A MYSTERIOUS WEB OF INFLUENCE
"In the nineteenth century, physicists had used field theory to explain electricity, magnetism and light. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the concept was extended to include matter itself, an extraordinary development that took even physicists by surprise. According to the new discipline of "quantum field theory," a "particle" of matter is not a "solid" object at all, but an undulation or ripple in a quantum field that pervades our universe. Here the very concept of "object" is subverted and all our commonsense understandings of that word no longer hold true. "Objects" as we are used to thinking of them don't really exist in the universe of quantum fields. What we are offered instead is a kind of post-object worldview in which the very idea of hard, separate things is replaced by a mysterious web of influence. None of this is easy to come at, and as the great quantum pioneer Niels Bohr once remarked, anyone who isn't confused by quantum theory hasn't understood it...
Practically speaking, we are all recipients of the revolution in thinking that the field idea has wrought, and anyone who uses a cell phone or a computer has reason to be grateful that physicists have come to understand this enigmatic aspect of our world."
- Margaret Wertheim
"Great seers from mystical traditions suggest what we experience everyday is a projected reality where events and things only "appear" to be separate in space and time. In the deeper realm we are all members of the same body, and when one part of the body moves, every single part of that body is instantly affected.
Scientists also propose a level of existence called Minkowski's eight-dimensional hyperspace. In this mathematically conceived dimension the distance between two events, no matter how separate they appear to be in space-time, is always zero. This once again suggests a dimension of existence where we are all inseparably one. Separation may just be an illusion. When we feel love in any form, it has the effect of beginning to shatter that illusion.
Because observation is the key to defining the wave-particle as a single entity, Niels Bohr and other physicists believed that consciousness alone was responsible for the collapse of the the wave-particle. It might be said, then, that without consciousness, everything would exist only as undefined, potential packets of energy, or pure potential.
This is one of the key points of this book. Let me repeat it because it is so important: Without consciousness acting as an observer and interpreter, everything would exist only as pure potential. That pure potential is the virtual domain, the third level of existence. It is nonlocal and can't be depleted, it is unending and all-encompassing. Tapping into that potential is what allows us to make miracles."
- Deepak Chopra