Rewriting the Reality Code: The Quantum Power of Our Participatory Universe
“What strange beings we are!” noted the 13th-century mystic Rumi, “that sitting in Hell at the bottom of the dark, we are afraid of our own immortal- ity!” Perhaps it is actually the power to choose our immortality, as well as everything from our personal healing to the peace of our world, that truly frightens us. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that it is us—our consciousness—that holds the key to life and even reality itself! In 1967, the pioneering physicist Konrad Zuse married the idea of consciousness with modern technology. He proposed that our uni- verse works like a massive consciousness computer. Just as every computer translates “input-commands” into “output-results,” our cosmic consciousness computer appears to do precisely the same thing. When we translate our deepest beliefs into the reality of our world, we are literally rewriting the code that makes the universe appear as it does.
“We are tiny patches of the universe looking at itself—and building itself.”
– John Wheeler, physicist
“Imagination creates reality.”
– Neville, visionary and mystic
A Participatory Universe
A series of breathtaking discoveries has given us a powerful new way to think of our role in the universe. Rather than the conventional view that suggests we are passive observers, living a brief moment of time in a creation that already exists, the discoveries suggest that it is actually consciousness itself that is responsible for the existence of the universe! Perhaps the most revolutionary discovery supporting this idea is the scientific fact that when we look at the stuff our world is made of—tiny quantum particles such as electrons, for example—the very act of watching that electron changes the way it behaves in our presence. What’s more, the longer we look, the more it changes! In 1998, scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science documented this phenomenon, showing that “the greater the amount of ‘watching,’ the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place.”
