Leibovici's concession that prayer is "a real comfort and help to a believer"? This suggests that the benefits of prayer are limited solely to the individual and are purely psychological. But controlled studies in both humans and animals suggest that its effects cannot be explained psychologically or ascribed to the placebo response.[29] We suspect Leibovici's deepest objections are not toward retroactive prayer in particular, but toward intercessory prayer in general, which involves a view of consciousness he is not prepared to accept. If we are correct, then his objections to retroactive prayer are but a proxy for a more basic concern - that human consciousness may act outside the individual.
Science and Phenomena
"We have no idea how the world really is. All we do is build up models which seem to prove our theories." |
Most scientists acknowledge that we know relatively little about the universe. This means that even our most sophisticated models of reality are certain to be incomplete or incorrect. Novel phenomena are continually arising that challenge our view of reality and which may not fit into any logical construct in science. These phenomena will remain puzzling until a new model is developed that is capable of accommodating them. But if we limit ourselves to investigating only those phenomena whose mechanism is understood, science will tend to remain static.
A case in point is acupuncture. When it reached the West in the 1960s, most physicians enjoyed a good belly laugh at the idea of controlling their patients' pain by sticking needles in them. It hardly mattered that Chinese doctors had used acupuncture successfully for nearly three millennia. The main obstacle for Western physicians was the absence of a framework on which to hang this strange therapy, a model to guide their thinking. Things changed rapidly. Novel theories of pain perception emerged through which acupuncture's purported actions could be viewed.[31] Clinical studies followed and acupuncture gradually began to seem less strange. Recently acupuncture gained the imprimatur of a panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health, which recognised the "clear evidence" of its effectiveness in specific clinical situations.[32]
For Leibovici, the possibility that prayer offered in the present could affect events in the past is so far off the scientific map that it, like acupuncture in its early days, should be dismissed in principle. But how can he know this? It is arrogant to tell the world how to behave. In order to know the directions science will take in the future, one would require clairvoyance - the ability to know events outside the here-and-now - which is the sort of ability Leibovici seems to be arguing against .
Why are the distant, nonlocal effects of consciousness, such as intercessory prayer, so repellent to some scientists? We suggest that they may stir the unconscious fear that the workings of the universe are so complex that they may be unknowable and therefore forever beyond our control. Moreover, in the world of science, thousands of careers and egos are invested in preserving the current view of consciousness, in which all thoughts, emotions, and intentions are reducible to the actions of the brain. Adhering to this conventional view of consciousness, therefore, becomes a way of preserving one's self-identity. Perhaps this is why some individuals seem to interpret a challenge to their materialistic perspective of consciousness as a personal attack and adopt positions that are unbecoming a scientist - e.g., as when a prestigious peer-reviewer rejected a manuscript dealing with purported distant manifestations of consciousness and huffed, "This is the kind of thing I would not believe even if it existed."[33]
Many esteemed scientists have believed that there is a mental side of the world that simply cannot be eliminated. An example was Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner. He observed, "There are two kinds of reality or existence; the existence of my consciousness and the reality or existence of everything else. The latter reality is not absolute, but only relative."[34]
The subjective side of things has often made spectacular appearances in science. For instance, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, one of the crowning achievements in the history of science, was the result not of actual experiments but of exercises taking place solely in his imagination. The impact of consciousness in shaping medical reality is particularly obvious in clinical research, where we employ ingenious study designs to eliminate the placebo response - the impact of belief, suggestion, and expectation.
A great many eminent scientists have lived comfortably with the possibility that consciousness and the physical world may influence and mirror each other. An example was the English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician Sir James Jeans (1877-1946). Describing the interplay between the individual scientist and what is considered to be the objective world, he observed, "Before man appeared on the scene, there were neither waves nor electric nor magnetic forces. These were not made by God. They were made by Huygens, Fresnel, Faraday, and Maxwell.[35]" To Jeans' name could be added those of many luminaries in twentieth-century science and mathematics, as described in philosopher Ken Wilber's edited book Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists - Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Louis de Broglie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, and Arthur Eddington.[36]
The fact that their views are so little known shows how emphatically the role of consciousness has been ignored in contemporary science.
Many basic tenets within science that are held as truth are not based on objective validation. And scientific evidence is not necessarily proof that something is wholly true. For example, in spite of the wealth of scientific evidence, the red shift, which is indicative of an expanding universe, may not truly indicate the universe is expanding, in view of more recent information from the Hubble telescope (which also may be wrong).[37] Any scientific result, of itself, may be erroneous, as we are reminded by the recent reversal in medical thinking about hormone replacement therapy in post-menopausal women.[38, 39, 40, 41]
A danger for all scientists lies in forgetting the tentative and partial nature of scientific information, and using that information to construct a world view which is considered iron-clad. As philosopher Roger Wescott warns, "The tragic flaw in established science and religion is not that they consist of half-truths: so, after all, do art and mythology. It is, rather, that these half-truths are so complacently taken for whole truths."[42]
Confirmation by different investigators helps strengthen the validity of results, of course, but even replication does not prove they are correct. Objectivity is not everything in science. As history shows, sometimes the most profound discoveries often arise from the interplay of the intellect with intuition, epiphanies, dreams, and revelations.[43] So profound is the complementarity between our analytical and intuitive faculties that warnings of an imbalance of the two have surfaced repeatedly from a variety of disciplines - such as from novelist Joseph Conrad, who observed, "Thinking is the great enemy of perfection,"[44] and from Einstein, who contended that "imagination is more important than knowledge."[45]
We believe these considerations matter greatly in attempting to understand Leibovici's dismissive stance toward the remote actions of prayer. These phenomena presume the existence of an aspect of the world that is decidedly mental, which Leibovici seems to believe does not exist. His experiment, however, suggests otherwise. Thus he arrives at a recommendation many scientists would consider a betrayal of the scientific tradition: the dismissal of evidence that does not fit in.
A Non-study?
"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." - Goethe [46] |
Leibovici states:
To deny from the beginning that empirical methods can be applied to questions that are completely outside the scientific model of the physical world or, in a more formal way, if the pre-trial probability is infinitesimally low, the results of the trial will not really change it, and the trial should not be performed. This, to my mind, turns the article into a non-study, although the details provided in the publication (randomisation done only once, statement of a wish, analysis, etc.) are correct.[47]
Leibovici thus sabotages his own study - surely one of the most curious strategies to be found in the peer-reviewed medical literature. But his auto-rejection raises serious questions. Why is he justified in disqualifying one challenging study and not another, when both follow acceptable scientific methodology? Is one free to cherry-pick among controlled studies, rejecting those which offend one's personal world view and accepting those that flatter it? If this practice were widespread, what would prevent the entry of a dangerous level of arbitrariness into the scientific process? Who would decide what is and is not a "non-study"? If the worldviews of two equally eminent scientists clash, which one is sent to the head of the class and which to the corner?
Leibovici's put-down strategy is known in logic as a reductio ad absurdum - the disproof of a proposition by showing its consequences to be impossible or absurd when carried to a logical conclusion. The most famous scientist to employ this device was Albert Einstein, who used it to show the incompleteness of quantum theory, as described by Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos in their book The Non-Local Universe. [48]
While at Princeton University, Einstein shared his concerns with physicists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, resulting in the publication in 1935 of the famous EPR thought experiment.[49]
In this mental exercise, Einstein and his two colleagues demonstrated that, according to the formalisms of quantum theory, instantaneous correlations exist between distant particles regarding their position and momentum, no matter how far apart they might be. Yet this violated a fundamental classical assumption that physicists regarded as an incontrovertible truth - the principal of local causes - according to which a physical event cannot simultaneously influence another event without being mediated by some sort of energetic signal. This means that in the EPR thought experiment, for the distant particles to change simultaneously a signal would have to pass between them, traveling faster than the speed of light. But this would require physicists to give up virtually all of modern physics, including the theory of relativity, which forbids faster-than-light travel. And this, Einstein and most physicists of the day, considered unthinkable. Therefore, because quantum theory permitted such an outrageous phenomenon - the instantaneously correlated behavior of distant particles - it was obviously flawed: the reductio ad absurdum.
As physicist Nick Herbert relates in his discussion of the EPR paradox in his book Quantum Reality, [50] "For thirty years physicists and philosophers beat their heads against this proof without either refuting EPR's logic or shedding further light on [it.until in] 1964 the long-standing EPR stalemate was broken by the efforts of theorist John Bell."[51] Bell's theorem and the string of confirmatory experiments that followed [52, 53, 54] undermined Einstein's position. His reductio ad absurdum was turned upside down. The argument he had advanced in opposition to quantum theory was proved true: distant particles, once in contact, somehow remain connected no matter how far apart they may be. Physicists call events such as these "nonlocal." Change one particle and the other changes - instantly and to the same degree. According to Herbert, "The essence of non-locality is unmediated action-at-a-distance..A non-local interaction links up one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay. A non-local interaction is, in short, unmediated, unmitigated, and immediate. " [Herbert, QR, 212-214] A trivial discovery? Hardly. According to physicist Henry P. Stapp, of UC-Berkeley, a leading interpreter of quantum theory, nonlocality could be the "most profound discovery in all of science."[55]
We suggest parallels between the EPR thought experiment and Leibovici's study of retroactive prayer. Both were designed as reductio ad absurdum exercises to reveal the inadequacies of quantum theory and prayer experiments, respectively. Subsequent evidence showed that what Einstein considered unthinkable was in fact true. And, we suggest, developments in prayer research already strongly suggest that what Leibovici finds reprehensible may also truly reflect the actual workings of the universe. Moreover, just as the EPR thought experiment paved the way for what many regard as one of the most important discoveries in the history of science - nonlocality - Leibovici may have helped lay bare a facet of reality that dwarfs, even, the importance of nonlocality: the unity and inseparabilty of all humans across space and time.
Methodological Problems
Plausibility aside, Leibovici's study may have flaws that make it unreliable. From his data it is not possible to know the nature, sincerity, and duration of the prayer that was employed; the intent of the person praying; prior prayers that may have been offered for the subjects; and the extent to which extraneous prayer - prayer by the subjects and their loved ones - may have penetrated the intervention and control groups. As far as we know, the Leibovici study is the only prayer experiment ever published in which a single individual was enlisted to do the praying. Was the praying person an experienced healer or was prayer a casual venture for this individual? Moreover, Leibovici does not define prayer and does not specify the type of prayer that was used. Was it religious in nature? There are, of course, different religions and many types of prayers within each of them. Most religions are theistic but some are not. Was prayer in Leibovici's study offered to a deity or to the universe at large? Did the praying individual request a specific outcome, or was an open-ended, "Thy will be done"-type prayer strategy employed? The extent to which these factors make a difference in prayer research is not known, but scientific thoroughness suggests that they should have been described as fully as possible.
Can we be sure that prayer was responsible for the superior clinical course of the prayed-for subjects in Leibovici's study? Or could Leibovici unconsciously have assigned the clinically superior patients to the prayed-for group, biasing the results in favor of prayer? In other words, was the randomisation process really random, or can mental intentions interfere with it? This question is not frivolous. Many studies involving attempts to mentally influence random-number generators suggest that certain individuals can interfere with natural processes believed to be inherently random. In a meta-analysis published in the prestigious journal Foundations of Physics , involving 832 studies and 68 different investigators, Radin and Nelson found that people could indeed influence random processes. The overall odds against chance in this meta-analysis was beyond a trillion to one.[56] Do the data from experiments with random-number generators apply to clinical experiments? Could Leibovici have "pushed" his data to conform to his expectations by mentally tweaking the randomisation of his subjects? This question applies not only to Leibovici, of course, but to randomised clinical trials in general. David Anick of Harvard Medical School has explicitly questioned the possible role of intentions in biasing the randomisation processes in clinical research.[57]
All medical science is based on statistical probability. While Leibovici's study was highly significant, it is still possible he was simply lucky. On the other hand, he would have to be very lucky indeed for two of the preselected endpoints to be positive with a P value of 0.01 and 0.04. The chance of that is small indeed. However, the power of this study would be amplified if another similar study showed that the data are reproducible, which is the way of science.
Physics and Time
"In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of our nature, time occupies the key position." |
Is the idea that the present might influence the past patently absurd? We generally believe that the flow of events is in the other direction - the past influences the present - because of our innate sense of a one-way, linear, flowing time. Yet this idea, scientifically speaking, is on thin ice. As physicist Paul Davies states:
Notions such as "the past," "the present" and "the future" seem to be more linguistic than physical.... This strongly suggests that we look to the mind, rather than to the physical world, as the origin of the division of time into past, present, and future....There is none of this in physics....No physical experiment has ever been performed to detect the passage of time. As soon as the objective world of reality is considered, the passage of time disappears like a ghost into the night.[59]
Modern physics has also shown that time is linked with space. [60, 61, 62, 63] If we could transcend our belief that time flows inexorably from the past toward the future, and accept the idea of the unity of space and time, this might make it easier for us - and Leibovici - to entertain the possibility that prayer in the present might affect the past.
What images of space and time lie in the future? Davies: "[S]ome new theory, a new model, is necessary....What this new theory will be like, can only be guessed. It may not even employ the concepts of space and time at all. It could be that a future society will not use these words or notions. Perhaps, like the ether, they will pass out of the interest and the language of mankind."[64] Might these future developments assist us in engaging the possibility of retroactive prayer?
Those of us involved in healthcare are generally content to sit on the sidelines when mathematicians and physicists engage in this sort of talk. We do not realise that our notions of space and time profoundly influence what we actually do on a daily basis.[65] Leibovici's position reminds us that our choice of therapies - those we consider legitimate and those we do not - is often a function of our world view.
In considering whether the past and present may be related, we are not obliged to defer totally to the physicists. Our everyday experience can show us that the past is not closed to our scrutiny. Looking into the starry sky, the distant past is evident to our naked eye. The starlight streaming from heavenly bodies tells us not what the stars are like now, but millions of light years ago. The powerful Hubble telescope allows us to peer even more deeply into the past. Thus is the remote past being revealed now, making all of us time travelers of sorts. Does our present observation of these past events have consequences? Do we change past happenings by observing them? One of the linchpins of modern physics is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which shows that the act of observation at the atomic level disturbs things. In view of this, we are free to wonder whether our observations influence our large-scale world, or whether the disturbances are limited to the ultra-microscopic realm of atoms and subatomic particles. Is there a crisp dividing line between these domains? Would the universe be a different place if we did not look at it? Would it exist at all? Does our consciousness call our reality into being? There is no consensus among physicists about these issues.
We physicians are not used to asking questions of this sort, but many physicists don't share our hesitation in probing the impact of consciousness on "the world out there." Consider the title of a recent article about famed physicist John Wheeler, who coined the term "black hole," is mentor to many of today's leading physicists, and was a colleague of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr: "Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?" In this article, Wheeler says he has only enough time left to work on one idea he considers utterly compelling: "that human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past as well."[66] If these considerations are permissible in physics, they are permissible in medicine as well, and should be part of any dialogue that considers the interaction of the present and the past, as with retroactive prayer. Leibovici does not address these issues. If he did so, would he be so eager to dismiss retroactive prayer as zany?
In simpler times, three dimensions (or four, if time is considered), explained our universe. Early work by Einstein, using tensor analysis, assumed space had 10 dimensions, but it has become clear that even 10 dimensions is an oversimplification of the universe. Bosonic string quantum mechanics is only consistent in a 26-dimensional space-time, and even these models do not include the dimensions of consciousness or intentionality. How do they fit in? [67, 68,69]
Models of space and time that permit two-way interactions between the present and the past are at hand. For example, current images of the topology of the space-time continuum involve the idea of " wormholes," which, like holes in Swiss cheese, link remote regions when space-time is "pinched" or "folded." Some physicists hypothesise that these distortions might allow near-instantaneous travel into the past and future.[70] They suggest, additionally, that wormholes might connect an infinite number of parallel universes.
We may affect the past in ways we seldom consider. Consider our concept of history. Although we consider "past history" unchangeable, our knowledge of the past is limited and changes from time to time. Indeed, historians make careers out of sifting through the past and creating new versions of it. Might a praying individual, as in Leibovici's study, "re-write" the past by praying for an event that is presumed to have already happened? As we shall now see, considerable evidence exists that this may indeed be the case.
Retroactive Intentions: Supporting Evidence
"Shocking as it may sound, I conclude that we can at noon become part causes of an event occurring at ten A.M." - C. S. Lewis |
William Braud, director of research at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, and codirector the Institute's William James Center for Consciousness Studies, recently summarised the results of 19 studies involving 233 experimental sessions, in which persons attempted to influence, retroactively, a variety of living systems. The results of 10 of the 19 studies were statistically significant.[72]
The foundational work in the field of retroactive intentions was done in the 1970s and 80s by physicist Helmut Schmidt. He worked with electronic random-number generators and inherently random processes such as radioactive decay.[73] Schmidt's findings suggest that pre-recorded, quantum-level events can be influenced by the intentions of humans in the present if the recording of the quantum events has not yet been observed, even though the events appear to lie in the past and seem already to have happened. Schmidt's work has been published in prestigious physics journals, and he has collaborated with physicist and quantum theorist Henry P. Stapp, of UC-Berkeley, already mentioned. [74]
Schmidt's experiments are widely regarded as some of the most precise ever done in the field of human intentionality. His work has drawn praise even from skeptics such as the late astronomer, Carl Sagan, of Cornell University, who said Schmidt's findings "deserve serious study". [75]
Mechanism
"Something unknown is doing what we don't know what - Sir Arthur Eddington [76] |
Schmidt's experiments and those reviewed by Braud provide indirect empirical support for retroactive prayer. Even so, the mechanism of the influence remains hidden. Neither do the actual prayer studies shed light on questions of mechanism, such as whether divine intervention is part of the "prayer loop," or whether a person's mental intentions act directly on the distant individual. Because researchers do not have "god meters," it is difficult to imagine how an empirical study could confirm or reject the presence of divine intervention when prayer seems to work.
These points deserve emphasis. Currently there is much speculation about how the distant effects of consciousness actually take place. Although several sophisticated hypotheses have been posited, as we shall see, no one really knows how consciousness manifests outside the confines of the brain and body and the present. Evidence so far suggests that these events are nonlocal - phenomena which, as physicist Herbert says above, are "unmediated, unmitigated, and immediate" [Herbert, QR, 214]. But calling distant healing and intercessory prayer nonlocal does not explain them, it merely relabels them and substitutes one mystery for another. There is an additional problem in using physicists' concept of nonlocal interactions to help explain prayer and distant intentions. Most physicists believe that nonlocal connections cannot be used to transfer intelligent information from one spacetime region to another. Herbert: "[Non-local] awareness consists of consciousness without content. . It is difficult to see what use we could make of such non-local connections. On the other hand, perhaps these connections are not there for us to 'use.'" [Herbert, QR, 249-250] And as parapsychology researcher Joop M. Houtkooper of the University of Giessen's Center for Psychobiology and Behavioral Medicine says, "[T]he notion of 'connectedness' is related to the concept of 'nonlocality' as borrowed from quantum mechanics. This is [only] an analogy with quantum mechanics: Quantum mechanics itself offers.no hope for an explanation..Moreover, nonlocality as a metaphor lacks the specificity to predict anything." [77] (Note 1.)
But studies suggest that intercessory prayer and distant healing intentions do have content and are useful. Through prayer and healing intentions we appear to convey meaningful information. This discrepancy suggests that quantum nonlocality is at best a metaphor for distant healing and prayer, but may not prove to be a sufficient explanation for these remote operations of consciousness. As Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner, already mentioned, put it, "It may well be.that present-day physics represents.a limiting case - valid for inanimate objects. It will have to be replaced by new laws, based on new concepts, if organisms with consciousness are to be described."[78]
Mathematician-philosopher David J. Chalmers, of the University of Arizona, agrees that physical laws may not be up to describing consciousness. In an influential 1995 article in Scientific American, "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience,"[79] Chalmers notes the efforts of Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg and other physicists to craft a "theory of everything" from which all the universe's workings can be derived. "But Weinberg concedes," says Chalmers, "that there is a problem with consciousness. Despite the power of physical theory, the existence of consciousness does not seem to be derivable from physical laws. He defends physics by arguing that it might eventually explain what he calls the objective correlates of consciousness (that is, the neural correlates), but of course to do this is not to explain consciousness itself. If the existence of consciousness cannot be derived from physical laws, a theory of physics is not a true theory of everything. So a final theory must have an additional component. Toward this end, I propose that conscious experience be considered a fundamental feature [of the universe], irreducible to anything more basic..Thus, a complete theory will have two components: physical laws, telling us about the behavior of physical systems from the infinitesimal to the cosmological, and what we might call psychophysical laws, telling us how some of those systems are associated with conscious experience. These two components will constitute a true theory of everything."
Prayer and distant healing await a Newton who might explain how they happen. Or perhaps not. When asked the mechanism underlying his proposal of universal gravity, Newton wisely held his tongue and simply declared, "Hypotheses non fingo" - "I frame no hypotheses." Until hypothesis development in prayer and distant healing is further advanced, perhaps we should follow suit and defer on questions of mechanism. This is a perfectly acceptable strategy within science - particularly in medicine, where we have often known that something works before we know how.
Thinking Outside the Box
"Religions assure us that we are all brothers and sisters, children of the same deity; biologists say that we are entwined with all life-forms on this planet: our fortunes rise or fall with theirs. Now, physicists have discovered that the very atoms of our bodies are woven out of a common superluminal fabric. Not merely in physics are humans out of touch with reality; we ignore these connections at our peril." - Nick Herbert [Herbert, QR, p. 250] |
In 2001 a group of elite scientists and Nobel laureates submitted a letter to Nature and Science, the two top international research journals (it was rejected by both publications). They asked, What has happened to the lone genius making scientific breakthroughs? They concluded that scientific genius is being stifled by slavish adherence to popular ideas. Questioning conventional assumptions has become heretical. As a result, new directions and insights are being squeezed out in favor of blockbuster projects that are currently in fashion, such as the sequencing of the human genome. "All too often today," these scholars observed, "the academic research environment favors objectives selected by consensus . . . pioneers and consensus can be poor bedfellows initially, and so peer review often fails." As a consequence, one of the scientists, Donald Braben, a physics professor at University College, London, suggested that the next Einstein may languish in obscurity. "We need people like the Einsteins, the Newtons, who can stand back and ask how everything fits together," he says. "These are the people who lift our eyes above the horizon, who open up new vistas, create new types of understanding. When was the last time we had a real scientific breakthrough?" The signatories concluded with a sober warning: "This is one of the most serious problems facing civilisation."[80]
Fortunately, a few scientists are thinking outside science's conventional box about the behavior of consciousness in space and time. A notable example, already mentioned, is physicist Henry P. Stapp of UC-Berkeley, an authority on the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 2001 he observed:
[T]he new physics presents prima facie evidence that our human thoughts are linked to nature by nonlocal connections: what a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe. This nonlocal aspect can be understood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, but rather a growing compendium of "bits of information.".And, I believe that most quantum physicists will also agree that our conscious thoughts ought eventually be understood within science and that when properly understood, our thoughts will be seen to DO something: they will be efficacious. [81]
Mathematician C. J. S. Clarke of the University of Southampton, like Stapp, has also hypothesised a nonlocal view of the nature of consciousness.[82] Mathematician-philosopher David J. Chalmers, of the University of Arizona, has expressed a similar view. As noted above, he suggests that is time for science to bite the bullet and declare consciousness fundamental in the universe, perhaps on a par with matter and energy, irreducible to anything more basic. Researchers Harald Walach and Hartmann Römer, of the University of Freiberg, Germany, have developed a sophisticated hypothesis for the nonlocal behaviors of consciousness based on the concept of complementarity in physics. They argue that nonlocal phenomena are not restricted to the quantum domain but exist in the macroscopic, human dimension as well.
Erwin Schrödinger, the Nobel physicist, suggested that all individual minds are connected.[83] If so, this might provide a pathway for the prayers and intentions of one individual to affect other persons who are remote in space and time.
Schrödinger wrote:
Mind by its very nature is a singulare tantum . I should say: the overall number of minds is just one.[84] To divide or multiply consciousness is something meaningless. In all the world, there is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the spatio-temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction..The categories of number, of whole and of parts are then simply not applicable to it; the most adequate.expression of the situation being this: the self-consciousness of the individual members are numerically identical both with other and with that Self which they may be said to form at a higher level.[85]
The eminent physicist and quantum theorist David Bohm felt similarly. He said:
Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don't see this it's because we are blinding ourselves to it.[86] If we don't establish these absolute boundaries between minds, then.it's possible they could.unite as one mind.[87]
Although tentative, models and images such as these - and many more that could be mentioned [88] - go far to free consciousness to act remotely not just in space but also in time, and are cordial to the sort of phenomena rejected by Leibovici.
Where do the fields of psychiatry and psychology stand? Like the above scientists, William James, known as the father of American psychology, believed in the unity and continuity of consciousness.
In 1909, in one of his last essays, he wrote: [89]
Out of my experience., one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges.that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and pine may whisper to each other with their leaves..But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother sea or reservoir...
Since James, depth psychologists have proposed similar ideas. Chief among them is perhaps C. G. Jung, who stated: [90]
[N]o one knows what "psyche" is, and one knows just as little how far into nature 'psyche' extends. .Under certain conditions.[the psyche] could even break through the barriers of space and time precisely because of a quality essential to it, that is, its relatively trans-spatial and trans-temporal nature. This possible transcendence of space-time, for which it seems to me there is a good deal of evidence, is of such incalculable import that it should spur the spirit of research to the greatest effort.
In contrast to the views of James and Jung, however, the field of modern psychiatry seems generally resistant to the nonlocal type of communication implied by intercessory prayer. But Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, apparently felt otherwise. Late in life he stated: "I am not an out and out sceptic....If I had my life to live over again, I would devote myself to psychical research rather than to psychoanalysis."[91] Freud's legacy has been virtually sanitised of his openness to "psychical" or nonlocal mental phenomena. Yet, says biographer Frank McLynn, "[T]hroughout the Freud oeuvre there is a deep and abiding interest in the paranormal and preternatural. Freud was always interested in telepathy .. It was for purely prudential reasons that he did not publish until late in his career the many strange cases of thought-transference he had come across; he simply feared that until psychoanalysis was established beyond risk of destruction by ridicule, to exhibit open-mindedness was to hand enemies a weapon. In 1932 he wrote that he . was.convinced that thought-transference was a fact."[92]
Conclusion
"You do not possess the truth; it is truth that possesses you." - Thomas Aquinas, attrib. |
In science, nothing is ever written in stone. As biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), Darwin's dogged defender, described this situation, "The greatest tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."[93] Leonard Leibovici has performed a study suggesting that prayers in the present can affect the past, which he dismisses a priori as an outrageous idea. We suggest that his opinion is in the process of being slain by what must appear to him to be ugly facts.
"There is a point," said British playwright J. B. Priestley in his important book Man and Time, "past which scientific detachment can turn into bull-headed prejudice."[94] How do we guard against this? In view of our ignorance of the nature of human consciousness, space, and time, we suggest that anyone doing experimental work in the area of prayer and healing approach their task with openness and humility, setting aside their preconceptions to the extent possible. Mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead underscored this need. In his Essays in Science and Philosophy, he observed, "The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of its existing modes of knowledge. Sceptics and believers are all alike. At this moment scientists and sceptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted: fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophical adventure. The Universe is vast."[95]
A generation ago, controlled studies in prayer and healing did not exist; now they are commonplace. In an era when medical science is becoming increasingly dominated by molecular, physical approaches, one might expect that interest in the role of consciousness in healing should decrease, not increase. Why the current renaissance in prayer-and-healing studies?
We suggest that an invisible dynamic may be at work in our world, a force that is calling forth these developments because of a crucial human need. This need is not merely for a new type of therapy to assist in physical healing, but for an expansion of our concept of human consciousness and how we fit into a larger reality.
As C. S. Lewis described this process:
It is not impossible that our own Model [of reality] will die a violent death, ruthlessly smashed by an unprovoked assault of new facts....But I think it is more likely to change when, and because, far-reaching changes in the mental temper of our descendants demand that it should. The new Model will not be set up without evidence, but the evidence will turn up when the inner need for it becomes sufficiently great. It will be true evidence. But nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her. Here, as in the courts, the character of the evidence depends on the shape of the examination, and a good cross-examiner can do wonders.[96]
It is customary for scientists to say that they "do" science. But if a hidden dynamic is at work in the world, as Lewis suggests, perhaps science is in some sense "doing" scientists.
As another Huxley, the novelist Aldous, T. H.'s grandson, put it:
Understanding is not inherited, nor can it be laboriously acquired. It is something which, when circumstances are favorable, comes to us, so to say, of its own accord. All of us are knowers, all the time; it is only occasionally and in spite of ourselves that we directly understand the mystery of given reality. [97]
The questions raised by intercessory prayer and distant healing are far-reaching. They challenge our basic assumptions about the nature of consciousness, space, time, and causality. Some individuals consider these issues too vexing and simply ignore them. But if the distant effects of consciousness are real, they will not cease to exist by being ignored but will operate in the background of our lives. Others dismiss these events as trivial or irrelevant to the mission of the healing professions. We suggest, in contrast, that the nonlocal expressions of consciousness may be crucial in the relief of human suffering, that medical science will be enriched by coming to terms with these phenomena, and that our understanding of our place in the world will be expanded in the process.
Rather than dismiss prayer studies because they do not make sense or confirm our existing knowledge, we should seriously consider them for this very reason - for, in the history of science, it is the findings that do not fit in that often yield the most profound breakthroughs.
Brian Olshansky, MD
Professor of Medicine
Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology
University of Iowa Hospitals
Iowa City, IA
e-mail: brian-olshansky@uiowa.edu
Larry Dossey, MD
Executive Editor
Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine
Santa Fé, NM
e-mail: ldossey@ix.netcom.com
Notes
1. The limitations of physics in explaining the nonlocal behaviors of consciousness, such as distant healing and intercessory prayer, are the subject of a series of essays by co-author Larry Dossey.[98, 99,100, 101]
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