Reality and Observers in the Brain States

Brain States: Beta or Waking state

For a good overview of how the brain functions, read David Eagleman's book The Brain: The Story of You or watch his show, The Brain, on PBS or BBC.

When we are awake, the brain normally manifests a wave pattern that is in the range of twelve to forty cycles per second. This is the beta brain wave state. To measure brain waves, two electrodes are placed in certain regions on the top of the scalp, and a third electrode as a ground on the earlobe. The measurement is called an EEG or electroencephalogram. Voltages measured are in the range of a few millionths of a volt. This is insignificant in relation to the voltage of a flashlight battery.

Beta wave consciousness or consensus reality is the current field for science. Certainly, science plays a powerful role in determining consensus reality, the single possibility, beta brain state world. More people believe in science than any religion in the world. Perhaps science has more power over the way we perceive the world than any other belief system. Many of us believe that science is the best path to truth. However, it is currently limited to consensus reality.

The current scientific method is the Apostles' Creed of science. We share observations and experiments and try to formulate a reason for them turning out the way they do. We call this a theory. Then we try to test the theory in every way possible.

However, the ordinary scientific method rules out the possibility of the truth or reality of individual unique experiences, like an individual walking through a wall, which quantum theory suggests as possible. It also eliminates creativity in our experience. That's why we have artists, for example. They often step inside themselves, leaving behind the outdoor world of consensus reality and stepping into the increased possibility levels achieved in the dream state of theta brain wave consciousness or beyond. However, let's first examine the boundary between beta and theta: the alpha state.

Alpha or the State of Focus

Have you noticed that when you go to sleep, you first let go of your focus on certain areas of your life necessary now and become aware of the whole? This is like clearly seeing consensus reality from the doorway. It is a sense of feeling connected to everything. When we do, we are in the alpha brain state (eight to twelve cycles/sec). This is a state where we shift from looking at the pieces with our left brain and start to see the whole with our right brain.

Theta or Dream State

The theta dream wave state is associated with the part of our brain that controls emotions: the reptilian brain. This is the limbic system, which surrounds the center of the brain. It seems the function of theta waves is to connect these primal emotions to our cortex or thinking and creating mind.

To be able to fully access the next deepest level of sleep — the theta state — we usually must first drift into the deepest-sleep delta state. That's like going upstairs to the bedroom, getting a good night's sleep, and recharging. This detaches us from consensus reality and allows us to experience the specific alternate universes of the theta dream state when we come downstairs in the morning.

However, it is interesting that we still dream a bit when we first go to sleep, when theta brain waves become dominant for a while. In my opinion, the reason we need to enter the deep-sleep delta wave state first is to recharge our ability to dream deeply, by encountering the infinite possibilities accessible in it. Some would even call this encountering God.

We dream the most on leaving deep sleep. This is indicated by a theta-dominant state being accompanied by REM or rapid eye movement. Coming down from that high, we again enter the alpha-wave-dominant state. This probably means we gain focus on what is important from higher levels of consciousness attained in deep sleep. Aside from recharging the body and brain with energy and nutrients, this may be the reason deep sleep is necessary for a healthy life — both physically and psychologically.

Delta — The Superconscious State?

Though we can often remember our dreams, supposedly we don't remember anything from the delta wave deep-sleep state. Perhaps that's why brain experts call it an unconscious state. Without reaching the delta sleep state, a night's sleep doesn't leave us fully rested. Why? My claim is that we recharge our possibilities and dreams in that state. I suggest that perhaps it is a state of infinite possibilities — a quantum possibility field! In so many ways, my suggestion fits the evidence.

The delta wave state is associated with our reptilian brain located in the center of our head. Meditating before going to sleep has been found to slip a person into the delta sleep state much faster, giving them a quicker recharge. That may be why some meditators need to sleep less than the usual seven hours.

Separate Science Experiments in Each Brain State?

Normally, we do science experiments in the reality we share: consensus reality, relating to beta brain wave domination. However, what if we were to do tests of our hypotheses in the various states of the brain and even create separate hypotheses for each one?

Let's start by doing a test of Newton's third law: for every force acting on an object, there is an equal and opposite force acting back on the actor.

Beta experiment: results confirm Newton's third law in every macroscopic case, if we ignore quantum theory.

Alpha experiment: we may observe several instances of the back reaction of a force at once. We experience the feeling of being pushed when we see them.

Theta experiment: Newton's third law may or may not hold in a dream state. One can imagine a cart being magically pushed without the pusher being pushed back. However, most dreams probably would confirm the law. One way of understanding is to compare the dream to consensus reality and relate what sorts of ideas are in normal life and which ones aren't.

Delta experiment: all possible ways of reacting could happen. Cause and effect can totally break down or not. For example, if we disturb a person in delta wave sleep, there is no way of predicting how they will react.

Quantum uncertainty creates problems for cause and effect in consensus reality and even for Newton's third law, particularly for particles. Collide with a particle, and it might not act the way you expect because of quantum uncertainty in its motion. This comes from the uncertainty principle in quantum theory. It's almost as if quantum theory allows for delta wave types of events to occasionally happen in the waking state.

It would be interesting to test brain wave states of a scientist right before they make an uncertain quantum observation. Would there be a burst of theta waves and an opening of more possibilities?

Does sleep recharge our possibilities for the day? Most of us would agree that it does.

Another question: could we find a formula that statistically relates the number of possibilities to the balance of brain waves in the individual?

The Old Scientific Method and Steps toward a New One

History of the Scientific Method

Before we plunge more deeply into our ideas relating to a new scientific method, let's explore the history of the old. After all, that is one way to advance science: know where it has come from.

Ancients had been watching the sky for thousands of years, trying to understand the relation of events in the sky to events on earth. We call it astrology. However, they had little knowledge of why the sky appeared as it did over time.

That knowledge began to evolve in Babylonia, where scientists began to apply the evolving math to the way objects moved in the sky. By about AD 500, they gave us an earth-centered system using circles upon circles. Their method involved observations, mathematical theories, then observations to test them. Though this reflects on our modern scientific method, it was not fully formulated by them.

Roughly five hundred years later, another Arabian, Al Hazen, did multitudes of experiments to test his theory that objects emit light. He published the results of his experiments and deductions in his Book of Optics in 1021.1 He proved that the light coming off objects did not come from the eyes as Ptolemy and Euclid had suggested. This was the first recorded case of someone who realized a theory should be thoroughly tested by observations and experiments, which is the beginning portion of our modern scientific method.

In the twelfth century, Robert Grosseteste wrote about what he called "resolution and composition" or theorization and prediction of observational results. He said that both paths should be verified by experiment.

There are two Bacons that led us even further toward the method we use now: Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon.

Roger Bacon, in the middle of the thirteenth century, described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. He did substantial experimental work to develop lenses to improve vision, and his book Opus Majus is considered an advancement in science of as much impact as the work of Aristotle. He was imprisoned for trying to find a science behind the movement of objects in the sky.

Francis Bacon

The story of Francis Bacon and the scientific method is worth exploring. He went to Trinity College in Cambridge at age twelve and two years later left the college because he concluded that the sciences he studied had no proof of their theories. He explored the idea of cause and effect and concluded that there were principles to be discovered in a hierarchy of their application. He called them "lesser," "middle," and "higher" theories or axioms.

He laid out how to test and revise this hierarchy in his two books with one title: Advancement of Learning. He formulated what is called eliminative deduction. "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."

He quotes the apostle Paul, recommending "that we not be spoiled through vain philosophy." Bacon explored deeply the impeding influence of ego, learning institutions, and society on the progress of science.

Bacon also suggests that finding out who we are can illuminate ordinary science: "For the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected." My book tries to explore and understand consciousness and who we are, in hope that it will help us gain better knowledge in science.

He also supported the transcendent nature of science that I explore: "neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science if you stand but upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science."

So how do we ascend to the higher science of knowing? After all, Bacon says, "the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge." I suggest that we first understand how the brain and mind function in hierarchical levels.

Our brain states, as we have explored, suggest a hierarchy of possibilities. I suggest that the delta brain state may contact the infinite possibilities of the holographic universe. The theta dream state has fewer possibilities but more than the waking state. The alpha wave state is a state of awareness where we are just above consensus reality and have the freedom to join it or go back into the theta dream state. The waking state, indicated by beta waves, is consensus reality, one possible world. I believe this is mistakenly purported by so many scientists to be the only real world. However, we find so many cases where the dream and waking state overlap. Awakened dreaming s is an example. We should search to understand the science of that and other overlaps.

Francis Bacon also created a transformation of colleges by his ideas in The Advancement of Learning. He suggested their elevation to the level of modern universities: "Amongst so many great foundations of colleges in Europe, I find strange that they are all dedicated to professions, and none left free to arts and sciences at large." Thank you, Francis, for pushing for the scientific side of learning! That has transformed our world.

However, I believe we are in need of another change in academic institutions. We need to understand our learning process, by means of understanding consciousness and how it plays into science.

Bacon pushed science, because of his connection to leaders in his country, to recognize the importance of experiments to science: "In general, there will hardly be any main proficiency in the disclosing of nature, except there be some allowance for expenses related to experiments." That has changed our lives forever. He established the funding of experimental science.

He also gave us the idea that colleges should share their knowledge: "It would be yet more advanced, if there were more intelligence mutual between the universities of Europe than now there is."

Bacon also supported something that hasn't been included in science yet. That is the validity of the observation of one person. "I take it those things are to be held possible which may be done by some person, though not by everyone."

I hope to support that in this book. He elaborates: "It is the duty and virtue of all knowledge to abridge the infinity of individual experience, as much as the conception of truth will permit ... which is performed by uniting the notions and conceptions of sciences."

Bacon may have also led the way to an acceptance of mechanics as a science. "It is esteemed a kind of dishonor unto learning to descend to inquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical, except they be such as may be thought secrets, rarities, and special subtleties." Galileo, shortly after Bacon's book was published, was despised by the academic establishment, in part for his work on telescope development, compasses, and the pendulum clock. Perhaps Bacon's and Galileo's foundational work also helped lead to the great discoveries of Isaac Newton. Bacon weighed in: "if my judgment be of any weight, the use of history mechanical is of all others the most radical and fundamental towards natural philosophy." At the time, natural philosophy was the name for what we now call physics.

He also divided scientists into two groups: "(we can) make two professions or occupations of natural philosophers — some to be pioneers and some smiths; some to dig, and some to refine and hammer: the inquisition of causes and the production of effects ... all true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, ascendant and descendent, ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments." He is obviously referring to what we now call theorists and experimentalists. "Experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give most light to the invention of causes."

Bacon also gave clarity to the distinction between metaphysics and physics: "Metaphysics handles the formal and final causes. Physic(s) (taking it according to the derivation, and not according to our idiom for medicine) is situate in a middle term or distance between natural history and metaphysic(s). For natural history describes the variety of things; physic(s) the causes, but variable or respective causes; and metaphysic(s) the fixed and constant causes ... Physic(s) hath three parts, whereof two respect nature united or collected, the third contemplates nature diffused or distributed."

He also emphasized the importance of transcendent understanding. "That knowledge is worthiest which is charged with least multiplicity, which appears to be metaphysics."

Bacon also advised that scientists keep a list or "calendar of doubts" and a "calendar of popular errors." This approach has gradually evolved to be effectively implemented by scientific journals. He said that "experience, if it be in childhood, will call every philosophy mother, but when it cometh to ripeness it will discern the true mother."

Bacon even describes the necessity of falsifiability, for which Karl Popper is given credit more than three centuries later! "For to conclude upon an enumeration of particulars without instance contradictory, is no conclusion, but a conjecture."