The observer

An important concept in quantum physics is the role of the observer. There is a famous hypothesis called “Everett’s many worlds theory” that builds on Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen theory that an action seen by an observer has more than one possible outcome. Everett’s theory holds that the universe splits when that action is taken (or even when an action is not taken).

Physicist David Z. Albert has put a slightly different spin on Everett’s theory, which I believe is very important to the understanding of schizophrenia. Albert maintains that the term “many worlds” is actually incorrect and that a description that leads to a better understanding is to call it “many viewpoints.” This is in essence the schizophrenic problem of ambivalence: holding two (or possibly) more opposing views in which the center cannot hold. It offers one explanation for Chris’s lifelong aversion to making a choice.

As a university undergraduate, I was an art history major, not a physics major. Physics is hard for me, as it is for most people, to wrap my mind around. The implications of quantum physics are still not well understood, even by quantum physicists. What I can say with some conviction is that an appreciation of schizophrenia will emerge in future from a further understanding of quantum physics and lead to new methodologies in treatment. For the compassionate observer, schizophrenia brings us closer to the knowledge that we are all subject to a supreme power in the universe, but a spark of that divinity is also within us.

To quote Hermann Hesse once more, modern science is in the Stone Age compared to the teachings of ancient Indian mythology. Ancient and indigenous peoples seem to have a better appreciation of multiple realities than modern people do. Indigenous people, such as the Toltec civilization from which Don Juan came, know that hallucinogens can deliver you to an altered dimension where extraordinary things can happen. Although he did not know the physics of the assemblage point, he knew what moving it could do.

It made perfect sense to me that Chris began experiencing altered realities or parallel universes at the time that his assemblage point was breaking up. The assemblage point is assembled in the womb in part by the vibrational energy of the outside universe. Altered states of awareness such as in schizophrenia and lucid dreaming may be indications that there are universes parallel to our own.

(See also “The Akashic field and synchronicity,” April 22, 2009)

The Akashic field and synchronicity

There are paranormal phenomenon related to schizophrenia, God, and physics. The Akashic field is an ancient Sanskrit term describing an ethereal library of all knowledge—thought, word, and action—that can be accessed through the subconscious mind. It houses the collection of universal truth, to which all people have access, and which all religions and shamanic traditions have acknowledged in some way. The Akashic field, also referred to as the universal mind or the word of God, shares much with Jung’s collective unconscious in which everyone participates through shared inheritance, thoughts and memories, which are symbolically manifested as fairy tales, myths and fantasies.

Conventional relativity theory says that the particles have to be close together to affect each other. The concept of nonlocality is a quantum physics concept that tweaks conventional relativity theory by demonstrating that you can accurately predict how one particle is behaving by how another is behaving, and that they have a causal relationship, even though they are separated by great distances. When Chris’s doctor does long-distance muscle testing on Chris, for example, she is tapping into the nonlocal library of knowledge to find the particular record that Chris has left in the collective unconscious, even though she and he are separated by a great distance.

Schizophrenia is a prime example of how the universal mind works, using another of Jung’s concepts, that of synchronicity. Synchronicity is the uncanny coincidence with which most of us are familiar. You were just thinking of someone you haven’t been in touch with for ten years, the phone rings, and it is that person on the other end of the line. One event does not cause the other. They occur because the universal mind contains both our consciousness and external events. Events reflect our conscious and vice versa because neither time nor place exists in the universal mind.

People with schizophrenia find meaningful coincidences or synchronicity everywhere. I remember heading to a Japanese restaurant with the family when Chris was sliding into psychosis. Chris was obviously impressed with the name of the restaurant, the letters of which were the first letter of each of his names, with a negation at the end. He was under the belief that the restaurant was negating or invalidating him in some way. He repeated the name of the restaurant throughout the evening, almost like a mantra.

That’s the funny thing about synchronicity. It is only meaningful to the person experiencing it. It is a non-event to others, and pretty boring to them as well. Yet when synchronicity applies to us, it is a different story. We are bemused perhaps, but not enthralled.