We know the universe is the vast context of physical reality, a great void stretching into unimaginable distances. But experimental evidence has now shown the world is very different. It is a ‘relative world’, meaning it is only real where you have observed it. It means there is an outside, just as depicted in the famous Flammarion engraving. Here we explain this avant-garde physics and demonstrate the extraordinary implications. One is constantly interacting with the destiny of the relative world, all over.
Scientific Revolution
So the new physics shows us something quite unbelievable. ‘Out there’, just beyond the limit of perception the world is unreal, just mathematical patterns. As told by the pioneering physicist Bryce DeWitt:
Wrenched out of centuries-old thought patterns, physicists of a century ago found themselves compelled to embrace a new metaphysics. The distress which this reorientation caused continues to the present day. Basically physicists have suffered a severe loss: their hold on reality. (1971, 274)
Now, finally, the meaning of the new metaphysics is emerging. The world is real – determinate – only where observed.
The indeterminate world was one of the original discoveries of quantum theory. This is the famous ‘Copenhagen interpretation’, developed in the early days of quantum theory. But it was just too weird. Only now is it beginning to make sense. It is a ‘holographic universe’. As with each great change to the scientific worldview it sounds too crazy. Which is why each one becomes a Scientific Revolution.
The Personal World
The new physics means the world is very different to our current understanding. As the eminent theoretical physicist John Wheeler stated in the light of quantum experiments:
No phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. (1969)
Hence the indeterminate world. This is the meaning of the standard textbook definition of quantum theory, the ‘von Neumann-Dirac formulation of quantum mechanics’.
‘QBism’, the modern update of the Copenhagen interpretation, takes this to its logical conclusion. Only where it is experienced is the world real — for each individual. This is the great scientific revolution of our time. As the authors state:
This means that reality differs from one agent to another. This is not as strange as it may sound. What is real for an agent rests entirely on what that agent experiences, and different agents have different experiences. (Fuchs et al., 2013, 3)
In other words the world is personal. Each person lives in their unique, personal, version of the physical world. We live in different parallel realities. Each one is a different relative world – defined relative to that individual agent.
Obviously, our personal relative worlds are very similar. And of course they overlap and coincide. But with regard to the future there may be huge differences. It is a most disturbing idea but the advantages are out of this world. This is your own personal journey through infinite possibility, and you are the pilot.
Now there is physical evidence. The idea of the personal world has been largely ignored as an inexplicable weirdness in the science for some time. But this has now been demonstrated in a leading edge physics experiment (Proietti et al., 2019). The breakthrough concept presented here is the explanation, the ‘ontology’. This is described in The Personal World. There is also powerful theoretical evidence as demonstrated by the ‘holographic universe’. This is a pretty sure thing.
The New Empowerment
In the personal world, one’s relationship with the world is fundamentally different. The personal world is only real where it has been observed. So if you alter which version of an observation is made, this alters which version of the observed event becomes real in this world. Fantastic though it sounds, this is exactly what happens with ‘confirmation bias’.
Confirmation bias is when we see what we expect to see rather than what is really there. Essentially, the unconscious alters the observation so that it confirms what is expected. In the ordinary world this just means my perception is off. But in the personal world, defined only by my observations, something very strange happens instead. That altered observation is what comes to define my world. This is the direct and inevitable implication of the physics of the relative world.
The immediate and obvious point is simple. Positive thinking is absolutely essential for a happy and successful life. Anticipating happiness, health and success rather than expecting the worst is vital because either way these are self-fulfilling prophesies, at large. So not just in terms of psychology. The physics of the way this works is described in The New Empowerment.
The Game of Life
The extraordinary implication is that expectations become ‘strange attractors‘ in the personal world. This simply means that the reality tends to gravitate toward these outcomes.
All this operates unconsciously. But an new empowerment arises because we can take charge of this process. We can generate and strengthen expectations deliberately. This is done through ‘creative visualisation‘, a well-known practice. This means one deliberately formulates images of desired events in the future. When these are brought to mind repeatedly, this induces expectation for these types of events. A strange attractor is created. Affirmations, meaning statements about desired events in the future, can also be very powerful.
This explains how manifestation works in the sense of the ‘law of attraction’. This is a modern version of the ancient mystical idea of ‘sympathetic magic’ or ‘like attracts like’. The idea is that you can make things arrive in your physical reality as a result of just picturing it. This is twaddle in the ordinary world, but in the relative world it works. But not because anything is magically attracted to you. It is simply that when observations are altered because of the expectation, the path into the future is altered. The visualising simply generates expectation. The attraction in operation is that you tend to gravitate to a future in which the expectation is fulfilled. You pilot your way through the infinite possibilities.
If we can shape our futures in this way it means life really is a game. Finally, we now know how it works. It should be a lot easier to win now we know what we are doing. You are the wizard behind the curtain. The concept of strange attractors and the technology of visualisation are described in The Game of Life.
Quantum Karma
A further extraordinary implication is the other side of this coin. ‘Karma’ is a real phenomenon. This is a longstanding concept of cause and effect in Eastern religions. Good actions generate a good future and bad actions a bad one. They were right. Unconscious expectations are constantly being generated by what one does and how one thinks. And quite unbidden these become powerful strange attractors in the personal world. Thus karma operates because we sow the seeds and reap the harvest of our actions and intents. Effectively, the way one treats the world is the way the world treats oneself.
The only way to do really well in the light of karma is ‘enlightened self-interest’, meaning doing well by doing good. This is Right Action in the Buddhist world, treating others as you would wish to be treated. Loving thy neighbour as thyself. The new worldview means there is an entirely selfish reason to do as you would be done by. Good actions really do generate a good future, and bad actions a bad one. So in principle, at least, we want to do well by others. Or at least do no harm. This is how to play the game of life to win. This way the personal world gets better and better. Now we have the logic.
So the universal spiritual principle that the great religions promoted is totally real. This is just how a personal world works. The Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path is the operating manual for this type of world. These are real operational principles. But dogma has no place here. This is simply hard rational logic. The full impact of karma is described in Quantum Karma.
The New Enlightenment
This new understanding has the potential to resolve the truly intractable problems in our global culture. As stated by the pioneering environmentalist Alexander King:
Any durable solution to [humanity’s] external and internal problems can only come from evolution beyond the egoism that motivates every individual. … This seems the only hope of breaking the impasse of both great danger and great promise, in which mankind is presently constrained. (2006, 22)
This is the effect of the new worldview. Karma means that enlightened self-interest is the only rational behaviour. Otherwise one is constantly poisoning one’s future, not only locally but globally.
The inner transformation is the realisation is that the self and the world are not separate in the way we have imagined. This is central to the great spiritual path. Most of us cannot really see the point. But in the personal world there is a powerful motive for such an evolution. You are the pilot of your personal world. Treating others poorly is driving the personal world onto the rocks. But skilful living brings about extraordinary results.
Without this knowledge we have been playing with half a deck. Should we manage to enable this new worldview we have a decent chance of surviving this century as a successful species on a viable planet. We have a crack at the best possible future. A glorious new age is a real possibility as described in The New Enlightenment.
A Marvellous Vision
We have discovered that the the universe is even more extraordinary and mysterious than we could have imagined. We live in personal parallel relative worlds. And each one of us is a direct participant in the global story of their personal world. We have been pilots asleep at the wheel. As stated by the great physicist John Wheeler:
We are participants in bringing into being not only the near and here, but the far away and long ago. (Redfern, 2006)
He coined the term ‘the participatory universe’, meaning that we are not irrelevant bystanders. As philosopher of science Dirk Meijer writes in the conclusion of his article on Wheeler:
To know that all of us have a role to play in the universe, should matter to each and every one of us and motivate us to take our personal responsibility. When we become real participants, we may truly make our world, and the universe as a whole, a better place for ourselves and all that is living. Ultimately we may even understand our own position in this grand design. (2015, 20)
He ends with Wheeler’s wonderful and famously optimistic insight:
Someday we’ll understand the whole thing as one single marvelous vision that will seem so overwhelmingly simple and beautiful that we may say to each other: ‘Oh, how could we have been so stupid for so long? How could it have been otherwise! (2002).
As physicist David Deutsch comments:
In other words, the problem has been not that the world is so complex that we cannot understand why it looks as it does, but it is that it is so simple that we cannot yet understand it. But this will be noticeable only with hindsight. (2011, 104)
The full spiritual implications are described in A Marvellous Vision.
The Avant Garde
For centuries, art in the western world was stuck in literal representation. The standard form, painting what the eye sees, was endlessly refined. The avant-garde revolution broke this static mould. First impressionism and then abstract art ushered in an experimental new age. New modes of expression emerged, with a new type of social impact. Now in the modern world there is an unexpected parallel in the science of physics.
The modern scientific worldview has always been committed to a type of literal representation. This is ‘physicalism‘, the absolute requirement for physical representation. But the revelations of quantum theory mean this does not work. There is nothing really there unless you look, so something non-physical is going on. But physical reality is obviously real ‘anyway’. The resolution is that both types of world are real. There is no need to give up our current scientific worldview of the ordinary world. This remains the basis. The personal world is like a special effect in the universe of all possible physical worlds.
This is what has been discovered but not recognised. There are two different types of world, and the quantum theory describes the way they work together. This is the resolution of the famous ‘measurement problem’ in quantum theory. The problem is there are two different ‘dynamics’, two different ways the physical reality changes over time. And they are incompatible. They cannot both be true in the same world. The answer is that these are the dynamics of the two different types of world.
It means the world objectively and the world subjectively are physically different. Since this is precisely what is forbidden in physicalism, it takes a scientific revolution for this to be taken seriously. The result is a new worldview. The impact on our human societies has the potential to generate of a whole new age.
The physics of all this is addressed in some detail in The Avant Garde. This describes exactly how the personal world works and the new empowerment operates.
About
If we can adopt this new worldview we have the means to transform our human condition. We discover how to play the game of life for true success, and our race survives to become tremendously successful. The objective of this website is to lay out the principles of the established physics that lead to this new worldview. There is nothing to believe here, or take on faith. What is presented is simply a logical analysis which you can follow from beginning to end. You have already seen the outline.
This new concept demonstrates the ontology of the personal world as a direct implication of the known physics. The potential benefits are extraordinary. This provides us with new intelligence about how to make life work. It also provides us with the chance for a whole new era of cooperation and intelligence in the human culture. A better brighter age is dawning if we can take it on.
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