The spiritual path is when you are willing to look at things which don’t fit into that preconceived notion of what is.

Welcome, beloved viewers, to Science and Spirituality on Supreme Master Television. Today’s program is part one of a three-part series featuring an interview with a popular quantum physicist, author and lecturer from the United States, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf.

Dr. Wolf earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California – Los Angeles, USA in 1963. He has lectured across the world, conducted extensive research in his field, written many award-winning books such as “Taking the Quantum Leap” and “The Spiritual Universe,” and served as the resident physicist on the Discovery Channel program “The Know Zone.” Dr. Wolf has appeared in popular films such as “What The Bleep Do We Know” and “The Secret.”

He is known for explaining the complex laws of quantum physics in an engaging way so that non-scientists can better understand them and see how they relate to spiritual principles. His fascinating work has sparked the interest of many to deeply inquire into the very nature of existence and the mind. Let us now meet the esteemed Dr. Wolf.

Dr. Wolf, welcome to Toronto (Canada)!

Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Tell us about your background.

I have worked in many different places. I have worked for the government. I have taught at many different universities: University of Paris (France), University of London (UK), the Hahn Meitner Institute of Nuclear Research in Berlin (Germany), the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Israel) as well as San Diego State University in California (USA) and many other institutions as well.

So what motivated you to study the connection between spirituality and quantum physics?

Mainly because my interest is in the nature of magic. It may seem strange but as a child I developed a severe speech impediment and I stammered very, very badly. And one of the two techniques I learned to improve my speaking ability: one was to practice deep breathing and meditation.

This was before I knew what meditation was. I was only nine or 10 years old but my speech therapist, that was one of the tools that she used to get me to concentrate on my breath and change my rhythm, so to speak, which of course is a meditation technique.

And I also practiced doing what I would call “magic” in front of a mirror. When you do magic tricks where you are actually performing, it is a performance. A magician is like one stage show and one being because you are not only telling a story, but you are also demonstrating or visualizing or you are showing people an effect as a result of the story and this means you have to talk.

So these two things in concert got me out of stammering and also got me interested in this process of what I call magic. So when I began to study more deeply, or in a deeper way, the nature of the world I was living in, I became intrigued with light, the light that we see. And I said, “What the heck is this? How does it work? What is light?” And that led me into “What is anything?”

That got me into studying physics and that’s what led me into theoretical physics because I am always interested in how we understand what’s happening. That naturally led me into quantum physics, which is the major physics of today and that’s what got me started.

The Buddhist sacred text the Flower Ornament Sutra says, “Our perception of the Three Realms arise from the mind,” as well as, “The mind is like a master painter experienced at painting all sorts of things.” In terms of our perception of the outer world, Dr. Wolf sees similarities between the principles of quantum physics and spirituality, particularly regarding the role of the mind in shaping what we see.

As a physicist, what is your view of the soul?

Well, it’s an interesting concept and, of course, it has gone through a lot of change based upon which culture you deal with. In ancient culture, I think the soul was connected with the breath. So you said “I am” or “ahkman” “I breathe.” There was a connection with ‘ah’ -- soul/breath, so there was a connection there. As long as a person was breathing he was “souling.” The soul was present. It was interacting so there was a connection with that.

And since it was like breath, invisible to the eye, the soul was some kind of invisible presence. And so the natural tendency was as we became more and more enlightened, to some extent, was to associate the soul as something more than just the breath; it was inhabiting the body like an apartment dweller inhabits an apartment. So these are the concepts.

From a physics point of view, it became curious in a certain kind of funny way because in quantum physics we learn something about reality as not being out there by itself. There had to be a process by which something recognizes reality out there. And by recognizing or cognating or becoming aware of reality out there – well “out there” can mean anything from the tip of your nose to the planet in the sky to the person across the street to almost anything at all – that this process of noticing, the processing of becoming aware, involved a recognition, a consciousness, a mind.

And that if the mind altered the way it went about this process of recognizing, cognating, looking at the “out there,” the experience would change “in here.” In quantum physics we learned that as you began to delve deeply into that question of how what you bring to bear to observe, interacts, affects is in relation to the thing which you are observing we began to realize that the thing which we are observing is not just something that is itself physically there but is something that has been constructed in our mind, in our memory, as having a certain form, shape, size, material substance: all the various attributes we call physical reality.

And that without these memorized concepts of these things that we say are out there we would not be able to even construct a picture or a semblance of understanding of what’s out there. In other words, there is no “out there” out there without an “in here” in here acting.

Quantum physics is highly complicated and deals with things which are not perceivable in our physical surroundings, rather we must rely on models created by the mind to grasp them. Much about spirituality is also about the non-physical and invisible and Dr. Wolf sees this fact as an area of commonality between the two fields.

As you delve even deeper into things that are subatomic or sub microscopic, things which we can’t see with our naked eye, we find that the very things we are looking at are fuzzy. They are not rigid.

Things of macroscopic which are large-scale size that we can see with our naked eye, they are not so fuzzy. They are pretty solid and that’s how we come to agreement about what’s this and what’s that. We say “Ah, that’s a ball” and “That’s a chain;” “That’s a ball” and “That’s a person’s hair.” They are not the same thing.

We have a way of describing that because we can see it. But when you are talking about atoms and subatomic matter, we can draw only pictures in our mind because we cannot really see these things. In fact, what we bring to bear to look at these things alters them. So the current thinking right now is there really is no actual thing “out there.”

If we are talking about subatomic matter – atoms – things which make up the nucleus of the atom, the so-called quarks and the things we call bosons – which are little particles which mediate the relationship between the quarks which hold the nucleus together, called gluons, we begin to look at these various pictures, which are theoretical in our mind. We have never seen any of these things.

We do them to give us some structure so that when we do experiments and look at the results of the experiments, the model will help us explain why the results look the way they look. So that’s what we do in quantum physics.

We make up a model in our mind that we never really ever see that we then say is happening at that level. We have to see them only as the experience we have of being conscious. And so this is where the two, I think, come into alignment with each other.

The quantum physical view that it is only when you bring your mind into the picture that you begin to make pictures of what’s going on at the subatomic level is very similar to when you bring your mind into the spiritual presence. You make a picture of what that spiritual presence is and so there is a similar process I think going on.

So if I understand you, what you are saying is that there is a link between quantum physics and spirituality?

Well, I don’t know if I would call it a link in the sense that there is a chain holding those two together. I would say there is a similar process of investigation which has to go on. And the thing which is very important to realizing both of these fields is that what you bring to bear affects what you perceive as reality of whatever it is you are looking at.

What I bring to bear to look at an atom, if I bring to bear a certain way of looking, it seems wavy, almost unsubstantial. If I bring to bear a particle way of looking at things – where I want to find out where things are or when they are – things look like little balls, little marbles or little pieces of things. So how I look changes what I perceive. So I can’t say what an atom really is per se. I can only say what it’s like when I perceive it a certain way; the same thing with spirituality.

Thank you Dr. Fred Alan Wolf for providing your deep insights into quantum physics and how this science is related to spirituality. Your enthusiasm and love of knowledge have certainly inspired many people to take a closer look into the nature of reality.

For more details on Dr. Fred A. Wolf, please visit Books, CDs, and DVDs by Dr. Wolf are available at the same website

Enlightened viewers, please join us next Monday on Science and Spirituality for part two of our program featuring more from our interview with Dr. Wolf. Thank you for your company on today’s program. Coming up next is Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. May all lives be blessed with peace, happiness and God's loving grace.

This leads naturally into the simple recognition of the great spiritual wisdom. There is only one mind because mind separated into separate parcels of space and time makes no sense from the point of view of quantum physics. And the theory of entanglement is one of the indications of the truth of that statement.

Welcome, thoughtful viewers, to Science and Spirituality on Supreme Master Television. This program is part two of a three-part series featuring an interview with a popular quantum physicist, author and lecturer from the United States, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf.

Dr. Wolf earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California – Los Angeles, USA in 1963. He has lectured across the world, conducted extensive research in his field, written many award-winning books such as “Taking the Quantum Leap” and “The Spiritual Universe,” and served as the resident physicist on the Discovery Channel program “The Know Zone.” Dr. Wolf has appeared in popular films such as “What The Bleep Do We Know” and “The Secret.”

He is known for explaining the complex laws of quantum physics in an engaging way so that non-scientists can better understand them and see how they relate to spiritual principles. His fascinating work has sparked the interest of many to deeply inquire into the very nature of existence and the mind.

Last week Dr. Wolf explained what led him to become interested in the relationship between quantum physics and spirituality. Today he provides his perspective on fascinating subjects ranging from the nature of reality, to the quantum entanglement theory to how quantum computers could possibly develop their own consciousness in the future.

A good question is what is reality? And what does it mean to talk about reality in any significant way? Clearly there seems to be some boundaries between what we call “what’s real.” You have your reality, I have my reality. That seems to be the case. However when you begin to look deeply into this question of quantum physics, and how mind enters into it, we cannot find a boundary from one mind to the next. We cannot find anything which distinguishes your mind from my mind. We have the experience of such a distinguishing going on.

But if you really look at it, and I look at you, and I say to myself, “That’s a human being,” but I don’t have any experience of you other than what I am experiencing from my natural senses, I’m not inside your head looking out your eyeballs, so I don’t know what you’re seeing, I don’t know what you’re smelling or tasting. I can imagine what those things are, but I don’t have an experience of that.

So that’s a tendency to say that well since we seem to have separate bodies, we must have separate minds. But according to what we understand about mind, it doesn’t have any place where you can make the compartmentalization take place. In fact Erwin Schrödinger one of the founders of quantum physics, actually came up with a proof that there wasn’t any separation between various minds even though it appears that there are.

That would bring us into the quantum entanglement theory. Can you explain that?

Well, in quantum entanglement it can involve mind, of course, but what it involves is what happens after what is called an interaction. When things interact we usually have a picture of an interaction as something coming together and flying apart, bindle-bangle, that’s an interaction. And the question then becomes if I know what’s going on before the interaction can I say what’s going on after the interaction?

Now if these were billiard balls, classical snooker, or some game like that and you hit a ball and bounce it against another ball, the snooker players and billiard ball players know how to control that. So they can say given that I push the white ball with a certain amount of momentum and hit it a certain way, it’s going to hit the red ball and it’s going to fall over this way and everything is correlated – co-related – correlated; (it’s the) same word.

In other words, I have control the initial conditions which are the ball I am trying to hit which is at rest on the green maze table and the little white ball I am hitting with my cue. I have control over the position and the momenta of both objects so I could predict what the position and momenta of the two objects are after they hit and fly apart. Momenta being mass times velocity or the movement of the object as it goes flying off in a given direction – that’s called momentum.

Anyway that’s fine but in quantum physics we have no such control. We don’t know exactly the position and momenta of each object to begin with; but once they interact they become what is called entangled. They become a correlation which means since we don’t know exactly where they are the question arises: What do we know of these objects?

And the question then is answered with this answer. We do know that if you measure the position of the object on the left after the interaction you can predict the position of the object on the right after the interaction. But if you decide to measure the momentum of the object on the left after the interaction you could predict the momentum of the object on the right after the interaction.

But you cannot predict both the position and the momenta of either object after the interaction. Even if you measure both at the same time you cannot determine what the other object is going to have. Entanglement tells us that they are correlated provided you ask one question but not both. It’s a kind of a funny kind of 20 questions thing that you can’t ask all the questions at once. So you can’t determine the answers to all of them.

There seems to be a buzz going around about quantum computing. (Yes) What’s going on in this field?

Well, let me explain as basically as I can about the difference between a quantum computation and a normal computation. Computers are very simple basic tools that are very complicated because the very basic tool is multiplied by a zillion times. The basic tool is simply up or down, on or off, zero or one: that’s the tool. In other words, it’s a switch. All computers are a bunch of switches.

Think of a switch as something which you can throw as going down or up, up/down, two switch positions and that is an ordinary computer, a whole bunch of these things, billions of them. And that’s how it works. Basically, change the positions of the switches; there are two possible positions here, there is another one over here, two more – that’s four possible positions.

They can be both up; they can be both this way; they can be like this; or they can be like this. Now put three of them in, that means two (possible positions) times three (switches) which is eight (possible positions) and so forth … so two to the power of how many different switches there are is the power of the computer. It could be very large. Two to the power of ten is already more than a thousand so you can see that you could get a lot of different possibilities.

Now we come to a quantum computer. It’s also made of switches but all these positions in between are allowed and can be computed in combination with the other ones. So there is an infinite variety in each switch of possible positions. So you have as many as different possible positions this has multiplied by as many switches as there are and you have a quantum computer. Of course, because they are so flimsy in a way, they are not very robust; you have to really isolate them to make sure that you don’t make them snap.

Now the thing which makes quantum computation of interest is that even though there are all these different positions possible when you make computations, when you don’t actually observe what’s going on (very important, you don’t look). When you actually observe any one of these switches what you instantly get is this (up) or that (down), but never anything in-between.

Is that because of the observing effect?

That’s exactly it.

Okay.

So what a quantum computer does: it has way of observing, or bringing in the observer and the question is whether the machine can observe its own state or not. It’s still an open question. I will lend a little bit of speculation here. If it’s possible that we can build a self-observing quantum computer it would be as conscious as a self-observing human being.

It will also think about God and questions like that. A thinking, really conscious being in a computer – a being essentially able to do what we can do, which is to make things snap one way or the other. But it’s the possibilities which all these different possible positions can add up because what we have in quantum physics is something called “superposition possibilities.”

If one switch is like this and the one next to it is like that, then the two add together like making vectors – you have one like this, one like that, and you can add them up and you get a whole bunch of different vectors going in all different directions and you get many, infinitely many different possibilities.

Whereas with only this kind of computer (up or down, on or off), it’s either this adds with this one makes that one, or it goes down. You don’t get any in-betweens and therefore you don’t get any states associated with any of the in-betweens; whereas in quantum computers you can actually get something associated with the in-betweens provided you don’t look at what’s going on in-between.

It’s a very fascinating field. It’s one of the biggest fields in thinking today in quantum physics. Almost all the papers appearing right now have different aspects of quantum computation because it affects everything.

We would like to again thank Dr. Fred Alan Wolf for explaining complex quantum physics concepts in a highly engaging manner and offering his insights on science, consciousness and spirituality. Bright viewers, please join us next Monday on Science and Spirituality for the conclusion of our three part interview with Dr. Wolf.

For more details on Dr. Fred A. Wolf, please visit Books, CDs, and DVDs by Dr. Wolf are available at the same website

Thank you for your company today on our show. Coming up next is Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. May the wonders of the universe forever inspire us all.

Welcome, forward-thinking viewers, to Science and Spirituality on Supreme Master Television. This program is the conclusion of a three-part series featuring an interview with a popular quantum physicist, author and lecturer from the United States, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf.

Dr. Wolf earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California – Los Angeles, USA in 1963. He has lectured across the world, conducted extensive research in his field, written many award-winning books such as “Taking the Quantum Leap” and “The Spiritual Universe,” and served as the resident physicist on the Discovery Channel program “The Know Zone.” Dr. Wolf has appeared in popular films such as “What The Bleep Do We Know” and “The Secret.”

He is known for explaining the complex laws of quantum physics in an engaging way so that non-scientists can better understand them and see how they relate to spiritual principles. His fascinating work has sparked the interest of many to deeply inquire into the nature of existence and the mind.

Today Dr. Wolf delves into the past and speaks about some of the most famous physicists in history. Returning to the present, he will discuss current theories regarding the nature of parallel universes. Finally he will close with a thoughtful message about spirituality. Let us now re-join our intriguing interview with Dr. Fred Alan Wolf.

You speak a lot about Plato. What was his role in quantum physics?

Well, that’s a good question. Actually not only do I have a certain respect for platonic thinking and for Plato but also Roger Penrose who is a noted physicist who has also written about platonic ideals as well. The basic notion is the debate between Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle was a student of Plato, as I understand it, 2,500 years or so ago.

Basically the idea there was that Plato believed there was an ideal world, a nonmaterial ideal world and from this ideal world the practical world got built. For example, there is an ideal table in Plato’s world and the table that any carpenter makes is going to be inferior to the ideal. It’s always going to have some pragmatic difficulty. One leg is going to be a little shorter than the other, wider than the other; the table may not be perfectly flat, etc.

In other words, it’ll function as a table for all practical purposes unless we really want to measure things in a very refined way but it’s still not the ideal table. And as far as Plato was concerned the ideal world is where real things “come from.” So therefore, the notion of quantum physics seems to be more platonic because the things we work with in the quantum physical world theoretically are ideals rather than actualities.

One of the most celebrated scientists was Albert Einstein. Was he a detractor of quantum physics?

Not at all. He was one of the founders of it. He became what appeared to be a detractor when he debated with Niels Bohr, the famous Bohr-Einstein debates that took place in the 1920s and even continued after the initial debates, which were in the 1920s, into even the day that Bohr died. He was still debating Einstein even though Einstein had died eight or nine years before him.

So the whole notion was, is quantum physical reality complete? Is it a complete explanation of reality? Basically, Einstein said no. He didn’t think “God played dice with the universe” whereas Bohr said “Stop telling God what to do,” and that was how the debate went. And it went into all kinds of different possible things but so far Einstein has never won anything in that debate.

Okay. Why do you think that is?

Because Einstein’s picture was basically one of what is called “classical physics” and Einstein was basically disturbed by this thing I just talked about earlier, about the notion of entanglement. Entanglement was not according to Einstein’s kosher way of looking at things because it indicated some kind of action at a distance – faster than light. And Einstein came up with the theory of relativity which says that basically no information can travel faster than light.

Do you have any insights into the theory of many universes?

Well, I’ve had a few of them. I wrote a book called “Parallel Universes” and by the way, I should tell you I have many books out there, almost 17 of them right now and my latest book is called “Time Loops and Space Twists: How God Created the Universe.” This should be appearing in the early spring of 2011. But I wrote a book called “Parallel Universes” back in the 1980s.

I tried to explain how the concept originated, where it came from. It actually comes from quantum physics and it actually comes from general relativity. There are two fields in which it developed without any connection between the two. Nobody thought there was anything between the two, yet they both developed a notion of something called many universes or parallel universes.

Let me talk about it from a quantum physics point of view first. When you observe something it instantly goes into a particular state at the moment of observation. When you are not observing something then it’s possible for that thing, the system or whatever it is that you are looking at to be in many different states at the same time.

Atoms exist in the same way with different states of energy and they are linear combinations of all possible states that they could be in and so forth. So we have what we call many states. It then became of interest to ask what would happen if an observer observes these states. In other words, the observer becomes split into all the different possibilities as well as the different possibilities that are there.

Now if that’s the case, then we have multiple universes and multiple observers so that one observer is not what happens. What everybody does when they observe is they split themselves into multiple observers, each one observing a different state in a different universe. Since the two don’t ever talk to each other because observers are so complicated, you don’t know the splits occurred and as far as you are concerned you are still in the same universe.

It sounds silly; it sounds a bit crazy but that’s how people were trying to model the effective mind by splitting the observer as if the observer were an object like the thing being observed. That’s where the idea originated from and at first people didn’t believe it at all, then they began to believe it even more so; and now they have the notion that well, yes, it’s true but.

And they add a little bit of “but” and they call it the “theory of decoherence” which means that when we split the relationship of one observer in his universe to himself in another universe is decoherent; you can’t bring them back together again ever. That’s the kind of idea there; it’s an added thought.

So that’s where many universes come into being there. The idea has caught on and it has led people into all kinds of speculation about can I go to a parallel universe? And people write me, “Well how can I get to a parallel universe?” and that sort of thing, and I try to explain to them that it doesn’t quite work that way but nevertheless I still get those comments.

That’s a question I would have. (sure) I would like to test and see if this universe is better for me or some other universe.

Yes, I totally agree. If we could figure out a way to make a model of you, we can make a test. And if we can model what it is about you that makes observations, then of course such a test like that could be carried out. And indeed could take a photograph of you in a parallel universe. (Okay) But, there has to be a way to model you, and so far we don’t know how to model how your consciousness works. So we don’t know how to do that.

In concluding our interview with Dr. Wolf, we asked him to give a message to those who may only have faith in science and do not believe that there is a spiritual side to our existence.

Think about these questions: If in asking yourself “Where was I before I was born?” “Where will I be after I die?” “Who am I?” If in asking those questions something gets ignited inside of you, some flame of inquiry, some igniting of consideration, that there is something going on here that is really mysterious.

If you are excited by such things as what I have just mentioned, these kinds of questions, then you are becoming spiritually awakened. And now the question is how much awakening are you willing to sustain in your life? Are you willing to walk in a completely awakened state all the time? Do you think that’s possible?

If you do or if you wish to, then you are now taking steps on the spiritual path. The spiritual path is actually the path you have always been on. You may not remember it but it was the path you chose before you were born and will be the path you will be on after you pass from this physical existence.

The spiritual path is when you are willing to look at things which don’t fit into that preconceived notion of what is and you begin to really realize that there is something going on here, which is igniting, burning inside of you, opening up like a flower growing, like a seed that has been planted. And the spiritual master is going to be there constantly nudging you to awaken to that; constantly trying to get you to water that seed.

Professor Fred Alan Wolf, we thank you so much. It has been a pleasure.

Thank you!

Once again our sincere appreciation Dr. Fred Alan Wolf for sharing your sage thinking on the connections between the spiritual world and the realm of quantum physics. Through the work of scientists like you, may we forge a greater understanding of the universe so that humanity quickly progresses toward a higher level of enlightenment.

For more details on Dr. Wolf, please visit Books, CDs, and DVDs by Dr. Wolf are available at the same website

Splendid viewers, thank you for your company on this week’s edition of Science and Spiritualty. Coming up next is Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. May your life be blessed with peace, happiness and God's loving grace.