Reviewed by Robert A. Charman
This review first appeared in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol 80(2).
Massimo Teodorani is an Italian astrophysicist and science writer who obtained his PhD from the University of Bologna on the physics of massive binary stars. He is the author of 17 books (the previous two being Intelligence Beyond Earth, 2013, and The Creative Mind, 2009). He has published many articles on subjects across the science spectrum from quantum physics to bioastronomy (the search for extraterrestrial life within the ongoing SETI Project) and the physics of strange atmospheric phenomena such as the Norwegian Hessdalen Lights. His inquiry as to the nature of the universe has led him to the hypothesis that matter and consciousness are one at quantum level. Mainstream scientific inquiry limits itself to observing and measuring the universe as a separate something that exists independent of ourselves, but Teodorani insists that this stance can only ever provide partial insights into the whole. For insights to include the whole, we must include the nature of our personal consciousness. In this speculative 15-chapter book he advances “several rather courageous hypotheses” into how quantum physics can marry consciousness with the universe.
As far as I can understand his argument, he proposes that we are quantum beings by nature and in the first part of the book he sets out some basic quantum physics (including formulae) concerning the collapse of the wavefunction, quantum uncertainty, Schrödinger’s equation and the live/dead cat-in-a-box paradox (which always reminds me of the Dead Parrot Sketch), the double-slit experiment, particle entanglement and their continuing relationship as an instantaneous non-local interaction, regardless of their distance apart. All this is interpreted in terms of David Bohm’s theory of the universe in which our everyday world of time, objects, space and causality is termed the Explicate Order governed by the underlying quantum nature of matter, mind and consciousness united in a ‘quantum potential’ or Q which is termed the Implicate Order. According to Teodorani, the Explicate Order is real in the sense of actual existence and the Implicate Order is one of virtual existence that ‘allows’ something to exist. In Bohm’s theory, ‘consciousness’ is not some immaterial entity but a quantum entity, and Teodorani interprets this to mean that consciousness has the property of having a ‘non-local radio’ connectedness with the entire universe. As Teodorani sees it, the purpose of the Universe as a whole is to exist in reality, as otherwise it could not become aware of itself. The quantum ‘spirit’ or consciousness is related to material reality through the DNA information that constructs the brain and its interconnecting brainwave activity. Teodorani suggests that the spirit is “actually located inside the quantum ‘cloud of probability’ that our instruments cannot see but the spirit can see what is happening while inside the probability cloud so doesn’t need to collapse it”. The spirit engages with matter in the form of the brain but — “being made of pixels of consciousness” — is governed not by matter but by information, so that matter obeys the spirit’s orders and is bound to the pixels of consciousness “whose main software is the Pauli Exclusion Principle” (I got more than a bit lost here).
All this speculation is bound up with the late Karl Pribram’s model of holonomic brain processing (developed in association with Bohm) in which the dynamic electrical fields that surround the fine structure of dendritic ‘trees’ can influence other dendritic trees of nearby neurons that are in nonlocal contact, creating a holographic consciousness in which the part contains the whole. Dennis Gabor — who invented the hologram — described this information transfer in terms of ‘holons’ of information, as in the quantum holography that is the basis of MRI, PET and other image processing techniques. Central to Teodorani’s speculations is the concept of the quantum brain-quantum mind as developed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, based upon the theory that the microtubules that form the skeletal structure (cytoskeleton) of all cells (including neurons) possess the property of collapsing the wave function into informational computation creating consciousness. This is known as “Orchestrated Objective Reduction” (OrchOR).
The tubulin protein units that build the hollow structure of the microtubules are electrical dipoles of opposite end charges that, in their theory, can act as 1 or 0 ‘bits’. Each collapse of the wave-function by the microtubules generates moments of consciousness, and the greater the concentration of microtubules the greater the level of consciousness. Teodorani estimates that as each moment of consciousness in humans lasts for one sixtieth of a second about one million moments of consciousness per day requires about one million microtubule wave-function collapses to be experienced as conscious continuity. Teodorani suggests that amoebae, which have many fewer microtubules, probably experience no more than a dozen such moments of consciousness per day (hopefully, they fully treasure each one). According to Teodorani, “microtubules are real units with their own intelligence”, as demonstrated by the behaviour of single-celled, ciliated, organisms of the paramecium genus that can swim in any direction, learn, avoid predators and reproduce without the need for synapses and neuronal circuitry that are considered by mainstream neuroscience to be essential for learned behaviour. This quantum brain-quantum conscious mind interpretation of microtubule function is rejected by mainstream physicists and neuroscientists, although it does have some supporters.
All this leads us to what, for Teodorani, is his central concept of “The Big Library Hypothesis” (BLH) which, he says, is the Cosmic Library that exists everywhere throughout the universe, including the quantum vacuum and all atoms with their subatomic units (Laszlo’s Akashic Field theory is a close analogy). Where do we as individuals fit into the BLH? Teodorani’s scenario is along the following lines: the essential ‘spirit’ of each of us exists in the form of a quantum field that can become manifest as consciousness in any biosystem that has the property of quantum coherence (such as the brain, though mainstream physicists say that such neural coherence is not possible); it acts as the ‘terminal’ of a big ‘supercomputer’ to work as software controlling the hardware of the body to collect information about the physical world. This information is automatically and non-locally ‘uploaded’ on a ‘hard disc’ located in the quantum vacuum at the Planck scale of 10–34 cm. All thoughts and emotions are non-locally uploaded “like an Internet website by every single spirit”. This creates an ever-expanding ‘cosmic database’ that records all sentient life — as long as this includes emotion as a strong factor; if there is no emotion associated with an event, then that event is not recorded. The hypothesis is that ‘the void’ contains — or is — the memory of everything thought and felt by everyone downloaded into the universal Big Library (BL) of pure information. Teodorani says that “if information directing the orchestra doesn’t exist, the Universe would have no reason to exist as well”. It is special access to the BL that animates great scientists, artists, writers, poets and mystics through their BL spiritual terminals. He takes as an example of shamanic communication with the BL the Dogon people’s apparent awareness that Sirius-A, the brightest star in the sky, had a Sirius-B companion as a binary star system (Sirius-B was discovered by telescope in 1862). It is only fair to add that how they acquired this knowledge when tiny Sirius-B is invisible to the naked eye, whether shamanically or being informed by anthropologists who visited after 1862, is a matter of much dispute even among themselves. Teodorani proposes that the various manifestations of paranormality such as telepathy, clairvoyance and psychic healing involve accessing the BL. There is much more in a similar vein, including discussion of tulpas as materialised thought-forms and the suggestion that the Universe is, in effect, a tulpa formed from the virtual particle inflation at the moment of the Big Bang.
We now turn to the “Intelligent Plasma Hypothesis (IPH)”. Plasma gases are often seen in the atmosphere as luminous plasma streaks, balls or tubules, sometimes changing colour and pulsating. Plasma is the fourth fundamental state of matter after solids, liquids and gases. Plasmas are formed from localised regions of freely moving positive and negative ions, from electrons and protons to molecules in constant interaction, emitting light and with temperatures up to several thousand degrees centigrade. Typical examples of plasma forms include lightning, electric sparks, and neon lights. Teodorani has investigated the atmospheric plasma lights known as the Hessdalen Lights that frequently occur above the Hessdalen valley in Norway. He speculates that plasma lights — also termed plasmoids — may exhibit elementary levels of intelligent behaviour, and plasma may even be a form of life that is widely distributed throughout the universe. He suggests that, at quantum level, plasma balls may have quantum coherence and even interact with the brain’s microtubules in resonant frequency of pulsation.
Teodorani quotes from an internet source concerning a hilly location between southwest Missouri and northeast Oklahoma, where atmospheric ‘Joplin Spooklights’ over a valley are often seen. A viewer trained in remote viewing claimed to be in telepathic communication with these lights, saying that they were aware of their surroundings, including the presence of humans. A more mundane explanation is that the atmosphere above the valley is in line with headlight beams from traffic on Route 66 near Interstate 44, as demonstrated when flicking headlights on and off resulted in Joplin Spooklight pulsation. He speculates that if what he calls ‘spirit’ is an “information package” that survives bodily death but during life was a “quantum coherent electrodynamic field” that governs the electromagnetic bio-field of the body, then “as a non-collapsed superposition of quantum states frozen inside the Planck field as an information databank” it could reconnect either with a biophysical structure such as the human brain or a plasma ball. Either way, it would be in communication with the Big Library. I end this section of this review by quoting Teodorani’s final paragraph:
The goal of the Cosmic Big Library — whose role is both communicating information non-locally and of creating new matter starting directly from the information stored in it — is to lead all sentient beings in the Universe towards an asymptotic limit approximating God. This is the only way God can take cognisance of himself; from an orchestrated fire made of an infinite number of sparks wanting to revive him.
I should add here that Teodorani does not mean God in any conventional religious sense, but as a universal intelligence. How we assess Dr Teodorani’s “rather courageous hypotheses” depends upon our prior beliefs as to what is possible, and that — as the late Renée Haynes, once Editor of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, very sagely remarked — depends upon our ‘boggle threshold’. I must confess that this has been a very difficult review to write, as my boggle threshold concerning his various quantum hypotheses, including the BLH and plasma balls demonstrating interacting intelligence, has been exceeded regularly throughout the book. The one point on which I am in complete agreement is that any attempt to explain the nature of the universe must include the nature of ourselves and, by inference, all other animals. In fairness to Teodorani, I hope I have conveyed enough of his thinking through my selection of quotes for you to consider exploring his ideas for yourself.
Robert A. Charman can be reached at email: [email protected]