Maya: The World as Virtual Reality
In his interview with radio show host Bob Hieronimus, Thompson explains the central thesis of his recent publication, Maya: The World as Virtual Reality (2003). In this work, Thompson compares the concept of virtual reality popularized by the American philosopher and computer scientist, Jaron Lanier, with the Vedic conception of maya describing conscious experience enmeshed within an illusory world. While considering these ideas as an intellectual framework, Thompson explores the enigma of consciousness, precognition, Cartesian dualism, near-death out-of-body experiences, and the transmigration of the soul.
TRANSCRIPT: Maya; Hieronimus Interview: 21st Century Radio – July 6, 2003 / (325)
Bob Hieronymus: Well, tonight friends, we're gonna cover two particular topics. The first, this hour and into the next, is a book called Maya: The World as Virtual Reality, by Dr. Richard L. Thompson. And in this new book, mathematician Richard L Thompson uses the metaphor of the virtual reality – popularized, of course, by the movie, The Matrix – to shed new light on the nature of that which is most dear to ourselves, at least to most of us, that is, our very consciousness.
This groundbreaking book shows how conscious beings could interact with a physically realistic virtual world. It shows how paranormal phenomena can be reconciled in a natural way with the laws of physics. And it sheds light on paradoxes of time, on life beyond the body, and on cosmic and terrestrial evolution. In a sweeping synthesis, the ideas and data of modern science are used to illuminate the ancient theme of consciousness in a world of illusion.
Dr. Thompson is a mathematician who received his PhD in probability theory and statistical mechanics from Cornell University in 1974. He has written over twenty-five academic papers, scripts for several video productions, and several books on science and philosophy including Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science, Vedic Cosmogony... excuse me, Cosmography and Astronomy, and Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. He also has a number of published books in the field of mathematical biology, including the textbook, Computer Simulations of Self-Organization in Biological Systems with N. S. Goel. I think that's how that's pronounced: G-O-E-L. Is that correct Dr. Thompson?
Richard L. Thompson: Goel
BH: Goel. Of course I knew that. I was testing you and you just passed the test. Welcome back to 21st Century Radio, Richard.
RLT: Well thank you.
BH: How's your pitching arm tonight?
RLT: What did you say?
BH: I said; How's your pitching arm tonight?
RLT: Okay
BH: Okay, your curve ball's fine? How 'bout your slider?
RLT: Well, I guess it's in there.
BH: Okay, just as long as it's in there. Did you enjoy The Matrix and it's sequel?
RLT: Well, I haven't actually even seen the sequel. But...
BH: Well you're under... You're under arrest Dr. Thompson. You can't do that, you know.
RLT: Right, I know.... you have to have proper research.
BH: But did you enjoy the first one?
RLT: Yeah, I did.
BH: Well, I didn't enjoy the second one as much as the first one because there were some logical inconsistencies. But what did you like most about it? The first one.
RLT: Well, I thought it was an interesting presentation of the idea of virtual reality. Of course, it has a certain limitation because it's assumed there that consciousness is limited to the brain.
BH: Yeah. Yep.
RLT: So therefore, for a person to be plugged into a virtual reality, he literally has to have a cable plugged into his nervous system, which is of course what they show in the movie.
BH: Yeah. It's a good piece of propaganda from that standpoint. Let's start very simple. What is māyā and why do you use it in the title of your book?
RLT: Well māyā, this refers to Eastern philosophy. Māyā is the... it's either illusion or the cause of illusion. Both meanings are used. And the idea behind it is that the world is actually an illusion in a similar sense to an illusion created by a magician. Let's say a magician on a stage makes a piano float up into the air with the fellow playing the piano. So we know that's an illusion. But because the magician has some apparatus and some technique for doing it, it looks very realistic to us. So the idea of māyā is that the world, in that sense, is an illusion.
BH: I've often wondered about the Central Americans and the Mayan tradition down there. I was wondering, do they have the same time of attach... the same type of meaning to the word māyā?
RLT: I don't know. As far as I know, that's just the name for their people. I really don't know the deep meaning of the word in that culture.
BH: Well you know, I may be totally wrong here because Maya isn't necessarily the name they call themselves. We may have tacked that name on to them.
RLT: Yeah.
BH: I'm not certain of that though, Richard. But you know, sometimes we do attach certain names and things onto certain civilizations that we don't necessarily understand or appreciate very much. Have you ever found that to be true?
RLT: Yeah. That could happen.
BH: Yeah. Sure could. Now how can you see the world as virtual reality?
[5:06]
RLT: Well the... In a way, this project started out by seeing a direct analogy between the idea of māyā in the Eastern philosophy and the concept of a virtual reality. Maybe I should briefly outline what virtual reality is?
BH: Please do.
RLT: Yeah. So the best starting point there would be... There's a fellow named Jaron Lanier. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but he pioneered the idea of projecting a person's consciousness into a world created by a computer. Now even in computer games, that happens to a certain extent because when you look at the screen, if you really become absorbed in the game, you can imagine that you're in that game situation. And you have some buttons to push to manipulate the different characters in the game. But that's pretty limited.
What Lanier did was, first of all, introduce a helmet with little TV cameras that would go... or TV screens rather that would go over the eyes and these screens in stereo would project what the computer generated world looked like from the standpoint of a pair of computer generated eyes in a body in that world. And it was set up so that if you turned your head right or left, likewise the viewpoint of the eyes in the virtual world would turn right or left. So you'd have a convincing experience of seeing inside that world. And then, for action, he introduced a data glove. This was just a glove that fit over the hand with little sensors in the joints. And as you moved your hand, the data would cause a virtual hand inside the computer generated reality to move in the same way that your own hand did. So you could reach and pick things up and so forth. So this is sort of the basic idea of a virtual reality. You see a similar thing in military flight simulators, and in fact, that's probably the most advanced area where this kind of virtual reality is used.
BH: Do the laws of physics define this type of foundation of nature in regards to virtual reality?
RLT: Well, the way the laws of physics come into it is that if you're going to create a convincing looking virtual world, then it should follow the laws of physics. Of course, in principle, it could be... it wouldn't have to follow the laws of physics. It could follow some other laws, in which case it would seem like a very strange world that we would have trouble relating to. But to make a really convincing and realistic world, you would want the events in that world to follow the laws of physics. That'd be particularly true, let's say, in aircraft simulators, where the idea is you're trying to really simulate how the airplane would fly so as to give experience to the pilot without leaving the ground.
BH: Do you act... do you believe... I already know the answer to this but I'm going to ask it anyway. Do you believe we know most of the laws of physics? If not, well, some would say there's hardly anything else to discover in physics any more, which I doubt.
RLT: Well the... Physics is an ongoing... in an ongoing process of development. And we can never know what will be discovered in the future. After all, at the end of the 19th century, a number of prominent physicists were saying that physics has basically come to a close. In fact, I believe Max Planck was advised to pursue his career in music rather than physics because physics was a closed subject. But of course, that was at the very beginning of the biggest revolution in physics that we've ever seen with Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. So physics could develop much further. But of course, physical laws are known which account for many physical phenomena in very great detail.
BH: Well, could you tell us a little bit more about your virtual reality model which uses the metaphor of a universal computer for a deeper level of reality?
[10:00]
RLT: Well, the way to approach the idea... You can approach this concept from two angles. The first is: You can look at a man made virtual reality or something like what you see in that movie, The Matrix. So in that movie, there's this basic idea is that there's this super computer that is simulating practically the equivalent of New York City with great realistic detail. And we have all these people who are literally plugged into the virtual reality through cables going into their nervous system, so that their senses are diverted into the virtual reality. So everything they perceive is coming from the virtual reality. And when they wish to do something, that command of action is transmitted into the virtual reality and their virtual body is made to act accordingly.
So that's the plot of the movie, and to do that realistically you'd need a very powerful computer. In fact, computers such... computers of such power don't exist at the present time.
But now imagine what would happen if you tried to simulate the entire planet earth with all the people on it, and all the different objects, living organisms, and so forth. Then you'd need a truly amazing computer. And of course, if you wanted to simulate an entire universe, then the computer would have to be even more powerful. It's interesting that a number of prominent physicists have speculated about the idea that computers of this nature could actually come into existence. And they are, at least, possible in principle.
BH: Well, the key to all of this, as far as my limited scope goes, deals with consciousness. And of course, it's almost a taboo word in some spheres of our culture today. But when we return, I'd like you to take a poke at that and try and relate to us what you believe consciousness might be. And why you believe, as many other researchers do, that it really is not based solely on the brain for it's eternal being. We'll return with our guest, Dr. Richard Thompson. Maya: the World as Virtual Reality. Govondhan... Gavin..., here we go again. Govardhan Hill Publishing. To order call 386-462-0466 or go to the website, simulatedworlds... that's S-I-M-U-L-A-T-E-D worlds.com.
Of course if you saw The Matrix and the sec... Matrix 2, you might have been a little bit disappointed in that film, which I was, mainly because I felt like they neglected what consciousness, or the... which I feel is the key to a human being on planet Earth, at least one of the keys, was... was in my estimation, kind of like rejected as unimportant. Consciousness: Could you... Could you give us your best interpretation of what consciousness might be? And then we can get into why you believe it may exist outside of the brain.
RLT: Well, consciousness of course is central to this whole idea of virtual reality presented in the book. Basically I am assuming that consciousness cannot ultimately be rationally explained. In fact, one can even define it, so to speak, in a negative sense by saying that: Whatever is left over after you can ration... you rationally explain everything that you can rationally explain, that would be the domain of consciousness.
In the last chapter of the book, I discuss some of the traditional philosophical and theological ideas concerning consciousness. And basically all of them, on a rational level, involve paradox. In other words, things that are apparently contradictory. I think that ultimately to understand consciousness, one has to use consciousness itself to reflect upon itself.
That being said, the virtual reality metaphor or analogy provides a way of looking at how consciousness relates to the material world. So basically, the idea of the material world as a computer basically reflects the concept that the world of matter or the world of māyā, to use the Eastern term, is something that could be rationally understood. One could understand it in terms of computation, of logic, and so on.
[15:16]
And in a virtual reality, a man-made virtual reality, you have a source of consciousness which really isn't analyzed very closely – and that's the person who's going to link up to the virtual reality. Ultimately people think: Well, consciousness must be in the brain, so the brain then is the important thing that links up with the virtual reality. And it does so through a certain interface, like I was describing earlier – the interface that Jaron Lanier created back in the 1980s with the data glove, and the helmet with the TV screens, and so forth.
So the concept of virtual reality is that you have some kind of existing consciousness, which is normally assumed to be something in the brain, and that is linked up to a computer generated world. This is an analogy to the proposed situation in the real world in which you have consciousness, which ultimately cannot be analyzed rationally – it simply has to be experienced to be understood – and that is linked up through an interface to the rational world, which we visualize here as a... as a computer running a simulation. The simulation then would correspond to māyā or illusion. So that's the basic framework. It's an analogy between virtual reality and the role of consciousness within the world of matter. And it turns out that this analogy can illustrate a number of interesting points. Just to begin with, there's the whole question of Cartesian dualism, which might be of interest.
BH: Well it certainly is of interest. Before we move from that area, I wanted to quote you on page 26 and 27, something I felt was important. You... as you note, you "treat consciousness as an unknown element” and thus you “assume that the Ground Reality includes consciousness." Is the Ground Reality more than consciousness?
RLT: Well, by Ground Reality, what I'm assuming there... that of course means the basis of everything, the Ground Reality. So that would include consciousness and this domain of māyā. And in one sense the simplest way to think about it is if you think of consciousness as an irreducible reality. Within consciousness, let us postulate elementary thoughts. At the very simplest level, just to think in terms of the computer analogy, let's make these elementary thoughts ones and zeroes. Because by putting together ones and zeros in patterns you can represent words and sentences, concepts and so forth.
So... and let us suppose that within this consciousness, there's a domain in which these ones and zeros can be manipulated according to a rational scheme. So in that case, the Ground Reality would consist of consciousness plus this realm of the ones and zeros which are being transformed and manipulated according to rational rules. So that's basically the idea of Ground Reality that I am presenting in the book.
BH: And... But your proposal is that consciousness is one of the irreducible features of this larger reality.
RLT: Yes. Basically, the simplest way to put it would be: You have a division between consciousness and non-consciousness. On the non-conscious side, one can imagine everything could be rationally analyzed. Of course, possibly there are things there also that could not be rationally analyzed. But at least for the sake of argument, let's assume that everything on that side, everything can be rationally analyzed. But on the side of consciousness this is not possible. And I would assume that consciousness is the more fundamental thing. In other words, the patterns of ones and zeros or elementary thoughts that I'm introducing here are coming from consciousness, not that consciousness is generated by patterns of some kind of object. So this is basically a simple metaphysical hypothesis that is used in the whole study in this book.
[20:32]
BH: Why do you believe that consciousness can exist outside of the brain?
RLT: Well the problem is, if you look at consciousness, you see that all its qualities and characteristics have nothing to do with the brain as we understand it. And this is actually a very famous dilemma or problem in philosophy. And they even refer to it as the hard problem of understanding consciousness. Because if you think about consciousness, what does that involve? Well, you have feelings; you have intuitions; you have intentions, thoughts, perceptions. Just to take the simplest example, consider the perception of the color red. So we know what it's like to perceive the color red. But what is that?
In physical terms, if you look at the body, at the eye, the different elements of the retina, and then the optic nerve and the brain. You can talk about, say, wavelengths of light striking the retina. Red light would be within a certain wave band. You could talk about nerve impulses which might be firing at certain rates. You can talk about all these things but red doesn't come into the picture. Because whatever red is, it's not a wavelength of light. It's what you experience. So there's nothing in the brain as we understand it in science that corresponds to this experience of red. And yet we know the experience is real because we experience it. And many people have tried to somehow come up with an explanation which would give you such things as red or other things.
They call these qualia, like the elementary characteristic of a color or of a sound or of a feeling. They're called... referred to by the term ‘qualia.’ So people have tried to explain these qualia in terms of physical things that we think we understand such as molecules, molecules traveling across synapses and neurons, and microtubules, and so on and so forth – all the different things that you find in the brain. But they haven't been able to do it. So on the face of it, consciousness is something different from the brain as we understand it.
BH: Well, it makes perfect sense to me in lots of different ways. And one of the things that I've always been impressed by your work, especially in this is the... Many times before a chapter, you have a sentence or two by someone that is certainly an advanced soul in some ways. And one that I liked in Chapter 2, that I thought was enormously important was Steve... one from Steven Hawking. Do you remember that one at the very beginning? Of course I'll read it or maybe you could just tell us what it is because I think this is really important.
RLT: Have you got the page number?
BH: Oh sure. Page 29. The basic...
RLT: Okay, just a second here...
BH: Alright. Sorry to throw you a curve there but I thought this was such a good quote.
RLT: Yeah, Steven Hawking. Well, yeah, he said “How could they formulate laws that would curtail the freedom of God to change His mind? Nevertheless they did, and they got away with it.” That was Steven Hawking.
BH: Yeah... That's a... I think that's enormously important. And back to... in regards to consciousness and virtual Ground Reality, from that standpoint. There's a quote that you find within... Well, I'm not trying to put the Beatles on the same rung of the ladder here, but one within "Yellow Submarine" is: Nothing or no thing is real. That quote I think is found in other ancient traditions as well. But what is meant really by no thing or nothing is real?
[24:48]
RLT: Well, the... there are various ways to look at this. The classical analogy that is made in Eastern philosophy is to mistake a rope for a snake. So suppose you're going along and it's evening. The light is kind of dim. You're walking along the path in the woods, and you see a rope there in front of you, but you think it's a snake and you're frightened. So you're mistaking the rope for a snake. So there is no snake, at least not there where you're seeing it.
Now you have the concept of a snake which actually is based on real snakes that exist somewhere else. And you're looking at the rope and you're taking that to be a snake. So the analogy is that, similarly, this world seems to be certain things that we take for granted. There are so many things that we see in this world or perceive with our senses in various ways. So the concept of māyā is that you're seeing something alright. This would correspond to the rope. But you're taking it to be a snake. It's a different thing. Now in this computer analogy, the thing that corresponds to the snake would be a computer simulation. Just like if you saw the movie Titanic. First of all, the ship as seen from a distance was a computer simulation and so were the... was the ocean with the waves and so forth. So none of that was actually real. Of course, in any movie, what you see is just light on a screen. So if you... if that looks like a ship to you, then you're in illusion because actually there's nothing but light on the screen. And going further into the actual way the special effects are created, that ship, which was generated by a computer, didn't exist inside the computer as a ship. It existed only as a list of numbers. So that would then correspond to the rope in this analogy.
BH: Shades of all things are numbers. I'm trying to remember which philosopher said that? Was that Pythagoras?
RLT: That was Pythagoras
BH: Yeah, that all things were numbers. And then others were saying "all things are vibration," "all things are fire." There's a lot of interesting stuff back then that I was introduced to by my wonderful English teacher back in 1960 in High School. I wish I'd... I wish this man was still around. Warren G. Almi. Remember him friends at City College? He bench pressed over 585 pounds and certainly impressed the rest of the school with that. But what was in his brain was even more impressive. He was the individual that introduced me to the work of Lord Bertrand Russell, and because of that I was able to correspond with Lord Bertrand Russell and that certainly changed my life considerably even though I ended up not being a logical positivist after all.
Our guest is Dr Richard Thompson. Maya: The World as Virtual Reality. Of course, in the past, we had Brenda Dunn who discussed the important work that's been going on at Princeton. And what we would like to do is to talk about some of the... some of the research in the various areas on the edge of orthodoxy such as the paranormal remote viewing etc, etc, etc. And how they can be kind of, well, explained or understood through the process of your work dealing with virtual reality and the māyā model. Do you think you could do that?
RLT: Well, I could give a brief outline.
BH: Well I...
RLT: Well basically, to go back to an earlier point in our discussion, we were talking about the laws of physics and the idea that you'd want the virtual world to follow the laws of physics in order to be a realistic world. And certainly we're interested here in the question of whether or not it is possible to make a virtual reality in which a conscious being, acting through this interface, could interact within a world that follows the laws of physics.
Now traditionally in philosophy of science, the general opinion has been that if the world follows the laws of physics then there's no way that a person’s intentions could affect it. In other words, let's say you want to reach down and pick up a pencil. If the world follows the laws of physics, the general idea is that that is either a product of some random process or a deterministic process. But there's no way in which intention, as some non-physical entity associated with consciousness, could, so to speak, reach into the physical world and cause your arm to move the pencil. That's the general view.
[30:32]
It turns out though, that it is possible. And in earlier chapters in the book, I described basically how it could be done – namely that the virtual reality could compute alternate futures. And I explained how the laws of physics actually allow many different alternate futures to exist. So the virtual reality computer in our analogy could compute alternate futures, and then the conscious entity could pick the one that is desired. So if I want to move the pencil, I pick the future, or one of the futures, in which my arm makes the necessary movement. So that's a general way that you could have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. You could have the virtual reality following the laws of physics strictly and, at the same time, the conscious intentions could be effective in moving things within that virtual world.
So the way this comes into the question of the paranormal is that quite a number of the paranormal phenomena that have been studied in great statistical detail seem to involve picking one of a series of alternatives. So one example that I start out with would be random event generators that Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunn and their colleagues at Princeton University have studied. And the basic idea is that, in order to guide the results from a random event generator... should I give any background on... ?
BH: I think it would be important because, you see... I'm sure our... we have covered this material over the past 15 years with Brenda and other representatives of Dr. Robert Jahn, but I'm certain our listeners have totally forgotten the... that particular area.
RLT: Well a simple... a typical example would be: You have a box sitting on the table with some electronics in it. And the basis of it is a quantum mechanical white noise phenomenon, a hiss like what you hear if a radio isn't tuned properly. This hiss is based on molecular phenomena which occur supposedly in a completely random fashion according to the laws of quantum mechanics. So this hiss is amplified and used to generate a series of ones and zeroes. And the apparatus is adjusted in such a way that there is a 50/50 chance at any point of getting a one or a zero. In fact, they even alternately flip every second, one and zero, so as to eliminate any bias that would tend to make it deviate from 50/50. So... and then these... the result of the accumulated ones and zeros are displayed on a screen in some fashion.
So in a typical experiment, they have a person sitting in front of the screen, and the person wills, let's say, more zeros than ones, or they will more ones than zeros. And the results, then, are tabulated in accordance with their intention, their will. And the unusual finding is that the machine seems to respond in some degree to people's will. It's not a very big effect but it's a very statistically well-established effect. In other words, by going through thousands of trials, the statistics show that when people intend fewer zeros, let's say, then they get fewer zeros. When they intend fewer ones, then they get fewer ones and so forth. So the question is: well how could that work?
The virtual reality model provides an interesting solution because, you see, if you were to reach into this machine and try to control it at the level of the white noise, it would be very difficult to know what to do because of all the complicated electronics including the switching of the ones and zeros and so forth in the machine. So even if you could reach in and directly influence that white noise, you wouldn't be able to cause your desired effect to occur, let's say, more zeros than ones.
[35:05]
But if you can calculate alternate futures a little ways in advance, and then pick the one that gives you more zeros than ones – if you have some ability to do that – then you could, in fact, influence the machine. So basically the same process that is useful for making a virtual reality that would be controllable by intention, and at the same time physically realistic, could also account for some of these paranormal phenomena.
In fact what it looks like is that there's a kind of leakage going on. Our bodies and the sensory link-up that I've been talking about are set up in such a way that our intentions can control our bodies. But there seems to be a little bit of leakage: in at least some people, intention can control things outside the body to some extent also.
BH: As you note, this leakage obviously accounts for certain psi-phenomena. And when we get to... well I'd like to touch on the remote viewing because many of my friends have worked in this area for long periods of time. Ingo Swann and Russell Targ and all of them have joined us repeatedly on 21st Century Radio. And virtual... excuse me, remote viewing... How would remote viewing be understood through this process of virtual reality?
RLT: Well, the interesting thing about remote viewing... And let me just, again, briefly, I guess just summarize what is involved. The classical remote viewing experiment involves two people. One person sits in a room and the other person goes to a randomly selected target location. And the person sitting in the room is supposed to say what the person at the target location is seeing. And the remarkable thing is that people seem to be able to do it, some with greater success than others. But there's some people that consistently achieve very high scores in saying what the person at the target site is seeing even though the person, through their ordinary senses, shouldn't be able to know what's going on at the target site. It may even be in a different state from where the receiver in the room is sitting.
So, of course, in the virtual reality model, you can easily imagine some protocol by which information referring to one location in the virtual world is transmitted to another location. And that would allow transmission of information without having to depend, for example, on electromagnetic waves. Pretty much, electromagnetic waves have been ruled out as a possible way of transferring information in these experiments.
But there's an even more intriguing aspect to these experiments. And that is that the person sitting in the room is able to predict, in advance, what the person at the target site is going to see. In other words, suppose the person in the room is asked: Okay, what is the person at the target site seeing? But the person goes to the target site several hours later. Well, it still works.
In other words, the perceiver seems to be able to cross over time somehow and describe what has not yet happened. So this relates to a more general topic of precognition, the idea of being able to see into the future. From a point of view of ordinary physics, it's very hard to understand how this could work. Because in ordinary physics things are just rolling on from past to present to future. But in the virtual reality model, if you are computing alternate futures, then one could postulate the additional step of giving the perceiver conscious awareness of some of the alternate futures, in which case precognition would then be possible.
BH: Well, our listeners may remember back there in 1984 and 83 with the books The Mind Race and Mind Wars, etc etc etc, that were coming out in the media... We were told basically that those experiments did not go too well, and that was not true. That is not true at all. As a matter of fact, though, you point out on page 101, the CIA interviewed our friends Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, and also Ingo Swann; their research showed that much more striking results can be obtained with talented individuals.
We'll return with our guest, Dr. Richard L. Thompson. Maya: The World as Virtual Reality. Govardhan Hill Press... Publishing, that is. To order, (386) 462-0466, simulatedworlds.com.
The book is Maya: The World as Virtual Reality, Govardhan… Govardhan Hill Publishing. To order, call (386) 462-0466. Please go to the website, simulatedworlds.com, or go to our website at 21stcenturyradio.com and order a couple of copies of this most important work, especially dealing in an area that we've covered for... gosh, over 15 years on 21st Century Radio.
And I especially appreciated, as I noted before, your chapters 6 to 10. You note that precognition and psychokinesis can be seen as leaks in this interface. These can be accounted for by assuming that the virtual reality is directed by choosing alternate futures calculated in advance. And this feature of the VR or virtual reality model is needed to allow for free will, and conveniently, it also accounts for certain psi-phenomena. And some of the psi-phenomenon... you refer to them as larger leaks than some of the smaller leaks that we touched on before.
But I'd like to touch on the work... most... of our dear friend, Dr Raymond Moody, has... who has joined us repeatedly on 21st Century Radio. And I serve on one of his Boards dealing in this work, dealing with Mirror Visions. Could you tell us about Mirror Visions and then how virtual reality could give us a greater understanding of what they are about?
RLT: Well yeah. Before getting into the topic of Mirror Visions, let me just quote one of these chapter quotations. This is for Chapter 7. “Strong hallucinations are simply impossible!”
BH: There you go.
RLT: That's by Daniel C. Dennett, who's a very famous philosopher. So basically Dennett is expressing the standard view concerning hallucinations, that... really strong hallucinations. And he explained what he meant: A ghost that talks back and that you could feel, shake hands with, and so on. These things are impossible.
Well, Raymond Moody made an interesting study of what he called Mirror Visions. Basically his study was based on the old tradition that people can perceive something paranormal by gazing into a reflecting medium of some kind. Of course the classical example would be a crystal ball. So he set up an experiment in which people would be primed to think of a certain person, usually a deceased relative, the person's deceased grandmother or something like that. And they would, having meditated on that person and primed their consciousness to think about that person, they would spend some time gazing into a mirror. And he found, curiously enough, that people would very often have extremely vivid visions of the person that they were thinking about. Or sometimes they would have vivid visions of a different person.
Well, Moody tried that himself and he got some rather interesting results. In his case, he gazed into the mirror after meditating on his grandmother on one side of the family. And he sat there gazing into the mirror for some time, about an hour or so... and nothing happened. So finally he gave up and was sitting in the other room, in another nearby room, thinking over what had happened, when his grandmother from the other side of the family walked into the room. Now she was also deceased.
Now Moody describes what the meeting was like. And as he describes it, it is definitely a strong hallucination, not a weak one. It was an extremely vivid image of his grandmother. She seemed to be standing in the room like an ordinary human being and he had a conversation with her which seemed to him to be an ordinary conversation. So looking at this as a hallucination, one would have to say that it was a very strong hallucination indeed.
[45:19]
So to relate this to the whole question of virtual reality: We can first of all consider, from the point of view of mainstream science, a hallucination would have to be generated by the brain. Now vision has been studied… let's just look at the sense of vision, just for simplicity. Vision has been studied in great detail and what is discovered is that the brain is divided into a number of sort of special processing centers, each of which deals with a particular aspect of vision. So there will be certain areas of the brain where neurons fire based on simple patterns in the retina, for example, an edge. If there's an illuminated edge projected on the retina, then a certain neuron will fire. If there's an edge with a different orientation, then another particular neuron may fire. So a lot of visual processing is at the level of detection of simple features.
But then there are more complex features. There are regions of the brain which specifically are related to color, associating colors with objects. And then there are parts of the brain that are sensitive to motion. And then there are parts that recognize different shapes by building up these simple patterns, edges and so forth, into more complex shapes. But nowhere in the brain do you find any one place where all this information is put together. So given that, how could a vivid hallucination be made?
Well, one theory would be that to create a hallucination, if certain parts of the brain that produce... that respond to different patterns are stimulated due to some disturbance within the brain, the brain may thereby generate unreal data relating to sensory perception. And then by editing that data, by sort of eliminating inconsistencies, the result may be a sort of crude image. So in this way a hallucination could form. Basically that's the idea, for example, that Dennett proposes as to how this could work. However that's not going to account for the kind of hallucination that Raymond Moody was discussing.
So what I propose in the book, in connection with the virtual reality hypothesis, is that there is additional information processing outside the brain. In other words, the really vivid hallucinations or apparitions and so forth which are described in so many different accounts are due to information processing not limited simply to the brain. That's the basic idea.
BH: Well, as you note, there are larger leaks. And some of these especially, I find enormously important, deal with near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. Could you tell us a little about NDEs and OBEs and how these too can be better understood through the idea of virtual reality?
RLT: Well yes. Let's take a look at the NDE. That stands for near-death experience and OBE is, more generally, out-of-body experience. So an NDE is a kind of out-of-body experience. The typical case would involve a person who has lost consciousness due, for example, to a heart attack or some physical problem. So if a person has a heart attack and the heart ceases to pump blood properly, it may be in a sort of spasmodic state of fibrillation – oxygen is not being supplied to the brain – and under those circumstances the brain should quickly cease to be able to function normally.
[50:33]
People have, in many cases, reported that they could still see during the time when their brain was supposedly not functional. And interestingly enough, they would see from a perspective outside their body. They might actually be looking down on their body from somewhere near the ceiling. So these experiments would seem to suggest that perception and processing and recording of sensory data can go on even though the brain is no longer functional. And that when the brain goes online again, so to speak, the data can be transferred to the brain so that it can be processed then further in the ordinary way.
So this would seem to imply some information processing system outside the brain. And that of course is provided in the virtual reality model. So if we look at the... looking at it from the point of view of this concept of leakage again, if you imagine that between consciousness and the physical brain there is an interface involving different stages of information processing, what we seem to see in the near-death experiences is that if the information processing of the brain is blocked at a higher level than this interface sense data can be processed. And the person can be seeing, hearing, and so forth without the use of the brain and the ordinary physical senses.
Of course, these phenomena are quite controversial. I would point out though that there are cases where the evidence is pretty strong that the brain could not be involved. For example there was the case of a woman who was going to undergo a brain operation. Her body was cooled down to a very low temperature. Her blood was pumped out and as one commenter remarked, she was as dead as you can be without being really dead. And yet, after the experience or after the operation, she was able to describe seeing things that were going on during that time period. So the question is, what was she seeing with?
BH: That is the question. And what was she seeing with, do you believe?
RLT: Well, what I would propose is that the interface between consciousness and the physical brain and physical senses has a number of levels. And at each level, information processing can take place. So you can imagine from the standpoint of this computer metaphor, the virtual reality analogy: If you have a virtual body and part of the sensory processing within that virtual body shuts down, then you still have the general data processing of the overall computer that is still going on. And that could pick up information which would be a substitute for the information that normally is channeled through the physical senses and brain. Furthermore, it should be possible in principle to pick up more information or more detailed information than the ordinary senses can perceive and, in fact, this is also reported in quite a number of cases. So people reported extremely vivid, omnidirectional forms of perception.
BH: Well I know our listeners are going to particularly love these chapters because these are questions that many of them, when they go to their... Well, even if they go to their priests or rabbis and ask these questions: How in the world can this be? I believe that this particular research, dealing with the virtual reality, gives us some really good answers, especially... also the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, whose work I have admired for, my gosh, thirty years or so down at the... what was it?... University of... Was that the University of Virginia?
[55:36]
RLT: Yeah.
BH: Yeah. University of Virginia. In regards to reincarnation, boy, he has done some major, major work. In regards to reincarnation, how might reincarnation, or being born repeatedly in a physical body, be well, kind of, not explained, but reviewed through the virtual reality situation?
RLT: Well, the basic idea is... of the virtual reality model is you have consciousness linked to a virtual body through this interface that we've been discussing. So... and we can propose that a lot of information relating to the person's incarnation in a particular body is contained within this interface area, rather than being simply contained in the virtual body and virtual brain itself. So now, if the virtual body dies, the interface still exists. It's just not connected to anything at this point. And it still contains a very large amount of data relating to the life that was just experienced. So we can imagine then, that interface could be linked to a newly developing body, a fetus in the womb at some stage of development. And that the interface could then begin to operate between consciousness and this new body as it gradually developed.
So that would provide a model for transmigration or reincarnation. And in particular it would account for the fact that in many of the cases reported by Ian Stevenson, information relating to one life surfaces as memories and also as physical effects within the body of the reincarnated individual.
BH: So as you might... as you note, you could call this earth a kind of school of repeated births?
RLT: Yes, this would provide for the possibility of such a school.
BH: A lot of us, friends, you know, in our dreams. You ever have dreams of you're being in school? Richard, have you ever dreamt of your being in school before?
RLT: Well, I'm afraid that I typically have the dream that I'm in school and that I've forgotten where the room is where the exam is being held...
BH: That's...
RLT: That I'm going around in great anxiety trying to find it...
BH: Yes and that... I think all of us or many of us have had that dream. And one dream that I hate most of all is I finally get to the... I finally get to the class and there's an exam going on which I didn't know anything about.
RLT: Right.
BH: And that really, really straightens you out real quick...
RLT: Or yeah, I mean a dream I've often had is that: I've signed up for all these courses in college but somehow I neglected to attend any of the classes and now it's time for final exams.
BH: Yes, well friends, also there are excellent... There are so many good things about this book but of course it touches on many of us here: Well you can't... the population problem theory, and life between incarnations is discussed. But I think of all the areas that I'm most interested in deals with healing and... Could you tell us about spiritual healing and the VR model, the virtual reality model?
RLT: Well yeah. Spiritual healing refers to a very broad spectrum of phenomena, but the basic essence of it is that people can be cured of illness in ways that would not be expected in terms of standard medical knowledge. I'll just give one very brief example of a – and this is a strong example and well documented – of a man, I believe his name was Vittorio Micheli, who was suffering from a cancer of the bones on his hip joint and upper thigh bone. And this cancer totally destroyed the bone structure. This was documented with X-rays and so forth over some period of time. He went to Lourdes in France seeking a cure at the shrine there, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. And he maintained that he was, in fact, miraculously cured there.
[1:00:31]
Right after being dunked in a sacred spring at this shrine, he felt that he was cured and he asked for the cast to be taken off his body. This wasn't done immediately. But in due course, the cast was taken off and the interesting thing that was discovered was that he had a brand new hip joint. The bones of his hip and upper thigh had completely reconstructed and it's very hard to explain how this could happen.
It's the kind of thing that might happen in some lower vertebrates such as salamanders. If you cut off, say, a leg, a new leg may grow back. But in mammals, what to speak of human beings, this isn't supposed to be possible. So that's an example and a very well documented one, because X-rays were taken later and it was shown that the new hip joint was slightly different from the previous one. So it was definitely a new construction.
BH: Indeed. Yes indeed.
RLT: Basically the explanation for this offered by the virtual reality model is that, since we're dealing with a universal computer and the world being run as a simulation, you could imagine a database of biological and biomedical information which could be drawn upon to reconstruct tissues and organs and so forth according to some protocol. This would certainly be possible in such a model. And that would, I think, shed light on a lot of these phenomena of miraculous healing.
Generally these phenomena require a large amount of knowledge. And in cases where a human healer is involved, the human healer will admit that they don't have the knowledge in question. For example, they may cure some particular disease within the body but they don't personally understand the details of how that disease works, what to speak of how to cure it. But somehow they're able to tap into some source of information which can be applied to the body to transform it and bring about a cure. So I think this is also an area where the virtual reality model could shed some interesting light.
BH: Well listen to this quote friends. "Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known to us in nature." Saint Augustine.
This is an important work. I want to thank you for joining us tonight Richard Thompson.
RLT: Well thank you. It's very nice to be on your show.
BH: It's very nice for you to join us. The book of course is Maya: The World as Virtual Reality, Govardhan Hill Publishing. To order: (386) 462-0466. And please go to the website: simulatedworlds.com.