edgar-mitchell

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Following these experiences with my mother, Norbu, and Uri, it was
clear to me that not only individual belief but also human intention plays a
large, though quiet role in shaping our lives. Obviously my mother intended
to be healed, but not by what she feared were tainted forces. Uri
struggled to bring back my camera but couldn’t quite pull it off. Norbu
intended to heal others, and, unfortunately, deformed my ring in demonstrating
his range of capabilities.
Regardless of how one twists and turns deterministic theories of nature,
such theories cannot accommodate these events, as both volition and
intentionality are denied in the old scientific framework. My experiences
with children performing psychokinesis didn’t help validate the supernatural
theologies either, unless God was asleep at the switch and allowing Lucifer
to run the show. That meant the answers lay in natural realms, likely within
quantum mechanics and some new theory of mind.
The story of quantum mechanics in the last 100 years is of particular
importance to notions about consciousness. On the surface it may seem
strange that the nature of subatomic particles and light could be entangled
with functions of mind. But when we eventually understand the full story
of consciousness, it will have to be compatible with our knowledge of how
the physical universe is structured. And quantum mechanics is a key map
to a strange and invisible world that underpins everything we know. Research
carried out in the last few years (and discussed in subsequent chapters)
strongly suggests that the consciousness experienced by all living
systems is inextricably tied to a mysterious property of the quantum world
called nonlocality.
Quantum mechanics and general relativity have produced the best
understanding we have to date of atomic-scale and cosmic-scale processes
of the universe, respectively, yet there are particular conflicts between
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