The improbable promises of the Zero Point Field
The story you’re about to read has caused quite a stir with our editors. The subject touches everything, absolutely everything, that we, human beings, do in our lives. That’s confrontational, uncomfortable and hope-inducing at the same time. But that wasn’t the only cause for the stir. There was a constant discussion about the way in which the subject ought to be introduced. After all, writing about an energy field that connects man and matter and constantly affects everybody and everything... well, it’s not as simple as the average newpaper or magazine article.
Tijn Touber, who locked himself in his room for weeks in order to write this amazing story, must have despaired on more than one occasion during that period. Not just because of our commentary and the constant conversations, but also because of the complex subject matter. The words of Niels Bohr, the famous Danish physicist, could have served as a warning: “If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.”
This, dear reader, is a warning.
But there’s consolation: if at some point you lose track of the story, you’re not alone. Hang on tight. (Or rather: let go.)
Shireen Strooker is standing motionless in the middle of a field. There are 600 people around her. She can’t see the beautiful surroundings at the foot of Mt Rainier in the extreme North-West of the United States. Shireen is blindfolded, just like all the other people in the field. That morning they each drew a picture. The hundreds of pictures are now hanging on the fence around the field. The exercise: find your own drawing.
Shireen practices a meditation exercise, visualises her drawing and thinks: “I am the creator and the beholder of this drawing, all I have to do is become one with the drawing and it will pull me towards it.” Then she walks, without bumping into anyone, straight across the field and... picks her drawing out of 600 others on the first try.
Coincidence? A lucky shot? You’d think so. But that morning, Shireen isn’t the only one to perform this improbable feat. The students of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment achieve results that beat the laws of empirical probability. Apparently, man is able to ‘communicate’ with matter in some intangible way. This unorthodox school’s curriculum is meant to prove that things like telephaty and clairvoyancy aren’t mysterious phenomena, but gifts that any human being has and can develop. There is more between heaven and earth than we can touch, says the unwritten motto of Ramtha’s school.
There are more schools and movements that have spread this message over the past few decades. In fact, the New Age movement is built on it. But the interesting thing is that the hard science of modern physics is starting to find evidence of the existence of an omnipresent energy field that could explain the miracle of the blindfolded woman who picks her own drawing out of 600 others.
In her book The Field (HarperCollins, 2001), research journalist Lynne McTaggart provides a summary of the recent scientific developments that show that there’s an omnipresent energy field that connects man and matter. In looking for the heart of matter - the very smallest particle - physicists discovered the special properties and possibilities inherent in this field. The so-called Zero Point Field - called thus because there is still measurable energy at the zero point - seems to be the explanation for numerous well-known occurances and processes that have baffled scientists until now. From gravity to electro-magnetism and from spontaneous healing to clairvoyancy and telepathy: they are all phenomenon that originate in this quantum field.
McTaggart writes: “Researchers are discovering that the Zero Point Field contains the blueprint to our existence. Everything and everyone is connected through this field that supposedly stores all information from all times. In the end you can trace everything - from people to matter - back to a collection electrical charges that are constantly in contact with this neverending sea of energy. Our interaction with this field determines who we are, will be and have been. This field is the alpha and the omega of our existence.”
A connection between mind and matter is directly contrary to the scientific foundations that modern society is built on. Our thinkng is still heavily influenced by the mechanical worldview that Isaac Newton introduced in the seventeenth century. Newton saw the universe as a machine with individual parts that have but a limited influence on each other. René Descartes added his own vision, namely that the human mind is seperate from the lifeless matter we call a body. In Newton and Descartes’s view, life goes on - with or without humanity. We don’t really matter. Darwin’s theory of evolution only strengthens the image of the lonely, seperate human. Eat or be eaten. Mankind seemed to be an evolutionary coincidence without any special meaning.
But big questions remained: how does life start, how does our mind work, why do we get sick, how does a single cell develop into a complete being, and so on. Many scientists sought the answers to these questions in religion, but it only brought them in conflict with themselves. How can you unite two opposed paradigms within yourself?
The first clues for a possible bridge between spirituality and science, for the existence of an omnipresent energyfield, emerged - strangely enough - from scientific discoveries at the start of the previous century. In 1911 German phycisist Max Planck proved that there is an ‘empty space’ filled with energy between atoms. But because he found this energyfield to exist everywhere in all times, he treated it as a constant without influence in material existence.
Other pioneers in quantum physics discovered that the most basic building blocks of matter can’t even really be called ‘matter’. Sometimes they behave as particles, sometimes as waves, sometimes they behave as both at the same time. In 1927 Werner Heisenberg dubbed this the uncertainty principle. Subatomic particles turned out not to be solid objects, but vibrating energy packets that cannot be quantified or understood as individual parts. A bigger break from Newtonian thinking was hard to imagine. On this basic level, nothing seemed to be fixed, the only sure thing was the endless amount of possibilities.
Even worse, the particles were discovered to only take one of the possible shapes once they were being observed by a spectator. Human attention made the particles ‘freeze’. The researchers came to the stunning conclusion that awareness creates reality and Einstein wonders if the moon even exists if nobody’s watching it.
The phycisists also observed that particles that had at some point been connected - for example within a molecule - will forever be connected where ever they are and can instantly - meaning ‘faster than the speed of light - influence eachother over great distance. This so-called ‘non-locality’ principle suggested that the dimensions of time and space do not exist at a basic level. Einstein called it ‘spooky effects at a distance’.
Einstein and his contemporaries did not succeed in uniting the new discoveries from quantum physics with the tangible Newtonian reality that they saw around them.Their solution was a scientific abomination: the world of small particles had different laws than the world of tangible matter.
At the same time these scientists sought refuge in spiritual texts. Erwin Schrödinger studied hinduism, Heisenberg dove into ancient Greek Platonic theory, Niels Bohr turned to the tao, Wolfgang Pauli to kabbala.
What didn’t work a century ago seems possible now. The theory of the omnipresent Zero Point Field could be a definitive bridge between spirituality and science. Einstein couldn’t prove it yet, but did suspect it when he said that ‘the field is the only reality’. The field can explain the instantaneous ‘spooky’ information-transfer between quantum particles. Various scientific discoveries show similar things.
Biologist Paul Pietsch of the University of Indiana wanted to discover where in the brain memory is stored. Pietsch experimented with salamanders. First he taught them certain behaviours. Next he disfigured their brains in such a way that their memory should have been destroyed. He put their brain through a meat grinder, among other things, and then put them back in the skull. The result? After some time the salamanders again displayed the behaviour he’d taught them. In other words: the brain was destroyed but the memory lived on. Pietsch concluded that memory is not a local phenomenon, but is somehow connected to something - an energy field? - outside of the salamanders that they use to retrieve their memories.
Neuro-anatomist Harold Burr from Yale discovered the field in a different way. In the forties he researched fields of light that existed around living organisms, and discovered that young salamanders have a field of light around them in the shape of an adult salamander. This ‘blueprint’ even exists around an unfertilised salamander egg. Even in plant seeds Burr detected light fields in the shape of the adult plant. These fields could explain why you can take a leg, jaw or even retina out of a salamander and have it grow back. Salamanders may have an extraordinarily strong connection to the energy field that surrounds them, but the process can be observed in humans as well. People with amputated limbs can sometimes still feel the (phantom) pain in the missing bodypart. Burr’s work suggests that bodies - matter - are connected with an energy field.
And where do psychics get their insights? That’s what physicist Hall Puthoff from Stanford University asked himself. He did several experiments with two psychics in which he gave them coordinates for a place on Earth where they’d never been. The psychics turned out to be capable of describing these places in detail. To see just how psychic they were, Puthoff asked them to describe the planet Jupiter before NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft mapped the planet.
Psychic Ingo Swann reported, slightly embarrassed, that he’d seen a ring around the planet. “Maybe,” he told Puthoff, “I was accidentally watching Saturn.”
Nobody took his drawing seriously until NASA revealed that photo’s from the spacecraft had shown that Jupiter did indeed have a ring.
Meanwhile the CIA had become interested in Puthoff’s results, as they could potentially be used for espionage. As an experiment, CIA-agent Christopher Green was sent up in a plane. In his inner pocket he had a note with three numbers. No problem for psychic Pat Price, who could name the numbers without error and in the right order. The only thing was, he’d gotten a bit nauseous. Later, Green turned out to have had a turbulent flight.
Then Punthoff did experiments where he’d send people to random places in the world and asked them to document the place with a camera in fifteen minutes. They also had to answer a questionnaire. In almost all cases the psychics managed to describe these places in detail. Then he asked the psychics to describe the location before the pictures were taken, even before the travellers knew where they were going. This succeeded as well. The psychics remained capable of describing the destination, from half an hour up to five days before the traveller got there. Punthoff concluded that time and space do not exist at the Zero Point Field’s level. The information is apparently available before the actions take place. Punthoff conducted 336 similar experiments, in which the psychics weren’t hindered by whether or not the travellers had been to a location already.
Physicist Helmut Schmidt did another surpringing experiment that shows the timelessness of the field. He equipped his test subjects with headphones and let them listen to beeps from a machine. The beeps were random and equally divided between the left and right ears. The participants’ challenge: make one ear have more beeps than the other. In almost every case they succeeded. In other words: people were capable of influencing the machine without direct physical action. Schmidt concluded that apparently there is a field that connects man and machine.
His next experiment made this even more obvious. He gave a test subject a tape of beeps to take home, and told him to influence the tape and send more beeps to the left ear. Schmidt made a copy of the tape for himself. The next day, the beeps turned out to indeed have happened mostly on the left. To his surprise, the same was true for the copy, even though he knew that the machine would have distributed the beeps equally like normal. Schmidt’s only possible conclusion was that the test subject’s intent in the future had affacted the tape at the time of the recording.
Just like the young salamander knows to become a big salamander, Schmidt’s test subject knew - before being asked - to influence the beeps. Past, present and future seem to blend together in the energyfield.
Psychologist Ellen Langer from Harvard used another experiment to show that time is relative. A group of people over the age of seventy were brought to a remote area where an environment had beeen created that was an exact replica of the year 1959. The furniture, the movies and even the newspapers were from this year. Within a week, the symptoms of their old age were changing. The joints in their fingers became more flexible and their eyesight improved. Langer concluded that because the participants get the same mental input they did in 1959, their body was beginning to match their physical condition from that time. One of the possible explanations is that the seniors connected with their blueprint from 1959, and the body followed it.
Indian doctor and author Deepak Chopra says it this way: ‘Time is dependent on our perceptions. No experiment has ever proven the existence of the continual movement of linear time and the concept has never been expressed in a mathematical formula. The experience of the continual movement of linear time is a phenomenon that was created by our nervous system. In fact, the past, present and future exist simultaneously, side by side, in a field of endless possibilities. The experience of linear time is the way in which nature protects us from experiencing everything at the same time. But that is what actually happens.’ Einstein put it more concisely: ‘Space and time are modes in which we think, not conditions in which we live.’
In the field’s resonance there is no difference between a memory and a new experience. The brain retrieves old and new information in the same way. This explains the salamanders’ behavior. The brain had been almost destroyed, but the memory hadn’t been lost; it was still stored int he field. Intuition, clairvoyancy, precognition, telepathy and other ‘inexplicable’ phenomenon are made understandable by seeing the Zero Point Field as a place where information is stored, and that people can tune into at any given moment. Is this what Nostradamus was doing when he ‘saw’ the future?
One of the first scientists to see that the Zero Point Field could be the missing link for our understanding of the universe was the Hungarian physicist Ervin Laszlo. In his 1993 book “the Creative Cosmos” he writes that the field is much more than a mass of seething energy at the background of our existence. According to Laszlo, the Zero Point Field is a carrier of information. “This quantum vacuum is the origin of mind and matter - a blueprint to the universe. Even our own memories aren’t stored in our brains, but are stored holographically in the field. Our brains are mostly receptors and processors of this information. When they resonate with a certain frequency they get access to certain information.”
Are you still there?
You’ve just read that time doesn’t exist and that a human being can influence a machine. And this in a world where the computer is supposed to be so consistent and logical that it’s always right. And yet we’re still talking about physics and scientific, verifiable experiments. All these experiments and events point to the fact that the spooky discoveries in quantum physics have much more influence on our daily reality than last centuries’ pioneers thought possible. Does the Newtonian universe even still exist? Hasn’t the world turned out to be a dynamic web that connects everything and everyone? Does that mean my life is completely different than I thought it was?
My life? Does an “I” even exist?
What does individuality mean if everything is connected and our own memories are accessible to all? To make it even more exciting: the atoms that interact with eachother and the universe in all sorts of ways, occasionally and temporarily form our bodies. Every seven years all the cells in our bodies have been renewed; not an atom remains the same. And who knows what new information the new atoms are putting into our bodies? “Individuality”, “me” and “mine” become very limited concepts. Not the seperation we think we experience in our daily lives, but the all-encompassing connection is central to our being.
These scientific discoveries can also explain the mysterious way in which people in a hospital get better sooner if random people in random places in the world pray for them daily, which research has shown. And the connection to the Zero Point Field also seems evident in the fact that some ‘memories’ from the previous owner of an organ are transferred into the new body. If I pray for people they get better. The opposite should probably be true as well. I realise now that it’s in my own interest to treat my environment with respect. Somehow we’re all responsible for the field that connects us all, and for the reality we create with each other.
The second effect the Zero Point Field has on my life is just as big as the insight that individuality really doesn’t exist.
I make my own reality.
Just like I can apparently influence a machine, I can influence any matter around me. I do it all the time, including the matter of my own body. If I create reality, then the world isn’t the way it is, but rather the way I think it is. My thinking makes reality.
When doctor and karate champion Roy Martina was attacked from behind at a party by one of his friends, his natural response was to put the man in a hold, which broke the friend’s finger. Thinking “what you break, you must fix”, they decided to do an experiment. They knew the Aboriginals manage to heal broken bones almost instantly. Martina: “We thought: if they can do it, so can we. We tuned in to the ‘Aboriginalfield’ and sent energy to the broken finger. A few days later my friend could play volleyball again. The scans no longer showed a fracture.”
In his famous novel “Think and Grow Rich” from 1937 Napoleon Hill shows that succesful people owe their succes mostly from the fact that they were convinced, on a deep level, that they would be succesful. Succesful people, Hill concludes, believe in their goal with such conviction that they don’t know better than to realise it. By focussing on their goal, it materialises - just like in scientific experiments only the particles that are observed become visible.
The third lesson the field has taught me is that basically everything is possible.
All information is available in the Zero Point Field. It’s my challenge - it’s everyone’s challenge - to pick out the good bits. It’s like what Michelangelo said about sculpture: “The statue is already inside the marble, I only have to get it out.”
I sometimes experience the same thing when I write a story and see words appear on my monitor that I’m barely even thinking on a conscious level. I draw sentences that I don’t consciously know and am not consciously thinking about out of nowhere - from the field? That’s called inspiration. But in fact, this so-called “inspiration” isn’t some inexplicable event anymore, but a scientific phenomenon.
On a visit to the Sistine Chapel, Mozart heard the famous piece Miserere by Allegri. It’s only performed once a year around Easter, and disappears behind locked doors the rest of the year. Mozart was capable of transcribing the entire piece from memory after hearing it only once, and was able to pierce through all the mystery around it. Ervin Laszlo says: “Mozard and the other composers of his calibre weren’t alone. They had access to the field and were in direct contact with masterpieces.”
Artists are more like translator than creators. Their talent is not a miracle, but something anyone could learn. It’s just a matter of tuning in to the field.
On a Greek island, Shireen Strooker and her husband Bram Vermeulen are lounging in the sun at a café. In the middle of the table is a suitcase, so they can’t see each other. Bram looks at a piece of paper in front of him and counts slowly to four. At each count, Shireen writes a plus or a minus symbol behind the number on her paper. She tries to ignore the surprised looks they’re getting from bystanders and focusses completely on what Bram is ‘sending’ her: a plus or a minus. When they’ve filled their papers, they switch roles. They both try to match up their plusses and minusses.
They play this game eleven times each day. Probability dictates that their plusses and minusses should match up only fifty percent of the time, but their score is usually around seventy. They know it’s not a coincidence, they’ve done similar things before. Bram and Shireen know you can reach each other if you tune in right. However, we tend to get in our own way. Shireen: “There’s a clear difference between just focusing, and tuning in. When I focus, I try really hard to think something into happening. Usually you’ll get the exact opposite. What we call ‘thinking’ is really mostly doubt. You end up in all sorts of emotions like “I can’t do it, what am I doing here” that keep you away from your goal. Tuning in means not thinking and just connecting with the information that’s already there. You become one with the information and resonate with it.”
Shireen tells about another exercise she once did with a fat American. They faced eachother and looked into each other’s eyes. Then they both went to opposite ends of the room and Shireen had to pick up what the man’s favorite food was. Her first image was of a bar of chocolate. But - because of his size - she doubted: “It’s probably a hamburger.”
She draws a hamburger and goes back to the man. Wrong. Turns out it’s a bar of choclate.
Shireen: “That’s what I mean about thinking.”
Children are naturals at tuning in. It’s remarkable how succesful young children are at Shireen’s drawing game that started this article. And I remember playing hide and seek with my little sister. She’d count to ten outside the living room, came in and would walk in a straight line towards me - no matter what curtain I was behind or what chair I was under.
Animals aren’t hindered by thinking either. The British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake describes many remarkable occurances. A cat that only “answers the phone” - she bats the horn off the hook with her paw - when it’s her master calling and ignores all other phonecalls. Or horses that refuse to walk on a trail hours before an avalanche. Dogs that try in vein to stop their owner from leaving the house when he’s about to get into a bad accident. There are plenty of stories of animals leaving the city before an earthquake.
Tuning in to the Zero Point Field makes it possible to consciously create.
Back in the day when I needed a new home, I created an image of it. I visualised a house by the sea with a forest nearby, it was tall, light and affordable. For weeks I’d focus on that visualisation for a moment each day, which locked the image into the Zero Point Field. It was only a matter of time before it would materialise.
That happened two months later. Now I live in the house I once pictured. With my visualisation I tuned in to the field. By giving attention to an image that image - my house - could become reality. Just like the small particles manifest because they are being observed.
In the past, dreamers were laughed at by self-styled rational people who had both feet on the ground. Now, dreamers have science on their side. Dreams are the origin of reality. The future is made by envisioning it, tuning in to it. Everything is possible. Science is showing me a reality my mind can barely understand. How can a man influence a machine? How can time not exist? How can I make something intangible tangible? But I do live in my house, and Shireen did find her drawing. This confusion probably has to do with the quantum leap my rational mind has to make. This must be why Niels Bohr said: “If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.”
When Shireen gets home one night she finds a yellowed envelope from her mother, with inside it copies from the gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1947. Jesus tells Thomas: “I am not your Master, for you have drunk and become intoxicated from the bubbling wellspring that I have personally measured out.”
For Shireen it is clear that Jesus was drawing from the same wellspring - the same field - that she is learning to draw from. Wise masters like Jesus saw through creation. They didn’t need science to know the Zero Point Field. Thousands of years later, science and spirituality are about to merge. The consequences and possibilities are immense. The miracle of Jesus and other enlightened thinkers lay in their ability to see a better world and shape it. They understood: if I want a different world, I’ll have to learn to think differently. Or, as Ghandi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Those who think only Mahatma or Jesus can do this, now have scientific proof of the opposite. Each of us has it in them. Each of us is a creator. Each of us can change the world. It doesn’t have to be a hard and endless struggle - think about the Aboriginal bone fractures. It can happen today. It can happen right now. After all, what is time?
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Good on you for reading all of that, if you did.
While the article is a bit flawed in places (sources, being vague in critical places etc), and towards the end is mostly speculation by the author, it's interesting nonetheless.
This ties in with a lot of what we teach here.
Related Elfpath reading:
Anything about LoA.
This wiki article called "It's your fault", about shaping your world
This post by Angel, about an underlying energy field, which also mentions the Zero Point Field.
This post by Angel which was posted while I was working on this one.
Probably a lot of other stuff as well.
