4. I’d like to quote from a paper on Bell’s Theorem by Gary Felder:

There are many aspects of modern physics which seem to violate our intuition. The classical theory of physics which was held from the time of Newton until this century provided an orderly model of a world made of objects moving around and pushing each other around in predictable ways. The mathematics could be difficult, but the basic ideas meshed with our common sense notions of how the world works. Starting at the beginning of this century, our physical theories began to include aspects which ran counter to that common sense, and yet the theories consistently made accurate predictions of experiments which could not be explained with Newtonian physics. Gradually, and despite much resistance, physicists have been forced to accept these new results.

In this paper I am going to discuss one of those results, called nonlocality. Its converse, locality, is the principle that an event which happens at one place can't instantaneously affect an event someplace else. For example: if a distant star were to suddenly blow up tomorrow, the principle of locality says that there is no way we could know about this event or be affected by it until something, e.g. a light beam, had time to travel from that star to Earth. Aside from being intuitive, locality seems to be necessary for relativity theory, which predicts that no signal can propagate faster than the speed of light.

In 1935, several years after quantum mechanics had been developed, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen published a paper which showed that under certain circumstances quantum mechanics predicted a breakdown of locality. Specifically they showed that according to the theory I could put a particle in a measuring device at one location and, simply by doing that, instantly influence another particle arbitrarily far away. They refused to believe that this effect, which Einstein later called "spooky action at a distance," could really happen, and thus viewed it as evidence that quantum mechanics was incomplete. Almost thirty years later J.S. Bell proved that the results predicted by quantum mechanics could not be explained by any theory which preserved locality. In other words, if you set up an experiment like that described by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, and you get the results predicted by quantum mechanics, then there is no way that locality could be true. Years later the experiments were done, and the predictions of quantum mechanics proved to be accurate. In short, locality is dead.

5. The reason I bring this up is to help us all start differentiating between magical thinking and the true magic of the universe.

6. Here we are practicing the Magi Process, and being told that it will or might have, some effect upon what we usually call the real world.

7. All of our work—whether it is IKH, IM, the W/R or the Magi Process—starts from one basic assumption which I have never really stated clearly. Namely: what is true of the universe, even in its most unusual aspects, is also true of us.

8. In other words, the playing out of non-locality: in us. The truth of the holographic viewpoint: in us as well. Quantum strings at the basis of matter: in us again….And so on.

9. This is because I see ourselves and the universe as being made of one thing, both metaphorically and actually. Materially we are one because we are made of the same ingredients, iron, hydrogen, carbon, and so on, as are the stars and galaxies. We are also one in intent and spirit: when not thwarted by our small model of egoic thinking, reality reappears to us as a single thing; the forest, the trees, the people, the rocks, the air, the streams: all actually, not just poetically, one.

10. Changing consciousness brings different conclusions as to the nature of the world.

11. This means the laws of quantum physics play outæin yet unseen waysæin the macro world of our bodies and lives as well as in cloud chambers and cyclotrons.

12. How do we separate this truly magical condition with our tendency as human beings to engage in magical thinking in order to save ourselves from suffering?

13. I remember many years ago meditating with a group that believed that Christ had returned and was living in London and would reveal himself if enough of the media searched honestly for him. These mediations were truly amazing. At one with the group mind that believe this and hoped it would be true, we were filled with love and expectation. Not a bad thing, all things considered. But when Jesus was not forthcoming, there was no place to goæexcept back into inquiring into the nature of reality, my own neurosis and suffering.

14. In the same way, I used to see ads for meditations that would help me live as long as a particular master, who lived in the Himalayas, ate nothing but sunlight, and was alive for over four-hundred years.

15. Of course, our tendency toward magical thinking starts much earlier than that, as a way to cope with a world that changes in unpredictable and frightening ways. Not all primitive superstition can be glamorized as an unspoiled vision of the extended world: sometimes superstitions are just meant to keep the boogie-man under the bed away.

16. Magical thinking exists to save ourselves from the unknown. And while these examples are rather dramatic, we all use magical thinking to save ourselves many times during the day. When it is in gross form, we call it superstition. When it is in its usual form, we call it “our life,” and the millions of times per day our brains think up new “as ifs,” form a foam of consciousness that we often mistake for what the world is really like.

17. So how is the Magi Process different? Is it different? People who have worked with this process for almost two years believe that it is profoundly different. But part of the answer must be that we don’t yet know exactly how and in what ways the Process is different.

18. What we do know however, is how to approach the question, which cannot be solved either by mathematics or physics (yet), but by clear-eyed observation and work on the self so that we see more and more clearly how both the Magi Process and the world works.

19. This work is the same as all other true spiritual work: to lay down our preconceptions, our attachment to what was and increase our connection to What-Is.

20. Only by doing the Process and not just thinking about it, will you discover its truth. This Process will change you.

21. One more piece of science. A number of years ago a scientist at Princeton named Robert Jahn decided to see if mind, consciousness itself, could effect physical systems.

22. To that end, he created several tests. One involved ball bearings that fell down a slope with a series of nails embedded in it, which made the bearings move in chaotic or random patterns.

23. Statistics has shown us that when things are allowed to move randomly, they will form a bell curve: the highest percentage of pieces falling in the middle, with lesser numbers at the beginning and end. While from fall to fall, trial to trial, the pattern could differ, statistically, when all of them were added up and graphed, a perfect bell curve was formed.

24. He then had people sitting in front of this mechanism thinking thoughts like “more to the right!” or “more to the left.” After hundreds of trials, there was a statistical difference in the bell curve. Something had changed the nature of nature.

25. Several years later, emerging from this idea, a group of scientists and other interested parties formed the Global Consciousness Project. (This project was pointed out to me by Robert Cliché, a second-year student.)

26. They did away with the hardware and in its stead, created a little processor that put out random numbers. They placed many of these processors in different parts of the world and began charting the numbers.

27. If statistics held, these random numbers, though different from moment to moment, would statistically be graph-able as a bell curve.

28. Sure enough they were. However, statistical anomalies began to creep into the system. They found that from fractions of seconds to fifteen minutes before an event of global importance, the graph changed in some manner.

29. The bell-curve got skewed in some manner.

30. This was not a local event: the processors near the event were not the ones to change, or the only ones that changed. Instead, the change appeared in many locations and statistically added up to a “bump” in the bell curve.

31. This means that whatever changed the curve was not a “force” as we usually understand it: a force is local!

32. How does consciousness change the world? We are still finding out. And does consciousness operate in linear time? Remember: the bell-curve got skewed before an important event!

33. In the case of the Magi Process, one thing we notice is the language: it is closer to poetry than prose; the statements run the gamut from easily understandable to somewhat obscure and finally, the reason these statements appear in a specific order is not entirely clear.

34. Yet, I can tell youæand others who have worked with the process can tell youæthat the order is important; that some sort of deeper order is being revealed and worked with in a nonlinear way.

35. We might even say that the language of the Magi Process is nonlocal. It is not “about” anything but the play of the world. But being about the play of the world it is tapping into a very deep strain of truth and alerting us to the way the world works.

36. It requires a bit of courage and persistence to do, but once done, has a strangely universal feel. It feels true and as if you have your hands on the machinery of the material plane.

37. Perhaps all visionary language has something in common with the Process. Maybe through the Process we will begin to understand earlier forms of working with the world.

38. In any case, working on the self will help heal our magical thinking and allow us to see the true magic of the universe, where many things can be in one place at one time; where many times can be in one place; where a form of marriage between inner and outer, a marriage or commitment that is absolute, can guide our intelligence to a new orderm of being and a new set of possibilities and a new way to help a world that is either drowning or swimming or just going on.

39. Finally, these quotes:

The possibility of affecting objects without touching them just exploded physicalism and materialism. It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes’ "ghost in the machine" in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: he exorcised the machine and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there. And the mind has mystical properties.

—Noam Chomsky

There are "thin places" in the world, where connections are made and amazing flows occur. These are known in all cultures, but seldom discussed because we know so little. In some places the feeling is closer to the people, and the experiences more real, so that stories are told today, and visions are still present. The Gaelic name for the thin places is CAOL ÁIT*, and this is a living and natural part of life. I think it has become clear to all of us that the more we do this, the more we feel at home in our life, the more our personal suffering touches something universal, that not only connects us to other people and the planet, but puts our life into perspective.

—From the Navajo

© 2005 Jason Shulman & A Society of Souls