The Conscious Mind, The Sub Conscious and The Double Slit.

Thursday 14 May 2015

Quantum Mechanics is a wondrous study of reality. It poses conundrums that are hard to reconcile, like “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle”. There is a well-known thought experiment that illustrates this principle. The experiment posits an Alive/Dead cat that is really --- yes really, in this state of uncertainty until it is observed. Until observation, the cat is said to be in a superposition of all realities.  The experiment is set up with apparatus that has a quantum mechanical trigger that can kill the cat, but only when the cat (which is in a in a closed box) is observed, can one truly know the state of the cat.

As a hypnotherapist I work with people that present with issues and problems that appear to have begun in a life or lives previous to this one.  I have been contemplating the double slit experiment and the quantum uncertainty that it illustrates, as a possible mechanism to help me understand the weirdness of the things I have seen in my practice. How can someone know that they were in a certain situation hundreds of years ago, well before their birth? How can they then experience this past life, with an accuracy that in many cases can be proven by a written record today? Invariably these clients are in some way dealing with the ramifications of that life in this current life. The resonances for them are clear, and the mysteries involved will no doubt apply to us all!

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle can be tested and explained with an experiment that fires particles, one at a time, through a double slit. The particles are collected behind on a screen. The experiment  shows that when one slit is observed, in order to see which slit  the particles went through, a slit pattern is built up on the screen as expected; however when unobserved the particles interfere  with each other and build up an interference pattern on the screen.  When the slit is observed, the particle is a particle, when unobserved it is a wave.  I believe we can draw inferences from the double slit experiment to explain my past lives conundrum! The following video is a great explanation of the double slit experiment.

These resonances from past lives are rarely conscious. The energy that drives them is seated firmly in the subconscious and usually requires hypnosis to shine a light on them. A good analogy for this Conscious/Subconscious situation is to consider an iceberg.  Just the tip is sticking out of the water, while the vast majority sits unseen under the sea. Consciously, we know about the tip, but the unseen vastness that sits below the ocean is pushing and pulling us around without us ever knowing about this connected conditioning. To see the subconscious we use Hypnosis, which is a practice of dissociating the mind. We use the tool of dissociation to move the conscious mind, with its ego and judgements temporarily out of the way.

Dissociation in the mind is something that we are all involved in. It is the bread and butter of human conditioning. When we are relaxed and open, suggestions go into the mind and we don’t even question why we bought “Kellogg’s Cornflakes” at the supermarket.  We just confabulate that we “like them best”. The original suggestion from the advertisement that put the idea there, has been dissociated. Learning to drive a car was a conscious process, but once learned, the skill becomes a subconscious one. It is the same with our cultures, our beliefs and opinions. Conditioning is all pervasive, and without the awareness of known datum, we cannot see where the mind is shifting to. For example, the practice of Meditation can provide a still point datum to give us an awareness of where and how our mind moves and shifts. On the other hand, hypnosis seems to provide a super position of the client’s conditioning by inducing a “wave like” reality. With their consciousness subdued, the hypnotherapist can direct the client’s awareness while they remain and participate in this trance state.   

Accomplished and practiced meditators will eventually see that at death, our stream of consciousness does not end. The body dies and the mind stream of consciousness is dissociated. Further, the evidence goes on to show that in many cases, when a new life is conditioned, the newborn child will still have knowledge of what went before. Many children can remember past lives. Using the scientific method, Professor Ian Stevenson, late of the University of Virginia has built up thousands of cases of childrens’ past lives in over 50 years of research. It is apparent though, that when the child’s ego forms at around 4 years old, this past history becomes further dissociated. Hypnosis uses this same dissociation process to recover it.

The hypnotherapist uses a range of tactics to distract any judgement or opinion being made by the conscious mind. This way we can access the subconscious with a bare awareness, without conscious interference. When successful the clients mind seems to see the bigger picture being presented from the “wave like” form of mind, as opposed to what it would see when the conditioned conscious mind is filtering and collapsing the mind into a fixed “particle” state.  This perception from the collapsed wave form seems to allow only the conscious mind to be real, whereas in the hypnotised trance state we can see the situation in a super position. 

In Hypnosis, clients are describing the stories that their energy is presenting from a dissociated place. It is a sort of trance state, a place that has separated them from their normal ego consciousness.  Many clients report the experience as discombobulating. It can shift the way that they see the world. It can also be an awakening experience. This awakening experience reflects as a wider perspective that opens us up to the entire “wave form” on offer. The realisation comes that this resonance had a beginning before birth and that it is subconsciously driving our lives. We see that we are ignorant of these pushes and pulls. Spiritually, we can grow and start to see things more truthfully. We can start to see and understand the interconnection and entanglement that we are all involved in.

The Buddha made many statements about reality that seem to be very “quantum mechanical”. For instance he said “Enlighten yourself and the whole Universe will be enlightened”. The mechanism for this seems to play out in the wave and particle duality of quantum mechanics. However, Buddhist practice does go further to an understanding of consciousness with its “wave like” form, collapsing into tiny particles the Buddhists call “Kalopas”. They are said to be like “Tiny particles coming together and falling apart trillions of times in the wink of an eye”. Further the “Kalopas” are like a “String of pearls, but without a string.” The Buddha taught that Enlightenment exists beyond the realm of consciousness and that it can be known in a still clear mind!  

The Buddha also had much to say about “Kalpas” or what he saw as Universal cycles. He said that “He had looked back over 24 Kalpas and no beginning can be seen.  He explained that a Kalpa was a length of time such: “That if you dragged the finest silk cloth from Benares over the highest and hardest Himalayan Mountains just once every 100 years, then by the time the mountains were worn to the ground is the span of a Kalpa.” The Buddha had obviously glimpsed into deep time --- astronomical time. He was also able to juxtapose this with the quantum. He obviously saw deeply in both directions, with great clarity and determined reality, from these extremes of time and space.  These statements come from an enlightened person that lived over 2600 years ago. The truth that he spoke of came from the still depth of his mind, and that can still be found right here and now in this present moment. “If we enlighten ourselves the entire universe will be enlightened with us!” Reality is a very strange but very beautiful and peaceful place.