Inter-dimensional Signaling; Free Will

7/3/15

On the other hand, some current scientific theories postulate that virtual particles suddenly and unpredictably appear in the vacuum of space only to disappear again a short while later. If this hypothesis is true, then it provides evidence in support of the idea that Beons can indeed influence our manifold by direct contact.

Another way to influence, or send a signal to, the 2D manifold would be to shine a spot of light on the paper. That is a little tricky because the structure of the light beam itself would have to undergo a dimensional transformation. That is, the 3D light beam would have to be converted to a 2D beam in order for the flatlanders to observe it.

That opens up what I think is an exciting area of inquiry. Not only do we need to think about the 3D to 2D transformation, but we need to clearly understand the nature of our own 3D light.

Science has come a long way from Newton's corpuscular idea of the nature of light. Maxwell gave us the idea of light consisting of propagating electromagnetic waves. This is a powerful idea enabling such technological marvels as TV, cell phones, and JPL/Mars rover communication links.

Maxwell's explanation for light interestingly depends heavily on the dimensionality of our manifold. The propagating light beam requires three spatial dimensions, i.e. it requires three orthogonal directions: One is the direction of travel for the beam. The second is the direction of the electric field, and the third is the direction of the magnetic field. Then, of course, if you want to include time as a fourth dimension, the light beam requires that dimension in order to progress and change, i.e. to be dynamic.

As good as Maxwell's hypothesis is, there is still some mystery surrounding it. The wave/particle duality is one example. Maxwell's picture is that of waves, but yet there are phenomena that can most logically be interpreted as particles, or photons.

Another complication is the relativistic effects on the light beam. For example, if you try to calculate the number of oscillations (i.e. the frequency) of a light beam traveling, say from Alpha Centauri to Earth, you will get a huge number by multiplying the beam travel time times the frequency, but you will get a very small number, very near zero, if you consider the slowing of the vibration rate due to the light speed of the beam. Something needs to be explained here.[7/16/15 see my essay Going Along with Einstein]

Yet another mystery is the entanglement and non-locality imposed by quantum theory.

But for our purposes here, Maxwell's description of light is enough to suggest some hypotheses for an equivalent to light in hyperspace.

Before we speculate on how 4D light might work, let's go the other direction and consider how 2D light might work. We talked about shining a spot of light onto a sheet of paper in order to communicate to the 2D flatlanders residing on the paper. We need to convert 3D light to 2D light.

Since there are only two spatial dimensions on the paper manifold, the structure of light must be deprived of a dimension as it is transformed from 3D to 2D. The obvious way to do that would be to jettison either the electric field or the magnetic field, each of which requires a dimension in 3D. We couldn't sacrifice the direction of travel if we expect a 2D light beam to be able to traverse and convey information from one place on the paper to another.

At this stage it doesn't really matter which of the fields is jettisoned. In fact, we might jettison both and postulate that there is some other force field in the 2D manifold in which the 2D light beam propagates. In any case, an obvious mechanism for the transformation of 3D to 2D light, as our flashlight beam strikes the paper, is that the vibrations of one or both of the electric or magnetic fields induces a corresponding vibration into whatever single 2D field exists in the paper manifold. That vibration is then propagated in an orthogonal direction in the paper carrying information to the flatland observer.

Now let's go back the other direction and speculate how some 4D light-equivalent might work and be able to induce 3D light in our manifold. Maybe 4D light only requires three spatial dimensions just as our light does. Well then the transformation could be simple and straightforward. The incident light on our manifold would simply induce vibrations in our electric and magnetic fields and a light beam (or photon) would be generated which would then propagate in time.

Or it could be that in 4D space there is an additional force that does not interact with our 3D manifold that is part of the carrier of 4D light. Here again, the transformation would be easily explained. That additional component would simply not be involved and the other two components would induce vibrations in our electromagnetic fields.

We have been talking about light, but everything we said applies to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays. So this proposal invites the question of whether we observe any spontaneous and unexplained appearances of electromagnetic waves.

Off the cuff, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) comes to mind. This, of course, has been attributed to the echo left over from the Big Bang. But really, does it make sense if you try to imagine the path taken by any particular photon from the BB to our antennas?

Presumably it took some 14 billion years for the photon to reach us, so we wonder: How did we get so far ahead of the beam? I guess the answer is that the inflationary period pushed us out faster than light whereas the CMB photon was trailing along behind at merely light speed. I guess you could swallow that, but it seems that it is no more plausible than our speculations of what might have gone on in hyperspace with respect to our 4D manifold.

There are other possibilities for reasonable explanations for how 4D light, or other equivalent might provide a communication path between 4D Beons and our brains in our 3D manifold, but it is too early to dive into those details.

Instead let's continue guessing at possibilities for extra-manifold communication links besides direct contact and electromagnetic waves. In either of those cases, if the truth were known, they would represent violations of the laws of physics. They would violate the conservation of energy.

Another possible mechanism, that would not violate the laws of physics, might involve communication that is "under the radar" of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP).

In this case, Beons in hyperspace might signal to structures in our 3D manifold by deliberately influencing the outcomes of some quantum events.

Under normal conditions, when such influence is not exerted, the quantum outcomes appear to all of our scientific measurements to be random. But if some small subset of the myriad quantum jumps taking place in our manifold were deliberately influenced by Beon mechanisms, the deliberately chosen outcomes could trigger cascades of physical events in our manifold such that meaningful (to Beons) signals could influence the behavior of material interactions here in our 4D spacetime manifold, i.e. the physical world of brains.

Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have suggested just such a pathway. Briefly, they suggest that quantum events occurring at the molecular level in the microtubules of neurons contribute to the conditions controlling the firing of the neurons. The pattern of neuronal firing being responsible for the brain states, which in turn are responsible for much of the behavior of the organism, is a well-accepted idea by biologists. They have not yet accepted the primary role of the microtubules, and of course, they have probably not ever considered them to provide part of a communication link to hyperspatial beings. We are pushing on a very resistant envelope here. Even Penrose refuses to go as far as we have. I hope you, dear reader, have more courage and stick with me a while longer.

Now, having a fairly satisfactory explanation for the Brain-Beon communication link, the next area for explanation and speculation is the hyperspatial world itself.

At the outset, it seems as if we can say nothing about hyperspace, since it is completely inaccessible to us with our limited 3D observational capability. But that is not the case. We already have demonstrated that we understand at least some of that hyperspace.

According to what we have developed so far, we know a lot about the geometry of hyperspace. That has come from mathematics. The possible types of structures in hyperspace have been developed (or discovered) by mathematicians for a long time now and are fairly well known. For example the geometry of hypercubes is fairly easy to figure out [7/16/15 see my video Visualizing a 4-Dimensional Hypercube] and it is common to build models of 3D projections of 4D hypercubes. (I have done quite a bit of that myself.) [7/16/15 see my video How to Make a Copper Model of a Hypercube]

We also suspect that hyperspace contains the contents of the Mental World and the Platonic World, as presented by Penrose and discussed at length above. And, if there is any such thing as a Spiritual World, as billions of people have believed for millennia, then hyperspace is a reasonable place for that as well. So we can say that we know, or suspect, at least something about the contents of hyperspace.

We also have reports, claiming to be firsthand, of people who say that they have visited and experienced being in a real world outside of our manifold. These people include the mystics, the NDE experiencers, the out-of-body experiencers, and the people who experienced drug-induced altered states.

There is a great deal of commonality among those reports, chief among them is the vagueness of the recollection and the admitted inability to express the experience in language. I don't think it would serve us well to depend too heavily on these reports.

One common feature, however, that is at least suggestive, and seems to support our speculations, is that hyperspace is populated by some sentient beings. They are usually identified as angels, demons, ghosts, or even God. We won't make use of those characterizations because of the acknowledged claim that language is inadequate to describe them.

Returning to our present development, we have postulated that the consciousness we experience is not resident in the physical brain but resides in hyperspace. This is consistent with the idea of sentient beings residing in hyperspace. We call them Beons.

Since our main purpose is to explain the nature of consciousness, we will focus on those Beons.

We have sketched out the framework of an explanation of consciousness. We claim that conscious Beons in hyperspace are connected to brains in physical bodies in our 3D manifold and that, similar to a JPL scientist remotely operating a Mars Rover, the Beon(s) use our body/brains as remote controlled vehicles communicating via some kind of brain-Beon communication link.

This picture provides an explanation for one of the greatest (IMHO) biological mysteries: why do animals sleep? The answer is that there are periods of time during which Beon is simply not driving the animal. The reasons why they are not driving could be many and varied, but the simple fact that they are not driving the animal explains the phenomenon of sleep.

This picture also provides an explanation for the mind/body problem. The "under the radar" link between Mental activity and Physical activity explains the conundrum that has stymied modern philosophers.

It explains how free will is exercised without violating the causal laws of physics. The free will, as with all other conscious aspects of mentality, is exercised by Beon and not by the brain/body. And the free will as exercised by Beon explains manifest actions of an Intelligent Designer of many of the complex structures of our physical world including galaxies and biological cells. It explains the establishment of the genetic code for example. [7/16/15 see my essay On the Origin of the Genetic Code]

I have glossed over the arguments against free will so now might be the time to address them. What we have so far explains the compatibility between the exercise of free will and the causal relationships demanded by the laws of physics. The free will is exercised outside of our physical world, and its influence comes in "under the HUP radar" to make it appear as if the brain itself is exercising free will and taking deliberate physical action.

But the immediate response is likely to be the evidence of Libet's Half-Second Delay experiment. We need to explain that at some point so it might as well be now.



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