Quantum Physicist Fred Alan Wolf on Consciousness & The Afterlife

—Bart Brodsky

Bart Brodsky: Some of the most exciting work in philosophy has been done by theoretical physicists over the last generation, and you are among those people who are pushing the limits of science and philosophy, taking them into wonderful new directions. Unlike some scientists, you're not shy about tackling big philosophical questions: What is soul? Is there an afterlife? How is it that you're so brave, or maybe that other scientists are so shy?

Fred Alan Wolf: Oh, I think it's pretty simple. Since I do not belong to any institution, since I've escaped the institutionalized formats of collegium, I have no responsibility to anybody other than to myself for what I say. So, since I don't have to play a particular role, "he supports this, we can count on him for that," and "he thinks this way, so he fits into that category, and that fits into this organization, we can get money for this...," that's what universities do.

BB: You don't have to play politics.

FAW: I can say whatever I damn well please! I base all the things I say on my research, my thinking, as good as it is or as poor as it is, 'cause I'm not always right. I've been trained to think like a scientist. Whenever I look at a problem, regardless of how difficult it is, or what it is, I try to approach it as if it were something of a scientific discovery. I try to be logical and offer things which have some basis in what we can experience.

BB: Quantum experiments by physicists have suggested that the decisions of the experimenter play a role in the outcome of the experiment. In other words, mind and matter are somehow intertwined. And that seems to indicate that consciousness is a fundamental component or aspect of the universe. Can you break that down for us? Or am I on the wrong track here?

FAW: No, you're not. It's a well-known chain of thinking [in] the popularization of quantum physics. Not in a bragging sense, but I will take all of the credit in the world for making quantum physics a world subject, part of the way we think. The first [popular] book on quantum physics wasn't The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, it was Space, Time and Beyond, which was a cartoon book aimed at making the ideas of modern physics and quantum physics and spirituality accessible to everybody through cartoons! I wasn't the only person thinking that way—Fritjof was thinking that way, other people were thinking that way—but this was part of a wave. There were too many good things in quantum physics to keep it from spreading out.

And I'd also put in a proviso here. There's always a downside and an upside to everything you put out in the universe. There's always something which is good about it and something which is stupid about it. The stupid about it, or the bad about it is that many people are quoting things in quantum physics, "Oh, this proves this," "This proves the Law of Attraction," "This proves that mind creates the universe!" and all kinds of crazy things! People are selling quantum snake oil and saying, "This is what's really going on here," or "After you die you're going to exist and go to heaven!" All kinds of insane statements that people are claiming quantum physics says, because they have a very limited understanding. They may have heard some things that I've said in a lecture and taken it out of context and then blown it up into the main thrust of their money-making proposition.

BB: Some of scientists who are critical of the wild aspects of quantum physics hope that a classical interpretation will come along, and that everything will make sense again. Where do you stand on that?

FAW: I think it's a wonderful dream, but it's basically nonsense. There is no classical understanding, and there are very good reasons for it. And it has nothing to do with the current theories of physics; it has to do with their experimental observations of reality. So, it's experiment that leads us to think in terms of quantum physics. It's not really the theories which lead us into these far-flung, maybe wonderful—or terrible—interpretations, depending on what side of the fence you're on.

BB: In the movie The Secret, in which you appeared, there seems to be a suggestion that one can use the power of the mind to bend reality, almost mind over matter. You've written some blogs about that. Would you explore that here?

FAW: Unfortunately, I still get emails from people saying, "All the quantum physicists are saying this...." And I say, which quantum physicists? There's only two physicists in the movie, and neither one of us say the things that you claim we've said. The other guys [in the movie], who I consider to be motivational speakers at best, snake oil salesmen at worst, are claiming [these] things. I must say, I didn't have full understanding of why I was going to be in the movie. I didn't understand I was going to be used as a reinforcement, a hunk of concrete, on which to stand the Law of Attraction, which is, you know, nonsense. So I take responsibility for my actions there and try to explain to people that the basic of understanding that we physicists have of how the universe works is not based upon the Law of Attraction. What it is based upon is that there seems to be the presence of something called Mind, or something outside of the physical world, which seems to be needed or present in order to explain, completely, the observations of reality that we have been able to carry out up to now. And, there seems to be no way to get out of that. People have tried to make everything mechanical, but it's not a mechanical universe, after all. And once you make that statement that there is something called a "Universal Mind," or you might call it "a quantum field of action," or some presence which is not material, but which is capable of shaping matter, or even giving birth to matter, in terms of the way fundamental physics works, you then run into the so-called dangers that people think, "Well, if the universe can do it, then why can't I?" And there are many reasons why you can't! This is where all the hoopla and trouble starts.

BB: This begs the question: What is a non-physicist supposed to take away from the general conception of a "Universal Mind? How are we to apply that principle in our own lives?

FAW: You know, I wish I could tell you a good answer to it. If the idea of a universal mind expands your thinking—whether it's true or not, I won't even get into it now—gives you a sense of well-being which you didn't have before, or restores your faith in whatever ideals you might have, whether they're Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever philosophy you use for a spiritual belief, then it's a good thing. If you are a total materialist and you only believe in hard-core material reality, then you must take into consideration the fact that what we physicists talk about which says that can't be the true picture. That picture is fraught with errors, experimental errors which show that picture can't be true.

BB: You've taken me back to my Philosophy 1 class where we asked, "Can mind exist without physical form?" Can it?

FAW: It's in a sense almost a meaningless question. What would it mean to have mind without physical form? If there's nothing physical, then what is mind going to be thinking about? The function of mind is to make subjects, objects, verbs and nouns, motion and not-motion—there's a play, a drama, which unfolds for mind. The only way it's going to make any sense is if there's some material which is NOT mind in order for mind to perceive it. So, matter and mind, rather than [existing] without each other, must [come into being] together. Einstein, when he was discovering general relativity, said that up to the theory of relativity it was believed that space was its own thing, time was it's own thing, and matter was it's own thing. But with relativity we now know that space, time, and matter can't exist independently of each other, and they're part of one unity which springs up at the same time. They can't separate from each other. And I think that mind and matter have a similar kind of role that they play. You can't separate them. Mind without matter really doesn't make any sense. There might be something which exists that's neither mind nor matter, but in order for it to be conscious, there must be matter.

BB: Does physics instruct us about the possibility of an afterlife?

FAW: Well, it doesn't really tell us anything about an afterlife. I've been playing with the idea and trying to see if there's anything I can find in physics which could lead us to believe that there's an afterlife. I personally think there's an afterlife. I've had experiences which tell me that there's an afterlife. But in terms of what the quantum physics of an afterlife is, that's a little bit trickier.

BB: Haven't you declared in your writing that the soul is immortal?

FAW: In my book The Spiritual Universe, I gave a quantum-physical model of the soul. It's a very loose, probably incorrect model, but it gives one at least a picture that transcends the models—well there are no models! Before I did this, the only model we had was one the Keppler gave back in the 16th, 17th century. After that, people simply just said "soul" without really knowing what they were talking about. They would use soul and spirit and self interchangeably.

BB: What is the difference, in a nutshell, between soul and spirit and self?

FAW: That's exactly what I wrote about! It seems that the immortality of the soul seems to be connected with the immortality of the universe. The universe—space, time, and matter—all came in to being, and it's going to go out of being some way. We don't know exactly how it's going to go, whether a big  crunch—there are current theories now that the collision of two or more "branes" collided and produced the universe, and matter starts diffusing...

BB: This gets to the "multiverse" concept...

FAW: Multiverse, yes. There's all kinds of different pictures that are coming down through brane theory and string theory that are very fantastic. Regardless, we believe that there was a beginning and we believe there's going to be an end. And when we say the beginning, we don't mean like 3 o'clock in the afternoon in began and at 6 o'clock in the evening it's going to end, and meanwhile our clocks are still ticking. We mean that the clocks will end—time, space, and matter all will no longer be. And so we won't have anything called time, or anything ticking, or any notion of something moving or passing from one to another.

BB: It's a little bit like Shakespeare's "We are the stuff that dreams are made of."

FAW: Right. It's very dreamy in that kind of sense. And I attribute the soul to that kind of consciousness which sprang into existence with the material world at that birth. And it goes out of existence when the material world goes out of existence. So, soul is intimately connected with the universe. Soul and universe are, well—if you want to call the material part of the universe matter, then the soul part of the universe, that's the mind-matter interface.

BB: Mind and matter intertwined.

FAW: That's right.

BB: Then is spirit beyond this?

FAW: Spirit is something which is contained within the vibrational fields which exist before there is even space, time, and matter. So spirit is the essence of what we call "the mind of God," or the vibrational patterns of the mind of God. Spirit is the essence, the living field—living and dead, it's paradoxical—the living field which is energetic and there's no energy, because it's not material.

BB: Self, then, would be the individual personality.

FAW: We'll get in to that. Soul, in order to become conscious, things have to form loops. Consciousness requires kind of a reflection or a mirroring. You can't have consciousness without something reflecting. So, there's a looping going on, a reflection which goes from the big bang to the big crunch, we'll call it. This is outside space and time, but it's bouncing around in that universe which, in a sense, the beginning and the end are already out there. And that reflection process is soul. Self is a reflection of that process, but it's a reflection in matter, and matter is something which is also a reflection process, but not of the soul, but of the spirit, and has to do with the fact that once you put in boundary conditions, like a beginning and an end, that sets up certain wave patterns, standing wave patterns, which are string patterns, and that's where we think particles come from. In the beginning of the universe when the strings first started going, these strings got caught into material substance, and that's where particles began to emerge, and the process keeps going. Particles are constantly emerging and disappearing and the universe is a constant bubbling dance of these things going on. But some of these things remained, and that's what has made up the material world. Now, that is matter, kind of a reflection of spirit. Self is a reflection of soul within the matter itself. Once the material field is formed, then it begins to reflect the soul pattern. So we have reflection upon reflection upon reflection. So self is a reflection of a reflection, so it's more of an illusion than anything else. That's why Buddhists talk about the illusion of "I" or the self.

BB: And yet, we're so convinced that it's the most real!

FAW: It's the one that seems so very real to us. But what I would say, and what great wisdom teachers say, the illusion is calling that your self, as distinct from being anyone else's self. That "selfing" process is the same in all individuals, so everybody is feeling the same thing going on. There's only one soul, and all of us reflecting that process and calling that reflection an "I," but that's an illusion.

BB: Have you been influenced very much by Eastern philosophy?

FAW: I've read Buddhist and Hindu thought, certainly, but it's really Kabbalah that's influenced me the most. Western mysticism, not Eastern.

BB: Let me ask a hypothetical question. If you were seriously ill or contemplating mortality, would you be willing to upload your consciousness into a computer?

FAW: I'd upload my memory, whatever I know, into a computer. No problem doing that. But that's not my consciousness. Consciousness has nothing to do with that.

BB: Do you think that computers will achieve self-awareness?

FAW: I think that computers are capable of reflecting soul—I don't see any reason why not—and therefore would appear to have the same ego-centric consciousness that we have. So, I don't see any reason why they can't, 'cause there's nothing special about that. There may be, however, that life itself has something to do with the process, so that once a computer begins to do this process, it may actually start to look towards creating material substrates which are close the molecular substrates which are needed for the living cellular reproduction, and so forth. It may start making its own DNA.

BB: Would you want to extend your life by transferring your brain to a younger cloned body?

FAW: None of that makes any sense, because I'm already there! I'm already in your body. I'm in you, I'm in the computer already. Anywhere there's any intelligence, I exist everywhere. The only difference between that and you is that I'm holding this phone and you—

BB: What a wonderful answer! You've already identified with the entire universe!

FAW: We already are! There's nothing else! The old thinking is that somehow "I" am contained in this body, and that this body houses a little guy running around inside me somewhere, probably in my brain, I suppose, or down in my nervous system, my little ego, my little "Freddy." And then you say, "Does little Freddy want to go into a computer?" and little Freddy says, "Oh yeah, I'd like to live forever, yeah!"

BB: Fred, in the course of this interview you've expanded my mind from my own little office to the great multiverse, so I can't thank you enough! Is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn't?

FAW: No, for the purposes of this interview I think you covered all the good questions.

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