Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri with
Speaker 2: our special guest Douglas Quincer. His book is called The
Speaker 2: Quantum and the Dream, Visionary Consciousness, AI and the New Renaissance. Douglas,
Speaker 2: tell me a little bit about quantum theory. What exactly
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 3: Well, it's always fun to go back to what Richard Feiman,
Speaker 3: one of the most brilliant people walking the planet in
Speaker 3: the twentieth century, who was a Nobel Prize winner in
Speaker 3: quantum physics, and he said, anyone who says they understand
Speaker 3: quantum theory doesn't, which is something you'd expect from a
Speaker 3: zen master to say.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: So I'm careful to point out in my book that
Speaker 3: whenever I speak about quantum theory from a scientific viewpoint,
Speaker 3: I quote a renowned scientist and footnote the quote, because
Speaker 3: I'm not a scientist and don't have a scientific background.
Speaker 3: But I getting to before and there's a book that
Speaker 3: one of the five or six best books, most influencier
Speaker 3: books ever read. Perhaps some of your listeners have heard
Speaker 3: of it, called The Dow of Physics by Fritz Geoff Copper,
Speaker 3: who is a high level physicist, and he wrote this
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy five. I didn't get to it till
Speaker 3: about nineteen eighty five, and he was about to give
Speaker 3: a talk on the coast of California, and he was
Speaker 3: sitting on a bench looking out over the Pacific Ocean
Speaker 3: when suddenly, he said, for some force, some light came
Speaker 3: down from the sky and he felt the whole ocean
Speaker 3: was dancing in some kind of vibrational dance. And he
Speaker 3: said it was one of the most extraordinary mystical experiences
Speaker 3: he ever had, and that got him thinking about any
Speaker 3: connection between science and mysticism. And he was able to
Speaker 3: interview Werner Heisenberg, who was one of the founders of
Speaker 3: quantum theory, who confirmed that not only was Werner Heisenberg
Speaker 3: fascinated by spiritual mystical wisdom, but so is Nils Boor,
Speaker 3: the father of quantum theory. So is Erwin Schrodinger, who
Speaker 3: want a Nobel prize, and so was Wilf kang Poli
Speaker 3: who I referenced before, who was fascinated by his dreams
Speaker 3: and spent twenty years working on them with Carl Jung.
Speaker 3: So what Kappa shows in his book to Doubt physicss
Speaker 3: have sold over a million copies and has been through
Speaker 3: three printings, and Copper says in his introduction it was
Speaker 3: a real risk publishing this book because back then it
Speaker 3: was considered blasphemy to consider science would have any connection
Speaker 3: with mystical wisdom, and yet it was. Some of the
Speaker 3: key founders of quantum theory were all totally into it,
Speaker 3: and that can't be a coincidence, okay. And the reason
Speaker 3: they are is because, as they felt, there was a
Speaker 3: true affinity and that they're their experience with their love
Speaker 3: of and their respect for mystical spiritual wisdom was one
Speaker 3: of the reasons they were able to discover what has
Speaker 3: been the most successful scientific theory of all time. And
Speaker 3: the reason that you know, we can uh talk to
Speaker 3: each other around the world on a world wide web
Speaker 3: and all sorts of things that are available because of
Speaker 3: because of quantum physics. So there, you know, Copper felt
Speaker 3: there was a clear connection. Uh, the major founders of
Speaker 3: quantum theory felt there was a major connection between the two.
Speaker 3: And as someone interested in philosophy, which literally means the
Speaker 3: love of wisdom, unfortunately that's not the way most philosophy
Speaker 3: is taught. It's very analytical and rational. There's a place
Speaker 3: for that. But uh, my love of philosophy is the
Speaker 3: ability to ask big questions, knowing there's no certain answer,
Speaker 3: but in knowing, exploring, you know, and stretching the mind
Speaker 3: out as much as we can. And and that's what
Speaker 3: I love about quantum theory. It's it's there are so
Speaker 3: many visionaries who are convinced that there is a clear
Speaker 3: connection between the quantum level of reality and the unconscious mind.
Speaker 2: How far, Douglas, can we push the mind to do
Speaker 2: these amazing things that we've been doing over the years.
Speaker 3: Well, here's a good example of what's called white hemisphere thinking,
Speaker 3: which is the part of our brain that is wired
Speaker 3: for intuition, imaginative leaps, and exploring the more mystical. Albert
Speaker 3: Einstein was named by Time magazine the Person of the Century.
Speaker 3: Tough to argue it. Einstein credits his discovery of relativity
Speaker 3: with a thought experiment he was doing at a patent
Speaker 3: office where he was working. He couldn't get a job
Speaker 3: in academia because he didn't follow the rules of academia.
Speaker 3: And he also said, and I authenticated the quote Einstein said,
Speaker 3: my entire career is based on a dream I had
Speaker 3: when I was eleven years old. Okay, so, and it
Speaker 3: was a very simple dream. He was eleven years old.
Speaker 3: He dreamt that he was sledding down a hill, and
Speaker 3: he kept going faster and faster and faster, and as
Speaker 3: he approached the speed of light, the whole sky started
Speaker 3: refracting in beautiful colors. And you know, as an eleven
Speaker 3: year old, he had no idea what that meant, but
Speaker 3: as an adult thinking about light, it made him think
Speaker 3: that there has to be some connection between speed and light.
Speaker 3: And then he did a thought experiment where he visualized
Speaker 3: himself in his imagination chasing a light beam. Okay, his
Speaker 3: laboratory was his mind. He did not work in a
Speaker 3: physical laboratory, and a lot of scientists during his time
Speaker 3: had hints of relativity but couldn't get to it. They
Speaker 3: were working in sophisticated laboratories and teaching at elite universities.
Speaker 3: Einstein was working a kind of easy job at a
Speaker 3: patent office to make some money, and he would do
Speaker 3: thought experiments, and in the one where he's chasing a
Speaker 3: light beam, when he caught up to it in his
Speaker 3: imagination time stopped, and that gave him the intuition, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, maybe light is the fastest thing in the
Speaker 3: universe and nothing can go faster than that. So between
Speaker 3: that thought experiment, the laboratory of his mind and I
Speaker 3: would call dreams are examples of our working in the
Speaker 3: laboratory of the unconscious mind. He came up with relativity
Speaker 3: before anyone else did. So you might say, well, okay,
Speaker 3: that's great, but if we do thought experiments and we
Speaker 3: look and pay attention to our dreams, we're not going
Speaker 3: to you know, we're not going to become Einstein. But
Speaker 3: there are loads of reasons, loads of examples of people
Speaker 3: whose lives are changed by working a dream or doing
Speaker 3: thought experiments, et cetera. And if you'd like George, my
Speaker 3: second dream teacher Jeremy Taylor his favorite example of how
Speaker 3: a nightmare changed history.
Speaker 2: What happened?
Speaker 3: Okay, in the mid nineteenth nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution
Speaker 3: had not yet really kickstarted, and a lot of engineers
Speaker 3: were trying to work on the first mechanical selling machine,
Speaker 3: and none of them could get it to work efficiently.
Speaker 3: And one of those people was Elias Howe. Elias Howe
Speaker 3: was a very rational engineer. He wasn't interested in his dreams.
Speaker 3: He wasn't doing thought experiments. But one night he falls
Speaker 3: asleep and he has the following horrific nightmare. He's being
Speaker 3: chased in a jungle by cannibals. They capture him, they
Speaker 3: tie his hands behind his back, they leave him back
Speaker 3: to the village. They put him in a pot of water,
Speaker 3: and they light a fire under it. Okay, And as
Speaker 3: the water starts boiling, he's panicking and oh my, you know,
Speaker 3: And but he notices that the hotter the water gets,
Speaker 3: the looser the ropes finding his hands are and he
Speaker 3: gets his hands free and he reaches for the side
Speaker 3: of the pot to pull himself out, and a cannibal
Speaker 3: takes the spear and pushes him back in. Well determined
Speaker 3: to get out and not die, he tries to get
Speaker 3: out again, and another cannibal comes in with a spirit
Speaker 3: and pushes him back in, and he wakes up in
Speaker 3: a total sweat. Now he was glad it was just
Speaker 3: a nightmare, because it seemed pretty weird. But one of
Speaker 3: the images stuck in his mind, and that was that
Speaker 3: the spear of the cannibals all had holes towards the
Speaker 3: point of the spears. He kept going holes in the plant.
Speaker 3: Holes in the plant. Now, I'm not a sewer, but
Speaker 3: those who do people when they hand so they thread
Speaker 3: a needle through the hole which is at the base
Speaker 3: of the needle. So the people working on a mechanical
Speaker 3: sewing machine assumed, right, we all like rationality and logic,
Speaker 3: it was logical that the machine would they would have
Speaker 3: it the thread automatically through a hole in the in
Speaker 3: the base of the of the needle. None of them
Speaker 3: would get it to work. So although it sounded crazy
Speaker 3: to Elias, how he said, hole on the points, let
Speaker 3: me try it. He got out of bed, he went
Speaker 3: to his home laboratory and he reconfigured the gear mechanism
Speaker 3: so that he could get the thread going through a
Speaker 3: hold towards the point, and he developed the first efficient
Speaker 3: selling machine, which kicked off the whole industrial revolution. So
Speaker 3: it's fair to say, George, that all of us who
Speaker 3: have clothes on right now owe a debt of gratitude
Speaker 3: to that nightmare of Elias house.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. He and Eli Whitney with the cotton gin right.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was a dream or not.
Speaker 3: But without the nightmare, it might have taken a lot
Speaker 3: longer to get a working selling machine. So the point
Speaker 3: is that there are, you know, many examples where any
Speaker 3: of us who are willing to play with our dreams.
Speaker 3: And you know we call it dream work, but really
Speaker 3: dream played because our dreams, like our imaginations, like our intuition,
Speaker 3: they like to play with us. Okay, like a zen master,
Speaker 3: you know, who loves to throw a banana peel at
Speaker 3: you metaphorically when you think you know too much. But Jeream,
Speaker 3: my second dream teacher, wonderful man, co founder of the
Speaker 3: International Association for the Study of Dreams, always said, and
Speaker 3: he taught you ange for fifty years around the world.
Speaker 3: All dreams come in the service of health and wholeness,
Speaker 3: including the most horrific nightmares. They're coming as deep teachers, okay,
Speaker 3: And I loved I was listening, you know during your
Speaker 3: break that didn't you describe your show or have an
Speaker 3: announcer to describe the show as deep in the earth. Yes,
Speaker 3: I love that, because you see, we're taught that to
Speaker 3: get aspiration, inspiration, we have to look up towards the heavens.
Speaker 3: But as the ancient spiritual teachers in Asia, New you
Speaker 3: have to go down as well. And in the contum
Speaker 3: of the dream my book, I propose that Freud's publication
Speaker 3: of the Interpretation of Dreams in the first year of
Speaker 3: the Modern Age nineteen hundred and plants discover of the quantum.
Speaker 3: They didn't know each other, and they wouldn't seem connected.
Speaker 3: And I'm proposing throughout my book giving evidence that they
Speaker 3: are connected through a synchron that they were a synchronicity.
Speaker 3: Why because Freud and Young surpassed him. But Freud gets
Speaker 3: the credit for starting the scientific revolution and looking at
Speaker 3: the dreams and change culture. So Freud's publication of the
Speaker 3: Interpretation of Dreams started an interest in descending into the
Speaker 3: dark creative interior of the human mind, the unconscious right,
Speaker 3: and the quantum started a huge journey into the dark
Speaker 3: creative center of the subatomic world. And are they connected well?
Speaker 3: Young and Polly thought they were a lot of the
Speaker 3: quantum theorists thought they were, and I would certainly agree
Speaker 3: with them. And we can all participate in this in
Speaker 3: many ways. We can do it with thought experiments, and
Speaker 3: I present a number of thought experiments in my book
Speaker 3: to get people started. We can do it by keeping
Speaker 3: a notebook and writing down our dreams and contemplating them
Speaker 3: and replaying them like a movie. And the more we
Speaker 3: replay them the more. Who knows, maybe there'll be a point,
Speaker 3: you know, in the sphere, and who knows where it's
Speaker 3: going to lead. So the right hemisphere of our brain
Speaker 3: was given to us by evolution. It's it's geographically larger
Speaker 3: than the left hemisphere, which is the more which is
Speaker 3: the part of our brain that looks for details and
Speaker 3: tries to understand the world by breaking things into smaller parts.
Speaker 3: But we were given the larger, more intricately wired right
Speaker 3: hemisphere to do thought experiments, to tap into our dreams
Speaker 3: and to explore the mystery of life. And we can't
Speaker 3: do it the left hemisphere because the left hemisphere needs
Speaker 3: to be certain about things right, And.
Speaker 2: They are different. Are the two hemisphere different, Douglas?
Speaker 3: Yes, And I now know that I was a totally
Speaker 3: right hemisphere person all my life, but I know the terminology.
Speaker 3: The number one expert on this is a fabulous gentleman
Speaker 3: named Ian McGilchrist, and I had the distinct pleasure of
Speaker 3: interviewing him and having talks with him, and he wrote
Speaker 3: this brilliant book called the mastard is emissary the divided
Speaker 3: brain and the making of the Western world. And he
Speaker 3: is over seventeen hundred footnotes. So he's a psychiatrist, and
Speaker 3: he is a neurologist, and he's done deep research, and
Speaker 3: he explains the difference from an evolutionary standpoint, and he
Speaker 3: gives it an example that I think makes it easier
Speaker 3: for us to understand. It. Turns out, George, that all
Speaker 3: living organisms who have brains have a divided brain left
Speaker 3: and right. Now, evolution doesn't keep things around for a
Speaker 3: long time if they're not working, so we can understand it.
Speaker 3: Thinking of let's say a small bird like a robin.
Speaker 3: In order for that robin to survive, it has to
Speaker 3: hunt and peck for microscopic seeds in the ground. So
Speaker 3: therefore it needs to use the part of its brain,
Speaker 3: the left hemisphere, that is very capable of focusing in
Speaker 3: on very specific details. Without that ability, it's not going
Speaker 3: to find the seeds. It's not going to survive. However,
Speaker 3: it doesn't also tune into its right hemisphere, which seems
Speaker 3: the big picture. The right hemisphere is not just focused
Speaker 3: on something. It tries to get the whole picture. That's
Speaker 3: the part of the brain that would recognize that there's
Speaker 3: a shadow overhead, and that shadows a hawk about to
Speaker 3: come down and make the robin lunch. So a robin
Speaker 3: could have the most sophisticated left hemisphere and be really
Speaker 3: good at finding microscopic seeds. But if it doesn't have
Speaker 3: a good right hemisphere while it's eating lunch, it will
Speaker 3: become lunch. So how does that apply to us? Well,
Speaker 3: look at helene and climate change and what it's doing.
Speaker 3: We did a brilliant job as humanity in developing marvelous
Speaker 3: technologies that we all benefit from that were primarily done
Speaker 3: by scientists and engineers looking at how to break things
Speaker 3: down into parts and being very specific in the way
Speaker 3: they're focused on things. But by not tapping into a
Speaker 3: right hemisphere, we weren't aware of the fact that our
Speaker 3: technologies generated by fossil fuel were destroying the very environment
Speaker 3: that keeps us alive. So we need to have a
Speaker 3: much better balance between left and right hemisphere if we're
Speaker 3: going to make it through the next forty years. As
Speaker 3: climate change is accelerating at paces, computers can't even
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