Does thought know no bounds?

In my previous blog post, “Science and spirituality”, I shared a new shift in thought identified by Larry Dossey M.D. that he describes as moving from “local” (brain-body) to “non-local” (mind-body) healing. This non-local healing is a shift from one place at one time to any place at any time, and this further trends towards every place at any time, and thus every place at every time. This therefore trends towards an omnipresent, unitary mind, or in other words, one omnipresent mind.

Here is a guest post by a colleague of mine, Sharon Frey, that shares how quantum physicists are seeing “non-locality“.

Guest post by Sharon Frey, Media Manager, First Church of Christ, Scientist
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Rethinking the universe

Living in a Quantum World. The June cover of Scientific American really caught my eye. It seems that for a while now, physicists have been saying yes, quantum mechanics exists, but it only applies to a category of small things, very small things. However, the author of this article, along with a growing chorus of other physicists, says it looks like quantum mechanics applies to bigger things too.

So what?

The author, Vlatko Vedral, writes, “In a quantum world, a particle does not just have to take one path at one time; it can take all of them simultaneously.” All of them, at the same time. Imagine if you or I could take various paths simultaneously. That would really break our concepts of space and time. My understanding is that sometimes physicists refer to this as non-locality, or perhaps, infinity.

Now I’m clearly no physics expert. The last time I laid eyes on a physics textbook was my senior year in high school, with a first-time teacher. God bless that poor man, who had to deal with a bunch of rowdy seniors. But regardless of my lack of physics knowledge, it sounds to me like these findings would have big effects on science if they’re true.

For instance, if our firmly held concepts of space and time aren’t exactly what we think they are, how would that affect the field of medicine? If western medicine assumes that we’re comprised of lots of very small particles that act and react a certain way in space and time, what happens if those assumptions are challenged? What if atoms and molecules are indeed non-local?

The author says that quantum behavior “forces us to rethink how we look at the universe and accept a new and unfamiliar picture of our world.” Indeed, it’s good to keep digging for truth. I, for one, look forward to seeing what quantum physicists discover next.