'Reality' from the perspective of quantum physics

In this excerpt Matthew and Amelia are temporarily living in another dimensional reality. They come to understand 'reality' from the perspective of quantum physics.




Chapter VIII

99.999% Empty Space



Matthew and Amelia walked over to the park across the street from the hotel and wandered over to watch a painter. He was wearing a red beret and an artist's smock. He had dark, ringlet curls, rosy cheeks and green eyes. He appeared to be right out of a painting himself.

He turned and said merrily, "Howdy! Lovely morning isn't it? Would mademoiselle care to have her portrait painted?"

Though he had the aquiline features of a native Italian, and dressed smartly, with a decidedly continental flair, his accent was undoubtedly Texan; and Amelia found herself suddenly grinning in response to this completely unexpected and curious combination.

"Oh, thank you, but we have no money," said Amelia apologetically.

"Money. Now that's a word I haven't heard in a long time!" he said, spinning around on his stool and planting his feet on the ground. “You're not from here, are you?”

"No," said Amelia, shaking her head.

"Well, we have no need of money here," he said brightly as he vigorously mixed a few colors while adding sprinkles of crushed crystal.

"Why not?" asked Amelia curiously. "How do you buy things?"

"It's kind of a long story," he replied cocking his head, sizing her up at the same time. "How about if I paint your portrait while I explain?"

"Alright. Thank you," said Amelia, smiling as she sat on the chair he offered her.

"To begin with my name is Timothy, and today I am an artist. A very happy artist, I might add, having such a lovely subject to work with!" he said brightly, twirling his paintbrush dramatically for emphasis.

Before Amelia or Matthew could introduce themselves Timothy continued as if there was no need for an introduction. "There is no need for money because here we recognize things are thoughts. You're both familiar with this concept aren't you?" asked Timothy, squinting his eyes with one eyebrow aloft.

"We're working on it," sighed Matthew, with a wry smile.

"Whatever you can imagine, you can create through the power of your own intention," said Timothy, dabbing a bit of color on the portrait. "If you want a castle on the hillside with a Rolls Royce and a stable full of horses, you can have it. You can mingle with the jet-set crowd, go to all the best parties, see the world, or the universe if you prefer."

"What if two people wanted the same castle? They couldn't both live in the same place," said Amelia.

"Why not?" replied Timothy casually. "Couldn't you and Matthew both dream that you lived in King Arthur's castle and not be sharing the same dream? You could be in the same place and still be in your own world, so to speak."

"I think you've lost me," said Matthew, vaguely.

"Let's take something you know is a concept," said Timothy as he mixed gold flakes into real gold paint. "Suppose you believed mathematics was a thing and not a thought. Numbers would have to be in a material form. Let's say the numbers are wood or metal and you had to buy a certain amount of numbers in order to balance your checkbook or pay your bills.

"Now, imagine there's a time when numbers were in high demand, like at tax time. And suppose they started running out of sevens and fives. All of a sudden people would be scrambling to buy and trade those numbers. Stock market prices would skyrocket far beyond what they were really worth. But that could only happen if you didn't understand that numbers are concepts. Do you see?"

Amelia and Matthew nodded.

"So, it's the same idea here," said Timothy. "We understand everything is thought and it's as simple for us to manifest a castle on the hill as it is for you to add two plus two in your head."

Matthew said, "If it's so easy to manifest everything, why don't you live in a castle with servants?"

"I've done that already. Most people do that when they first come here," said Timothy, smiling at the thought, the way a parent smiles at a toddler exploring their new world. "But just imagine. When you can have anything and everything you want it all gets a little boring after awhile. So eventually people try different things, different jobs, just in order to learn things about themselves, stimulate their minds. That sort of thing.

“You get over the self-serving thing pretty quickly because you can already have whatever you want. So, we get a cheap thrill by doing things for others!" said Timothy, smiling as he handed Amelia her portrait.

Amelia was surprised to see it wasn't a picture of her face at all. Instead it was an exquisite collage of images. A fairy kingdom, trees, flowers, unicorns, desert canyons, mountains, the ocean with dolphins, and angels of light floating in a sky with stars and planets, the sun and moon. Gold was sprinkled over the entire painting like fairy dust.

"This is beautiful!" she exclaimed.

"It's called a soul painting... it's a picture of you inside," he said beaming.

Amelia smiled and said, 'You know, I never even introduced myself. My name's . . . "

"Amelia," said Timothy. "And you're Matthew."

Matthew laughed in amazement and said, "How do you know that?"

"The universe isn't really as big a place as you think it is," said Timothy with a wink as he began putting away paints and rummaging through his bag for some other things.

"No, really," said Matthew sincerely. "Did someone tell you we'd be here?"

"Oh, no," said Timothy honestly. "I recognized you."

"Recognized us?" asked Matthew.

"Do you understand that light has different vibrations and wavelengths?" asked Timothy.

'Yes," said Matthew.

"So, you see light vibrating at a certain speed and you call it green or blue or pink. And in the same way, your body has a vibration that's unique to you. No other person or thing in the universe has your exact vibration, in that no two snowflakes or grains of sand are identical. There's this energy-field in you and around you, and this field of energy can be read like a book. Or, more specifically, an autobiography, and your name's right on the cover. You've sometimes seen this energy field as light around another person, haven't you?" said Timothy as he began mixing more paint.

"We both have," said Matthew as Amelia handed him the portrait for a closer look.

"The fact is even though you think you're solid, you're actually pure light," said Timothy, as he turned to look at Matthew. “You're not quite with me are you?" He then looked at Amelia and said, "Amelia has had the feeling of being light but she doesn't quite understand the logic." He paused. "Matthew, you're the physics man, are you not?"

"Yes . . . " said Matthew hesitantly, still unsure how Timothy knew these things.

"And you're familiar with quantum physics?" continued Timothy.

"It's sort of a hobby of mine. They don't teach it at my high school," said Matthew, sitting down with his back against an old oak tree, still holding the painting and admiring the detail and feeling it evoked.

"Let's start with some very basic physics concepts so Amelia can stay with us," said Timothy smiling affectionately at her. "Let's look at your physical senses. What do they tell you about the world? What are some views out of history we now know to be false?"

Amelia thought for a moment and said, "The world is flat and stationary."

"The earth is the center of the universe," added Matthew, "With the sun, planets and stars revolving around it."

"Good," said Timothy encouragingly. "Those were visually obvious facts a few hundred years ago. But even when science began to prove that those facts were false, it took a long time for the truth to become common knowledge. There was a lot of superstition, but today anyone who doesn't know that the earth is round, rotates, and hurtles through space as it orbits around the sun would be considered ignorant. So, what do your senses tell you about your body?"

"That we're solid," said Amelia, thinking her answer was too obvious.

"Is that true according to quantum physics, Matthew?" asked Timothy as he sat down under the tree near Matthew and motioned for Amelia to join them.

"Not really..." said Matthew, as he patted the ground next to him beckoning Amelia to sit next to him.

"Wait, I have a question," said Amelia, smiling at Matthew as she sat down next to him. "What does quantum mean?"

"Well, quantum would mean the smallest unit of something," said Matthew. "A quantum unit of electricity would be an electron; a quantum unit of light is a photon; gravity would be a graviton. So quantum physics looks at everything sort of from the inside out. More like inner-space exploration."

"So let's start from the inside," said Timothy. "What does an atom look like?"

"It has a nucleus, which is the only solid part of the atom," said Matthew knowledgeably, relieved he was finally answering questions with at least some authority. "And there are electrons. They're almost pure energy and they whiz around the nucleus at lightning speed. In the space between the nucleus and the electrons are subatomic particles: protons, electrons, quarks, leptons, bosons ......"

"That works, but let me add a little color to that description," said Timothy as he held his paintbrush dramatically in the air. "Amelia, let me give you an idea of the size of the nucleus. If you took all the nuclei of every person on the planet and put them together it would be about the size of a single grain of rice. If you took the nuclei of the entire planet, and put them all together, it would be the size of a sugar cube! And the distance from the nucleus to the electrons is proportionately the same distance as from the earth to the stars. So what appears to be a solid body is in fact 99.999% empty space."

"That's amazing!" cried Amelia.

"What's strange, is that out of that emptiness come non-material particles," said Matthew.

"How can something be a particle and not made up of matter?" asked Amelia as she absent-mindedly picked a daisy and twirled it in her fingers. It was easier for her to concentrate if she was doing two things at once, so she had a habit of twiddling with small objects whenever she was deeply focused on something new she was trying to comprehend.

"These particles are subatomic. They're so small you can't even see them," said Matthew.

"Then how do you know they exist?" asked Amelia, secretly pleased she was conjuring up some good questions.

"Because they leave behind trails," said Matthew.

"And to make this even more interesting," said Timothy, putting down his paintbrush and getting out some fresh paper, "these subatomic particles only come into existence through observation. They disappear when they're not being observed."

Amelia furrowed her brow and asked pointedly, "Wouldn't you have to be observing them to know that they disappear when they're unobserved?"

"It isn't that they literally disappear, it's more that these particles shift into a different state," said Timothy. "You see, each particle is also a wave."

As he spoke Amelia and Matthew saw the art paper transform into a small, flat-panel screen with images that reflected what Timothy was trying to explain. But this flat-panel screen wasn't two-dimensional. It was more like looking out a window at an immense landscape, yet it faithfully projected whatever Timothy was talking about at the time.

"Hold it!" said Amelia abruptly, "How can a particle be a wave?"

"It's a wave until it's observed; then it becomes a particle," said Timothy, picking up his paintbrush again and pointing at the screen. "The important point, though, is that it can be seen as a wave or a particle, but not as both at the same time. So the particle is created by the fact we're observing it."

"We create something simply by looking at it?" exclaimed Amelia in disbelief.

"It's even more than that," said Timothy. "It's how you choose to observe. Remember I said you could see these subatomic particles as waves or particles, not both at once. In other words, it is the conscious choice to see a wave as a particle that brings it into existence. Are you still with me, Amelia?"

"No," she said quite frankly, "I can't even imagine a wave being a particle!"

"Just trust that it's a proven fact in quantum physics. Don't worry whether or not you can figure it out," said Timothy categorically.

"What are these subatomic particles made of?" asked Amelia, staring into the screen intently, hoping the images would be a bit more helpful.

"Actually," said Matthew, "they're pure energy."

"That energy is thought-force," said Timothy. "In a word, Consciousness."

"Wait! Hold it! You're losing me," said Amelia pulling away from the screen to look directly at Timothy. "I understood everything up to the part where the particles are pure energy. You lost me when you jumped to thought-force and consciousness. Where does the thought come from if it's not coming from my brain?"

"Are you the thought or the thinker, Amelia?" asked Timothy.

"I'm the thinker," she said.

"So you are not your mind or your body. You are the one who has the mind, the one who has the body. Doesn't that imply consciousness? Therefore consciousness is the foundation of mind and body."

"Isn't it the other way around? Isn't it that my mind and body create a place for me to be conscious?" Amelia reasoned.

"Let's take a look at your mind and body, what really is, not the appearance,” Timothy said, while again bringing their attention to the flat panel screen as it mirrored his narrative.

“In the same way that the earth is not stationary and flat, the body is not static and solid. Did you know that 98% of the atoms in your body are replaced every year? You have a new brain every year; your skeleton is replaced every three months; your liver every six weeks; your skin every month.

"Every time you breathe, you're breathing out particles of yourself and breathing in particles of the entire universe. So, Amelia, this brain you have ...it wasn't here last year. And the brain from last year wasn't here the year before," said Timothy categorically.

"Are you saying we don't use our brain to think?" said Amelia feeling hopelessly lost.

"Let's say that the cells in the brain are like little floppy disks. You put information in on the computer and save it on your disks. As you go along you throw out the old disks and replace them with new disks. The new disks won't carry the information on the old disks unless you transfer the information," said Timothy, studying Amelia to be sure she understood.

"So how do you transfer the information?" said Amelia, still trying to get her head around these entirely foreign concepts.

"By whatever you're thinking. You're the programmer. You're the thinker, not the thought," said Timothy smiling. "Remember the statement, I think therefore I am? The reason all the information seems to be the same is because of the 60,000 thoughts you think every day, 95% of those same thoughts you'll think tomorrow."

Amelia sighed, "I thought I was getting it, but now I'm lost again."

"Don't worry, Amelia, it'll come. Are you still with me, Matthew?" asked Timothy.

"I'm hanging in there. I've never put all of this information together in quite this way before. But I do know what you're talking about," he said as he shifted into a more comfortable position under the tree, accidentally touching Amelia, but leaving his hand there all the same.

"Back to this 99.999% space. What do scientists call this space?" Timothy continued.

"The unified field," said Matthew easily.

"Why?" asked Timothy.

"Let me think about this for a minute," Matthew replied, not wanting to be over-confident. "Unified means to bring together, to become one, and in the broadest sense, it would represent the universe. The word field has to do with an interest, maybe even gaining knowledge. I guess you could call it universal intelligence. Ha! I never thought of it that way before."

"Good!" said Timothy. "Let's take it a little further. The word unify literally means to form into one. And field, as you said, has to do with interest, which would imply thought or ideas. So the idea of unified field would literally have to do with the idea of consciousness being expressed as form."

"Would you say that again?" said Amelia.

"Don't worry, I'll explain this further," said Timothy reassuringly, "but simply put, we're not bodies that have learned how to think and be intelligent. We are intelligence, consciousness, thought-force, that has learned how to create a body."

Amelia was stunned. She'd never heard of this before. She understood how people must have felt when they were first told the world was round. It was almost unbelievable and yet there was so much logic at the same time.

"So here's how it works," said Timothy knowledgeably. "You have an experience. You interpret the experience by how you choose to think about it and, according to what you think, your body produces chemicals that send messages to the body. Let me demonstrate!"

Suddenly Amelia and Matthew found themselves in pitch black on their way to the top of a roller coaster ride in the first car.

"Amelia!" yelled Matthew. "This is awesome!

"Oh God...!" screamed Amelia. "I hate roller coasters! They make me sick"'

As they plummeted down the other side Matthew threw his arms up in the air, while Amelia, with her eyes shut tight, gripped the bar with white knuckles and held her breath to keep from screaming. Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she felt herself on the verge of becoming physically ill. Mercifully the ride came to a halt just in time and she found herself back in the park sitting on the ground next to Matthew as if she'd never left, except for the glaring fact she was still shaky and a bit nauseous.

"That was awesome!" shouted Matthew enthusiastically. "Can we do it again? That was the best roller coaster ride I've ever been on!"

"Take him, not me," said Amelia quickly, feeling a bit green around the gills, as her dad use to say. She didn't really know what that meant, but she knew how it felt!

"Sorry about that, Amelia," said Timothy, "but sometimes experience is the best teacher."

"What do you mean?" said Amelia, still a bit shaken.

“I wanted you to see for yourself how the mind and body are connected," said Timothy. "How do you both feel right now?"

Matthew said, "I feel incredible."

"Shaky and nervous," said Amelia weakly, “and a bit queasy.”

"Notice, you both had the exact same experience," said Timothy, "yet you each experienced an opposite physical and mental reaction. The reason is that your mind and body create powerful chemicals in response to whatever it is you're thinking or feeling. If you feel that a roller coaster ride is fun then your body will create chemicals more powerful than heroin: A good time with no side effects! If you're scared-to-death then your body will create harmful chemicals ... to the point that if you stayed in a place where you feared for your life long enough your body would produce enough harmful chemicals to literally kill you."

Amelia said, "I don't mean to interrupt, Timothy, but I'm not exactly sure how all of this applies to us. I mean, we've been traveling through time and dimensions and learning quantum physics but I don't know that I understand the point. It's all very interesting but what are we supposed to do with all this information when we get back home?"

"What you do with the information will be your choice," said Timothy directly. "Having the information will give you a choice. You've heard the phrase, knowledge is power. It's through the knowledge of what's real that you'll be able to identify the illusion. I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen to you in the future, but I can say that if I were you I'd pay attention as if my life depended on it," Timothy said quite seriously.

Chills ran through Amelia's body. Somehow she had the feeling Timothy knew something about the future but wasn't telling. Asha knew something too. Why wouldn't they just tell her what they knew?

“Is there something you know about our future that you're not telling us?” asked Amelia.

Timothy smiled kindly. “Yes,” he said mysteriously.

Intrigued Matthew said, “How do you know what's coming... how do you see the future?”

Timothy sat down on his stool, clearly wanting to be precise in his communication. “Imagine for a moment you're playing the most sophisticated computer game ever to exist. Within the game there's a program, and every choice you could possibly make is already in the program. Now let's say you're on Level-5, and I know all about Level-5 because I can read the programming. So, yes, I see where you're headed... I can read the programming so to speak.”

“So will you tell us what's coming?” said Amelia with a tinge of desperation in her voice.

“I can't,” said Timothy.

“Can't or won't?” said Matthew with a note of defiance.

Timothy smiled and said calmly, “I'm going to give you two scenarios. Choose which one you want to believe, or discard them both. Whatever you choose, your belief in that choice will make it real for you.”

Timothy paused to let the concept sink in, “In both scenarios your life is actually a game... though it appears to be real, it takes place purely in consciousness. Before you enter the game, by being born, you agree to completely forget who you are and how you came to be playing the game. Your dreams are a powerful clue hidden in the programming of the game, because they help you see the possibility of consciousness or thought-force not only creating a body, but entire worlds.”

As Timothy continued the flat-panel screen lit up displaying events as he described them. “In one scenario the game of life, as we might call it, is a program where you have a series of choices. You have free-will, you have a purpose, and your choices make a difference in the world. Since the game is programmed to give you a purpose and choices, you experience a world of duality: Dark and light, good and bad, right and wrong. Your choices determine the outcome of the game for you and others, and their choices effect you, because everything is interconnected and interrelated.

“In the second scenario, you decide before playing the game, exactly what you want to experience. Every choice and event, down to the flower you pick in your garden, is programmed. In which case you have no free-will and no purpose, and no matter what's happening in your game of life, you consciously chose it before ever deciding to play the game. In this scenario there's nothing to change, because none of the events are real. There is no duality in this game because you do not believe in right or wrong, good or bad. And just like a dream, you have the illusion of choice, and the illusion of a purpose, but in reality, you do not effect others and they do not effect you, anymore than your dreams effect someone else and vice versa.

“So which game should we believe in... or try to play?” said Amelia fumbling for the right question.

“You both believe in free-will, and whether you know it or not, you're already playing one version of the game. In the second version, it's still a game, you just play it differently because your beliefs change. It may appear to be a choice between A or B, but these games are multi-dimensional, and they're superimposed upon one another. As your beliefs change, you'll feel as if you're walking between two worlds. And you will be.”

“Remember, there is no right choice, you believe what you believe, and you play the game according to your beliefs. I can only tell you how to play the game you believe in. Currently you're learning how to play the game of free-will. Ultimately you'll want to learn the other game as well,” Timothy said frankly.

“But you never answered the question,” said Matthew. “You can see the future, but is it that you can't or won't tell us our future.”

Timothy looked at them compassionately and said sincerely, “I can't tell you your future.”

“Why not?” said Matthew, chafing at the bit.

“I can't tell you your future, because it isn't programmed into this game,” Timothy said genuinely.

“I see! You believe there's no free-will!” Matthew said with an underlying, got ya!

“It doesn't matter what I believe, Matthew,” Timothy returned patiently. “Your belief is the one running the show. I can only say that the world of duality is a roller coaster ride, and no matter how much you love it, sooner or later you'll want to get off the ride.”

“I never wanted to get on the ride in the first place!” said Amelia half-jokingly, once again recalling the queasy feeling in her stomach.

Timothy laughed and said, “My purpose is to help you play the game you've chosen more effectively. So let's put this all together. You are consciousness. What you call your mind and body is consciousness taking form. Unified field: Unified means form; field means interest, thought. Unified field, then, is thought taking form, and this thought-form shows up as your body, and the world around you.”

"So do we have access to universal consciousness?" asked Matthew.

“You not only have access, you're a part of Universal Consciousness. This 99.999% empty space is actually full of intelligence and because it isn't in a physical form it's also full of potential," said Timothy. "So, you are that unlimited intelligence and you are that unlimited potential. But you must be conscious of this power to use it."

"I don't mean to seem dense," said Amelia, "but how do you make that potential real?"

"Thought," said Timothy. "Whatever you can imagine you can create as experience through the power of your own consciousness."

"But wait," said Amelia. "I can imagine walking through that brick wall over there but I can't actually do it."

"The only reason you can't walk through that wall," said Timothy, "is because your belief, your conviction, that it's impossible is stronger than your belief that it is possible. You can't because you said so, not because of what is. You can only play the game you believe in.

"The fact is things are thoughts, and that brick wall is nothing more than an idea. Look at it, it's a particle; it has material form. Look away, it becomes a thought; it goes back to being a wave in the unified field. Could you walk through the wall in your mind?"

"Yes," said Amelia.

"That's because the wall has become subjective. It's a part of you; you're a part of it. When you observe the wall, it becomes objective: It does not change, your perception is what changes. Suddenly you see the wall as outside of yourself instead of inside. Notice you cannot see it as both outside and inside at the same time. You are either choosing to see a wave or a particle: Mind or matter. When you see that the wave and the particle are not separate entities, they're one; then you'll see that things are thoughts."

Timothy stood up and walked right through the brick wall. When he returned he said, "And one other thing: Impossibilities never occur!"