THE ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE - ARTHUR KOESTLER, HUTCHINSON & CO 1972.

Posted by Robert De Vos on 1 July 2010 | 3 Comments

I have finally got around to reading Arthur Koestler's seminal book which deals with the early days of experimental research in psychokinesis, telepathy, parapsychology and the emergence of quantum physics as a new basis for understanding the reality of the universe, described by Sir James Jeans in his Rede Lectures:

 

"Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine."  

 

Although 38 years old, questions asked in the book have still not been adequately answered and the problem is summed up in Wolgang Pauli's proposal "to extend the principle of non-causal events from microphysics (where it its legitimacy was recognised) to macrophysics (where it was not)".

 

Quite a few avenues of thought seemed at the time to have hit a dead end, but with new research may turn out to be relevant to current investigations into the mind/body problem.

 

A number of new terms were even coined to try to define the "units" used in the transference of mind stuff or thought energy: V.A. Firsoff suggested elementary particles which he called mindons "with properties similar to neutrinos which exist in a different kind of space, governed by different laws" and Whately Carington and Sir Cyril Burt conceived psychons "which would have configurational (similar to Riemannian geometry or string theory?) rather than particle character". My italics.

 

An interesting concept was envisioned by Sir Arthur Eddington and expanded on by Adrian Dobbs - a five dimensional universe with three spatial and two temporal dimensions, where time moves on the commonly accepted deterministic path where "objective probabilities play the same part as causal relations in classical physics, and also a probabalistic second dimension in which the  objective probabilities of future outcomes are contained as compresent dispositional factors, which incline or predispose the future to occur in certain specific ways".        

 

Essentially suggesting that on a micro level of reality, all probabilities of events exist, (perhaps as in the many universe theory), but collapse into a specific form on the accumulation of sufficient information, paralleling the double-slit experiment where the result is influenced by the observer. The immediacy of psi situations could be explained through the "thought-stuff" of "psitrons" operating in Dobb's second time dimension having the same properties as neutrinos - "imaginary mass (in the mathematical sense) and thus according to Relativity Theory, can travel faster than light indefinitely, without loss of (imaginary) momentum." 

 

May it be that the particle's eventual state being one of either particle or wave function in the double slit experiment be determined on the basis of Dobb's proposal?

 

For me the most interesting research was done by Dr W. Grey Walter in 1969 where he used electrodes attached to the scalp of a subject, who could by pressing a button, produce an "interesting scene" on a computer screen. About a second before pressing the button, a "readiness wave" passes through the subject's cortex . By amplifying this electric surge and adjusting the circuitry, the mental impulse can be used to create the computer image without pressing the button. This application is I think, being widely used today in disabled people.

 

Dr Grey Walter discovered that the successful implementation though, "requires a peculiar state of concentration, a paradoxical compound of detachment and excitement". Now the most problematic issue of psi (parapsychological or psychic faculties or phenomena) events is that they are often not replicable. One thinks of the warning dream, the sudden urge to visit a friend, a strange impulse to cancel a train/airplane journey, all of which have resulted in averting a disaster. These sorts of scenarios have been well documented and seem sometimes to fit the requirement of "detached excitement". In the martial art of t'ai chi the state is understood as "relaxed awareness" or "shoong" where the practitioner begins with a calmed mind and progresses to a totally relaxed body and to yield totally to the entire universe, to the infinite. T'ai Chi Classics:  Waysun Liao -Shambala Books. 

 

One could imagine that in these states one could be in a "different kind of space, governed by different laws". 

 

Finally Koestler discusses the filtering processes of the mind where "our sense organs and our brain operate as an intricate kind of filter which limits and directs the mind's clairvoyant powers, so that under normal conditions attention is concentrated on just those objects or situations that are of biological importance for the survival of the organism and its species." Sir Cyril Burt. 

 

In a Sufi teaching story, a man asks to meet a dervish in the village market at a certain time. The man arrives on time and waits for half and hour before the dervish arrives. "Why are you late?" asks the man. "My brother had an accident and I had to help him," says the dervish. "Well", says the man,"I have come to you for advice on my future and yet you don't know what will happen in the next hour!" "Hold my arm" says the dervish. The man holds the dervish's arm and at that moment he is assailed by a thousand voices, thoughts, sounds and emotions overwhelming his mind and realises that he is aware of every thought and emotion of all the people in the market. He senses he is going mad and screams to be released. "Now do you understand why I didn't know my brother would hurt his leg with the plow?" says the dervish.   

 

Could it be that in the state of "shoong" or "detached excitement" or with a different neural wiring that our filters are somewhat switched off, offering us the possibilities of other stimuli or entering into the second dimension of time where Dobbs' "compresent dispositional factors" tend to collapse into incidences of a separate yet parallel reality? 

 

And could it be that the recently discovered dark matter and dark energy are also in some way "compresent dispositional factors"?

 

I also enjoyed Koestler's rather dry humour in recounting stories related to famous physicists. Especially about Paul Dirac who predicted "anti-electrons" - electrons with negative mass/energy.

 

"Another example of Dirac's acute observation has a literary flavour. His friend Peter Kapitza, the Russian physicist, gave him an English translation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment .

"Well, how do you like it?" asked Kapitza when Dirac returned the book.

"It is nice", said Dirac, "but in one of the chapters the author made a mistake. He describes the sun as rising twice on the same day."