Science, Feeling, and the New Alchemy:
An Interview with Fred Alan Wolf
by Michael Peter Langevin
From Issue #90
The writings of Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., balance carefully on the thin boundary between science and spirituality. His insights into the relationship between quantum physics and the human mind have opened up possibilities of thought that few scientists are exploring. Deepak Chopra has called him "one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness," and his reputation as a lecturer who can make complex concepts clear to a general audience reaches to every major capital of the world. His first book of speculative physics, Space, Time, and Beyond, was described as one of the most important works ever published on cosmic unity, scientific theory, and the nature of consciousness—even though it was playfully written and illustrated with cartoons. His nine books since that time, including his latest, Matter into Feeling, have explored (in more conventional form) the subtle and profound connections among the seemingly disparate worlds of science, God, feelings, and alchemy. We talked with Dr. Wolf about some of his newest ideas, and came away with a lot to think about.
You call your work "new alchemy." Is this because you really are pushing the limits of traditional science and making connections that are a little bit further than some of the academic scientists?
Well, let's put it this way, current academic science proceeds in baby steps. People don't make giant leaps; it's rare. It happened with Einstein, but that's a very, very rare occurrence with science. Most of the time somebody offers a theory, and someone will look at it, and say, "You know, I can do something with this theory; I can see how to apply it to this, and I can change the language so that it applies to that." What I am doing is really a giant step. It's a much bigger risk, and less grounded on actual data. So I don't like to call it "science" in the sense of the science that is presently being practiced, which is fundamentally based on data. It's really speculative thought, and I admit that. I'm not trying to pull the wool over people's eyes or say I have this all figured out. I am just trying to say that I have had a number of experiences that bridged gaps between the world I inhabited as a theoretical scientist and the world I entered as a shamanic initiate, as a spiritual quester, as somebody on a path that involved mystical insights. They weren't the usual paths that a physicist would take to advance a career. As a result of getting these different kinds of insights, I began to see new ways of thinking about the old problems. And this new way of thinking I call "new alchemy." It's at the root of Kabbalah and of alchemy. These are the two fields of intellectual inquiry that most affected the work I am doing.
What field is your academic degree in?
Theoretical physics.
You've lectured around the world about your work, and your endorsements come from just about everyone across the board, from Larry Dossey to Deepak Chopra, Laura Lee to Joan Halifax. What do the other physicists think of your work?
Almost every time I am interviewed, I am asked that question. You know, it varies; I usually don't speak at universities, so I don't get direct feedback by appearing before a crowd of professors. If I did, then I would know by the way they respond. But I keep up with what's going on in physics literature, and I email people who have interesting papers and ask them for reprints of their papers. It's surprising how frequently I get a response, and how many people from different parts of the world recognize my name. They tell me they have read my books; they want to hear my comments. And these are physicists from respectable universities working at the edge of where quantum physics is being applied. At the National Institute of Standards in Technology, people have recognized me. These are the new breed of physicists that are just coming into the game, just getting started with their careers. They recognize me mainly from Taking the Quantum Leap, I think.
In your book, you talk about the premise that everything is connected, even to the point that we ar,e all together, a composite God-being of the universe.
There is a level of our existence where we are really just one being. That level is the fundamental level, the basis from which everything arises. David Bohm calls it "implicate order." The ancient mystics called it spirit. Even beyond spirit there is something that I call soul. I write about these ideas in my book The Spiritual Universe. The notion here is that there is one soul and this one soul is conscious—it is a conscious being that lives and is, in a sense, the whole universe. And this soul has the properties of being able to think, to reason, to feel, to have intuitions, just like we do. But it is on a much grander scale, almost inconceivable to us. The closest we can come to it is when we begin to observe things that are larger than ourselves, that are literally physically bigger—for example, the weather of the planet, the notion of great winds carrying us across the sea, the ocean itself. There is a sense that these things have a life or a presence or a persistence of their own, which I think are closer to the soul than the individual self-reflections on these very same things.
In humanity's case, did the separation of the universal consciousness come in tribal times when the ego existed to maintain the survival of the tribe?
There has always been, and there will continue to be a tribal ego. Even Americans have it, and there are warring factors in America trying to win over that tribal soul. We call them political parties. But even before the tribes got as big as America did, there was definitely a tribal soul. And the smaller the group, the easier it was to maintain the sense of being part of a tribal soul. There were groups that dreamt together as one soul, and they recognized that and understood it to such an extent that when they woke up in the morning, they would discuss the dream as if the dream happened to all of them, rather than to an individual. It didn't matter which person had the dream, the dream was a tribal dream, and it belonged to everybody and they recognized it as such and they added meaning to it as such. And that spirit of tribalness not only affected the way they dreamt, it affected everything in their lives. You see, there is a whole different way of thinking when you begin to think in terms of the whole being bigger than the sum of the parts.
Back to ego. Would you say the ego made a break from tribal to individual at some point in our history?
Yes, it's hard to say exactly when, although it is hinted at in Homer's works. This was first brought to my attention by Julian Jaynes, who wrote a marvelous book in the mid-seventies called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Really obscure title. It sold 50 or 60 thousand copies. It did so well, he was surprised himself. As soon as it appeared, it was attacked by nearly everybody, because he was saying something that didn't go along with the current anthropological thinking of the time. But it was quite brilliant. And he pointed to the change in narrative that occurs between the two books of Homer. There was a definite shift from global voice to the individual voice of the sailor himself. And that indicates a shift in consciousness, according to Jaynes. In the Bible, we can see it in Abraham's dealing with God on Mt Sinai. He goes up hearing God speak to him, and comes down with the message of God written on tablets, and suddenly no one is hearing the voice of God anymore (with a few exceptions). From that point onward, we are on our own. So this breakdown means we are no longer able to hear the voice of the bigger soul, the bigger picture. We are now more individuated, more graduated into our own self-reflections.
And is this when feelings arose?
Feelings really don't have any space and time location in the body. Emotions can be recognized as chemical reactions in parts of the brain and body, but feelings themselves, which come before emotions, don't have space/time coordination. They really aren't necessarily individual. So feelings are probably the language of the soul. Feelings are probably what the tribal peoples went on. And when we are looking at the nature of animal species that behave intelligently, like ants or flocks of birds, they are going on feeling.
How do feelings and physics then relate?
Well, that has been one of my biggest questions. I began looking at quantum physics as a possible language to describe and map feelings, thoughts, intuitions, and sensations. If I could see a commonality between all these different functions we have in being human, I could then see how the laws of transformation would work. In other words, how one could transform from feeling into thinking or how one could transform from sensing into intuiting, or whatever it is that you want to change. The reason that I was interested in the laws of transformation was because if we don't become aware of how transformation works (by the way, this is the basis of the new alchemy) we get caught in old mechanisms. The whole idea is to break through that. If I can find a common ground, is it conceivable that the laws of transformation of quantum physics can be applied to the same transformational properties as feelings, thoughts, intuitions, and sensations?
In the book, you say that sexua| feelings actually come from the future. That premise was a little bit of a stretch for me.
The sexua| part? Let me try to explain that a little more clearly. First of all, from a purely abstract overview, what is the purpose of sex? The answer seems to be to alter and transform the gene pool in such a way that new possibilities will emerge. I can't think of any other reason.
Well, it feels good! [laughter from both]
It's so important that it feels good. It causes arousal of the senses, in a very magnificent, mysterious way. No one can explain what that feeling is, but we all know what it is, and we all know how much we want to repeat it; it's an addiction practically. So it obviously must be very important for us to want to have that kind of experience. And what is the major creation of any living thing? Another living thing. So, if we take a quantum physical point of view that all time is stretched out before us, like a landscape and the future is already out there calling to us, then it would make sense that possible future children are calling back to their parents. That may be not only true for the children of physical parents, but also the children of the mind, in the same sense—the urge to write a book, or to paint a picture. "I am the bookÉwrite me." It's the same basic notion. When you look at artists or anybody who writes, there is a sexua| charge in that creative activity that is undeniable.
In the book you address religion, and you make a couple of decisions that almost seem arbitrary. One of them is that you define religion as a rising to obtain a state of bliss. The other point that you made was that all religion is a recognition of our connection to all living things. My question is, aren't there countless ways to define religion that are almost in opposition to that?
It's more or less my view of religion. I wouldn't say that is a universal explanation. I am sure that some people believe religion is something you have to suffer through. But my feeling about it is that the goal of religion seems to be the removal of human suffering. That is why people go to church—people seek to remove their suffering and obtain bliss. If you live your life in a way in which that is what you are doing, then you do this all the time. So all experience is essentially religious.
What role do stress and tension play in the ego and the observer creating the world around them?
They play the major roles. They are almost equivalent. The arrival of ego was the arrival of stress. The arrival of conscious awareness is also an arrival of stress. So stress is very natural. Anytime you say it's this and not that, stress is bound to rise.
Are stress-reduction techniques an attempt to return to "the one"?
Yes, that is fundamentally what they are trying to do. Now, whether they do it or not is a question. But the basis is to let go. Stress is released by letting go; it's pretty simple from that point of view. Letting go means letting go of any ideas you have of who or what you are, ideas about how much or how little you have, about letting go of ideas you have of how attractive or how ugly you are—let it go.
In the book you say that it's almost as simple as saying that life is a dream. Do you mean as we observe and as we focus our thoughts and feelings, we co-create the future or the moment?
Observing our thoughts and feelings will change them. It's like steering a boat down the river. As soon as you put the rudder in, you disturb the water's flow around you, and you make the ride different.
What are you working on now?
There are a lot of questions I am trying to answer in my next book: Why do we have a privacy of consciousness? If there is one mind, why do we have the realization of individual minds? Why do we believe in a global consciousness? What is the connection between the objective and subjective experience? We often have the intuition that what happens outside of us can never affect us; where did that come from? How does the self arise? Where does the distinction of self come from? What does it mean to have a self-to-soul communication? Where does the notion that we survive death come from? What is intuition? Why does intuition arise? What is the connection we feel with animals? These are some of the things I am exploring and trying to find by literally making a map that shows pictures of some of the things I have mentioned. I actually have made computer models of what a feeling looks like, what a sensation looks like, how a feeling changes into a sensation, what the difference between a self-conscious experience and a conscious experience is.
When do you hope to be finished with this?
I am just now putting what I hope are finishing touches on the technical paper that is associated with it. A book will come after that.
Well, we'll have to do another interview then! I know we could go on—we have barely scratched the surface—but what would you say is the key idea for understanding how all these ideas to our lives?
There is one key idea in all of this. That is the notion that there is a fundamental state of being, which I call the drone state. It's like when you hear bagpipers play, you hear the drone. It represents the basis that any comparison or any distinction can arise from; it comes about by distinguishing the drone vibrational pattern. For me this is very important, because the model that I am developing is based upon wave forms that interact with this drone state. So in a sense, we are singing our way through life.
