CONNECTIVE TISSUE
SOMA SOPHIA
Body Wisdom, Creativity & Psychic Energy

By Iona Miller, 10-2005

Introduction

"The only truly natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth. . . .The sense of Earth is the irresistable pressure which will come at the right moment to unite them (humankind) in a common passion." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We can connect intentionally with well-being through our hearts, returning the human dimension to our technocratic society. We can align ourselves by implimenting changes in our beliefs to improve the flow of physical and psychic energy, creativity, the wisdom and well-being of our holistic selves as well as our quality of life. But how?

It is fashionable now, especially in energy medicine to talk of fields, and the field body in particular with a certain reverence. Fields are applied to the body for both diagnosis and treatment. Talk of the role of Consciousness in the journey of evolutionary wisdom is likewise popular. We speak in terms of fields, because that marks the boundary of our knowledge, the frontier of our observations and theories. But if there is a “consciousness field” science hasn’t discovered it.

As humans, we unceasingly pursue the manufacture of order out of chaos. It is not to be right, to prove ourselves right but just because we crave that understanding. We generate narratives, models, and myths. But that doesn’t mean that energy, consciousness, healing, or creativity is limited to those pathways in any way.

The truth behind the curtain is that we simply don’t know, though most practitioners have their heartfelt models about how it all works. Many stake their credibility on it. However, life, art and science imitate and are an extension of the technologies they use. But human beings rarely realize this cultural fact that “the medium is the message” (McLuhan).

Some experts will invoke the plenum (Comings), others extoll the Void (Bearden); some see a universe of sticky strings and membranes (Greene), others of chaotic attractors at the cosmological level (quantum chaos), a quantum handshake (Cramer; King), a plasma universe (Thornhill), density-matrix (Progogine), information field (Moles), toroid (Tenen; Young), or still others see an n-dimensional hologram (Miller; Gariaev).

Everyone chimes in on the chorus of mind/body buzzwords, and the nouveau version, Nonlocal Mind. Some speakers confound mutually-exclusive theories with one another, as if selecting “all of the above” as the answer to the Reality question. I can recall one well-meaning energy medicine researcher seriously trying to detect tachyons through his Ficus Benjamina! I was underwhelmed.


There are many dimensions of our consciousness, conditioning our experience also by how we think and believe. Observing our own self-awareness is a self-reflexive act. By definition, consciousness is always a scale-dependent collective event, whether conceived as an artifact of collective, cosmic, geomagnetic, biological, or quantum fields. But we are scientifically unsure it is a field phenomenon at all.

Consciousness studies have attracted the attention of mystics, philosophers, and scientists from many disciplines spanning new syntheses in physics, biology, neurology, psychology, energy medicine, and more. This multidisciplinary inquiry raises questions ranging from cellular to organismic perception to the subjective quality of our ordinary conscious and unconscious experiences, in addition to the phenomenology of transformation and transcendence.

Is there more to our consciousness than simple cognition? Does consciousness somehow relate to energy levels? The Chinese say the deeper the level of consciousness the higher the Qi energy it associates. They say the Tao gives rise to all forms, but has no form of its own; likewise, the Diamond Sutra says there is no form without void and no void without form. In cosmology, even cold dark matter is said to have structure at all magnitudes. Recent string theories propose dimensions larger than the universe.

Mystery and confusion enshroud our deepest experiences and observations. We don’t even know what ‘the self’ means much less the primal nature of the universe. We don’t clearly know how emotion differs from cognition, even when we perceive dissonance between them. Or we overlook the role of meta-emotion in choice, including worldview. Imagery plays a role in the models we create from our possibly hard-wired “love of truth.”

But it is a dramatic irony that emotion can also have distorting effects on cognition and reason, causing us to see what we want to believe (observer bias). Intentions and emotions arise together, but emotions compel us to pursue our goals even with colored perceptions.

Emotional investment can lead directly to episodes of goal obstruction rather than the emotional awareness of a comprehensive self in the world. Or, emotions, as perceptions of patterned changes in the body (William James), can help us toward greater understanding of self, others and world. When such perceptions are conscious, they qualify as emotions; unconscious unfelt emotions are feelings. Emotions condition our living experience of the present, the temporal stream of consciousness.

Every conscious state has an emotional quality; good or bad mood, energized or not. Existential feelings, (such as belonging, separation, power, control, being one with nature), can be bodily feelings and, at the same time, part of the structure of intentionality and the feeling of being.

Overt and concealed emotional experience permeates conscious life. Vigilance, emotional arousal, and attention mediate tensions associated with subjective states. They help us cope with dissonance, deploy intentional behavior, and stay motivated. Social bonds foster empathy, emotional/affective resonance with the internal distress of another individual and the intrinsic motivation to help relieve it. Empathic vision has to be part of the new paradigm that returns the human dimension to our plutocratic technocracy.

The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that we are clueless about the deep nature of reality. We might think or feel we do, either spiritually or scientifically, but it may be a conditioned illusion, a mirage of consensus. Why is it each new age or holistic health speaker or energy medicine practitioner has a pet theory of both physics and spirituality? Philosophically based, they can’t all be right. In the end, only a few will have accurately described the reality we inhabit.

Many traditions claim that when we experience pure consciousness that is the ground state of the universe. But there is nothing in the experience itself to substantiate anything beyond a state, physiological anomoly, or artifact of the nervous system. Separate sorts of evidence are needed to highlight the experience itself from theories about it.

Comprehending our consciousness raises the fundamental question of the primal nature of the cosmos as well as our own nature. We evolved in cosmic and local environmental fields (like geomagnetic Schumann’s Resonance) that definitely condition our being and consciousness. The environment has molded our form.

Three forms of EM fields- wavefront, photon, and coupling mediator field, are able to exchange energy and information within each other immediately, as if they were one unique existent, or living in complete symbioses. They exist as a resonant coupling, represented in the quantum world as the Bose-Einstein condensate.

Complex information can be encoded in EM fields, as we all know from coding and decoding of television and radio signals. Even more complex information can be encoded in holographic images. DNA acts as a holographic projector of acoustic and EM information which contains the informational quintessence of the biohologram.

Some argue for a field of consciousness, morphic or dynamic self-organizing fields guiding organisms including ourselves. Some (Laszlo; Goswami) argue for an “informed Universe”, a Conscious Universe. Yet others (Deutsch) argue the universe is obsolete, the fabric of reality being a multiverse.

We need a paradigm shift to effectively study consciousness - new concepts of matter, life and mind. Current theories of reality have gaps, and tend to overlap one another or treat existence at radically different scales. We can’t even reliably determine if Reality is smooth or lumpy.

Many naked assumptions are being made in science, which has become more like religion, a matter of faith and participant bias. When we look into the Abyss we find ourselves smiling back enigmatically.

We stand in Mystery, exemplified by the facts there is no consensus in physics, cosmology, consciousness studies, and certainly not metaphysics. Is information from the cosmic or subquantal realms really directly transducable? We don't even know what electricity is! Much less the definitive nature of a subquantal realm we cannot observe except by inferrence. We don’t know what energy is , except that "it is frozen mass and/or light" which another theory proves cannot 'exist', at least not objectively because all experience is subjective.

Too bad that for all our scientific pretentions to objectivity, we don’t have any viable understanding of either mass, light or time, either. This is compounded with notions of so-called dark matter and dark energy, more ‘smoke and mirrors’ explanations. It seems the great Light casts a long shadow. In holographic theory, that ‘shadow’ is related to the scalar field of the vacuum potential. Dark matter and energy are also implicated in structure formation, as is fractal dynamics.

There are continual revolutions in concepts and paradigms in physics, which later permeate society and beliefs mostly in a rather naive (often misunderstood) way. Life can be understood from the perspective of contemporary physics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and quantum theory or from metabolic domains like neurotransmitters, gene-expression, liquid crystals, or dynamic cellular membranes.

If we drop down another whole domain of observation from the juicy “wetware” described by chemistry and atomic structure, we enter the subatomic realm of quantum physics. At this level the behavior of matter, both organic and inorganic, is governed not by classical notions of cause and effect or even complex dynamics, but by those of quantum probability and the uncertainty principle.

Many theorists postulate quantum and subquantal imaginal fields for both the cosmos and ourselves. Some of these theories of interacting field bodies, (like Frolich’s quantum coherent photon fields), are more plausible than others. A model of the mind-body relationship is developed in which novel biophysical principles in genome function generate a dynamic possessing attributes consistent with both our psychophysical nature and consciousness.

One of the most coherent models (King, 2001) invokes a fractal link between neurodynamical chaos and quantum uncertainty. Transactional wave collapse allows this link to be utilized predictably by the excitable cell, in a way which bypasses and complements formal computation. The formal unpredictability of the model allows mindbody to interact coherently with the brain, the predictability of consciousness in survival strategies being selected as a trait by organismic evolution. This theory suggests quantum evolution is orchestrated by the information transduction of DNA.


Mindbody Wisdom

“Light and matter both behave like separate particles and also like waves. This . . . obliged us to abandon, on the plane of atomic magnitudes, a causal description of nature in the ordinary space-time system, and in its place to set up invisible fields of probability in multidimensional spaces.” ~ Wolfgang Pauli, Physicist

But, is consciousness a component of physics? Erwin Laszlo suggests that in an “informed universe”, everything that has ever happened is retained as holographic information in space and that it can be simultaneously downloaded from anywhere in the universe. So why aren’t we all “know it alls”? Because it exists enfolded or encoded or in potential? How can we embody that innate intelligence?

The problem of creativity is present in every field of science (Laszlo, 1995). He suggested that quantum-vacuum interactions play a significant role in the fields of cosmology, physics, biology and consciousness. Everyone wants to discuss the relationship of consciousness and cosmos at the scale or mode of their specialty.

Biologist Mae Wan Ho, Dr. James Oschmann, and cellular biologist Bruce Lipton speak of special energy relationships in the connective tissue (the skin, bones, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, various membranes covering major organs and linings of internal spaces), extracellular matrix, and cellular membranes of the body.

Some speak of the heart and “belly brain” whose thoughts travel the Vagus highway (Porges). These are physical correlates of gut reactions, and perhaps psychism (Radin). Sentience, memory and intercommunication are distributed throughout the body; it may be our unconscious and holistic source of wisdom -Soma Sophia - for what can we know without our body and senses and their virtual analogs? We don’t have the metaphors to conceptualize otherwise.

This extracellular tissue acts like a dynamic liquid crystal, and is the basis of instantaneous (nonlocal) communication throughout the organism.

Coherent energy is vital energy, arising from stored and mobilized coherent energy forms. Our systems are ultrasensitive to weak signals and can amplify them to global effects. Qi is called “coherent” energy. In addition to quantum vacuum interactions with the mind and cosmos, this ground substance of the body with ‘a mind of its own’ may be the basis of energy medicine and our well-being.

There is a dynamic, liquid crystalline continuum of connective tissues and extracellular matrix linking directly into the equally liquid crystalline cytoplasm in the interior of every single cell in the body (see Ho, 1997; Ho, 1998). Liquid crystallinity gives organisms their characteristic flexibility, exquisite sensitivity and responsiveness, thus optimizing the rapid, noiseless intercommunication that enables the organism to function as a coherent, coordinated whole. In addition, the liquid crystalline continuum provides subtle electrical interconnections which are sensitive to changes in pressure, pH and other physicochemical conditions; in other words, it is also able to register ‘tissue memory’. Thus, the liquid crystalline continuum possesses all the qualities of a ‘body consciousness’ that may indeed be sensitive to all forms of subtle energy medicines including acupuncture. (Mae Wan Ho)

In the quantum world, everything is in flux, including the subquantal virtual photons popping in and out of existence. The foamy Zero Point fluctuation determines the behavior of quantum systems likely by radiant EM fields. Radiation is absorbed from the zero-point background. The stability of matter itself is mediated by the zero point fluctuation phenomena. This hidden energy pool is invoked by new age physicists as plenum physics (Comings). And EM fields that correlate with matter are claimed to act as morphogenetic fields (Sheldrake).

This image of bubbling spacetime doesn’t exist in Einstein’s classical theory of relativity where space is absolutely smooth. Matter and energy have an equatable, quantifiable identity. But at the scale of atoms and electrons particles have no definite velocity and location. Einstein’s picture of reality breaks down at this smallest scale.

Quantum principles therefore dictate that spacetime is a seething foam. If gravity obeys relativity but matter obeys QM, clearly a theory of quantum gravity and a new description of quantum spacetime is required to resolve the conundrum. Are hyperspace and spacetime two views of the same domain or is the solution a whole new perspective on the deepest level of reality?

David Bohm (1980) expressed a view that the groundstate of human consciousness isbeyond neural states representing results of only activity related to aware consciousness. He proposed it may be very fast and related to pre-space, the implicate order behind space-time, to a creative factor, from which the whole phenomena and the space-time structure enfolds. These fast mental processes have characteristics common to microphysical processes (Bohm, 1986). Ultimately, thinking is related to the deep unconscious, the entire embedded organism.

These magical fields have been conceptualized because they work in the mathematics and the real world, but that doesn’t mean they are identical with it, necessarily. There are mathematical solutions for worlds that do not exist - imaginary realms. Likewise, string and M-theory have many solutions, most of which do not match our Reality.

They are a matter of faith, in some sense, whether we model them as EM fields, strong force fields, gravitational fields, strings, membranes, or subquantal scalar fields. The dogma of field theory has permeated the world of physics. Fields have taken on magical properties.

We can speak of a quantum vacuum “holographic information field”, but what is it; does it even exist as more than a mathematical abstraction? A recent Scientific American (Nov. 05), suggests solutions for holographic universes, but none of them match the observed flat, infinite nature of our own.

Fields or Holograms?

Maxwell is credited with establishing field theory. Maxwell combined a set of four field equations to describe electric and magnetic fields. These four simple and elegant equations describe behavior and provide means to calculate forces, but they shed no light on the actual physical mechanism of electric and magnetic fields and their interactions. As a result, we don't really know what is going on, and nobody seems to care.

Fields can materialize in empty space. Fields can bend and warp. Fields push and pull. Fields can change the speed of your clock. To help these magical fields we also have miraculous phantom particles and agents. We have photons for light and energy, gravitons for gravity, gluons for strong force, and super strings for string theory. They are all phantom because none of them were ever observed in nature or in any experiment. All but photons carry negative energy.

Yet, viable theories, such as the Holographic Concept of Reality don’t rely on field theory at all. In this concept, the 2-D holographic domain is one of information and resolution. The holographic domain conjures an extra dimension, projecting our apparently 3-D world. If the entire universe is a kind of hologram it may mean that even gravity is a persistent perceptual delusion operating only in higher dimensional spacetime.

The gist of the holographic paradigm is that there is a more fundamental reality. There is an invisible flux not comprised of parts, but an inseparable interconnectedness. The holographic paradigm is one of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding of patterns of information. All potential information about the universe is holographically encoded in the spectrum of frequency patterns constantly bombarding us.

In this dynamic model there are no “things”, just energetic events. This “holoflux” includes the ultimately flowing nature of what is, and all possible forms. All the objects of our world are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. This is the guiding matrix for self-assembly, and manipulating and organizing physical reality.

The holographic description is one of a frequency domain which doesn’t rely on fields to project itself. Each sample of that reality at any scale contains the information of the whole in greater or lesser resolution. The holographic model offers new options for resolution of profound mysteries such as quantum gravity and our hyperdimensional existence. We can speak of a self-organizing “holographic information field” but perhaps it is a misnomer. Does it even exist as more than a mathematical abstraction?

Criss-crossing patterns occur when two or more waves ripple through each other. In the transactional interpretation of quantum physics, waves of probability originate in the past, present, and future. Events manifest when waves from past and future interfere with each other in the present. That pattern creates matter and energy. The universe emerges from the rippling effects of immense numbers of criss-crossing interference waves. The geometry of the fields is more fundamental than the fields or emergent particles themselves.

Our brains mathematically construct ‘concrete’ reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension. This information realm of meaningful, patterned primary reality transcends time and space. Thus, the brain is an embedded hologram, interpreting a holographic universe. All existence consists of embedded holograms within holograms and their interrelatedness somehow gives rise to our existence and sensory images.

Interference patterns of waves can be visualized interacting like ripples on a pond. At the quantum level they create matter and energy as we perceive them -like 3-dimenional effects. Consciousness and matter share the same essence, differing by degrees of subtlety or density. There is a strong correlation between modulations of the brain’s EM field and consciousness (Persinger,1987; McFadden, 2002). The universe is a continuously evolving, interactively dynamic hologram.

This “Holographic Concept of Reality” was first suggested by Miller, Webb, and Dickson in 1973, and later touted by David Bohm (1980), Ken Wilber (1982), Karl Pribram (1991), Michael Talbot (1991), and others. In this holistic theory, the Universe is considered as one dynamic holomovement - grand Unity.

Research in Quantum Bioholography (Miller & Miller) strongly suggests that DNA is a holographic projector which manifests our embodiment through projection of biophotons and sound, a cymatic process known as acoustic holography. Fields are just ways of tuning subsystems.

Whatever this irreducible immaterial essence is, it a creative force recognized as identical with or an agent of Source. In heartful communities it has been linked with the groundstate of being (negentropic zero-point energy) by both physicists and psychologists.

Consciousness is multilayered. Our soulful intentionality can be a healing force for ourselves and others, coupling us whether or not we comprehend intellectually how that “works”. This “interactive excitement” may or may not have anything to do with the fields we attribute it to. Still, we all have a sense of inner direction that helps us know when we are on or off course in our life journey, whether we heed it or not.

We have suggested how the ethereal current concepts of the body have become, and certain ways ‘spirit’ embodies itself in matter. Mostly, the explanations depend on our level of observation - emical, molecular, atomic, or subquantal. Because we lack a unified theory, clearly we have yet to observe the deepest levels of reality, which keep receding as our vision expands further toward the microscopic and macroscopic.


The Triple Union

“Unless bodies lose their corporeal state and unless bodies assume again their corporeal state, that which is desired will not be attained.” ~ Byzantine fragment, The Philosophical Egg

We are truly psychophysical beings, composed of bodymind and spirit, but even those who grasp the holistic concept often fail to live it from the heart. Arguably, Carl Jung (1911) was among the first to apply the recognized concepts of physical energy to show that libido, or psychic energy obeys the same laws and is not only analogous, but identical. Psychophysical and emotional energy is associated with instinctual biological drives.

Though psychic energy is neutral, it can be literalized, somatized, sexualized, emotionalized, socialized, mentalized, or spiritualized. Symptoms, thoughts, images, fantasies, beliefs, emotions, forms of expression or behaviour are all libidinal. Libido tends to flow inward or outward, a dynamic rhythm of introversion/extroversion. Jung attributed mana or personal power for a kind of shamanic or positive psychic contagion to those individuals who seem to have a charismatic influence on others.

Psychic energy tends to follow the same laws of physical conservation and entropy. Jung taught that within the psyche, libido: (1) creates entropy, (2) is generally conserved under the principle of equivalence, (3) flows through the psyche in channels that can be redirected, (4) can be either progressive or regressive, and (5) is transformed by symbols. In short, the psyche as, defined by Jung, is a complex system.

New physics, chaos theory, synergetics, and information theory describe our existence as complex dynamical systems. Entropy can only occur in system that is absolutely closed so no energy from outside can be fed into it. But the psyche is an open system, which exchanges energy and information with its environment and can be negentropic.

We can also have a negentropic influence on one another (Gladwell), perturbing, enlarging, creating new pathways and possibilities. Theoretically, behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world. Gladwell's thesis that ideas, products, messages and behaviors "spread just like viruses do" remains a metaphor. Yet, highly sociable or connective people often become revolutionary leaders, bringing others together with a new perspective, a broadened worldview.

Life includes chaos and order, good and bad experiences, even catastrophes that require us to adapt or die. The important thing is how we meet and react to chaos, finding ways to replenish our depletion. Observation of the subquantal domain reveals an inexhaustible realm of negentropy from which we can draw our psychophysical sustenance. When healthy, our entire system is designed to reduce entropy, in different scales and domains.

The same is true for the superorganism of society. We are irreducibly entangled with one another and the environment. We are healthy only to the extent we resonate with our environment. We maintain our integrity and identity as a dissipative system only because we are open to flows of energy, matter, or information from our environment (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984).

We live in a persistent delusion of separateness. However, we are all nonlocally connected in an ill-defined yet tangible way at the subatomic, individual, group and global level, connecting and diverging Psychic energy or libido is a psychosomatic phenomenon analogous to the paradoxical nature of energy/matter or wave/particle. The human body is not an object in space, but seamlessly welded to spacetime. We are not merely a phenomenal body of flesh, but one of awareness, of consciousness, a living interface of inner and outer field phenomena.

We all experience visceral or gut reactions and know instinctively how our mental states affect our physical vitality, and vice versa. But often we loose the intimate relationship with our mindbody, with the source of our being, our aliveness, our passions. If we experience this flow at all, it ebbs and flows away. Our individual and collective creative potential remains largely unrealized.

How often do we pay attention to those vital signs, the innate wisdom of the body, inhabiting our minds rather than our flesh? We are increasingly not instinctual, but cultural, and we choose many of our behaviors for good or ill. We’re nearly all “sick and tired” of the way things are, but what do we do to change them?

We can learn simple techniques for self regulation, such as biofeedback, yoga, and meditation. Creativity, as an activity in several fields, brings many intrinsic health-promoting rewards. We can create new habits to help us cope with technocratic society that tone or recalibrate our systems and change our physical state. We all have to learn how to deal with personal and/or global catastrophe whether we want to or not.

The Golden Flesh

"The borders of our minds are ever shifting and many minds can flow into one another ... and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy" ~ William Butler Yeats

Do we actively value our psychic well being, our totality, psyche and substance? Are we living soulful, artful lives? Do we nourish our whole selves with self-love? Do we take the time to care for our body or deny it, drive it relentlessly like our servant, or treat it like a machine? Do we attend to our inner world of waking images and dreams? Can we come to our senses, deepening the quality and intensity of embodied experience?

Our felt-sense is our wise intuitive response if we but listen. It brings meaning and value to life. What is your body trying to tell you? The body has a mind of its own and speaks that mind in gut reactions, body language, psychosomatics, and literal symptoms.

When psychic energy is dammed up it manifests in unconscious or destructive ways, such as tension, withdrawl, alienation, anxiety, compulsions, depression, addictions, somatization, and suicidal tendencies. Some people learn early, even in the womb, that their world is not a safe place. Social patterns become maladaptive when an organism’s true needs are not met in a tangible, congruent way.

A confused person can react with pain, fear, hopelessness, cognitive dissonance, disturbed biorhythms, approach/avoidance, passive aggression, codependence, apathy, or self-defeating behavior patterns. Our biology and minds become confused. Fed enough negative self-talk the body will react with authentic symptoms, self-induced illness. This does not mean that all disease is self-inflicted nor that we are necessarily to blame for our ailments, in some version of “new age guilt”.

Both the alternative health fields and mindbody psychologies such as the humanistic, Jungian and transpersonal psychologies have sought the triple union of body, soul, and spirit much like the medieval alchemists. But only a fusion of those approaches can manifest the union of opposites in the golden flesh. We can learn to care for our mindbodies in new ways from the inside out, conceptually and experientially.

To truly nourish ourselves holistically we have to address the manifest needs of mental and physical well-being. Consciousness may have a direct effect on the subatomic particles of the body, especially those within the brain. A tiny change within the open system of the brain, for example, can result in a vast change to the overall health of the body because of amplification through feedback loops. Nonlinearity exists at many scales.


Soma Sophia

“To me it's very obvious that consciousness is not simply an epiphenomenon, not a byproduct of the brain; it's something that's pervading the whole universe. . . . Consciousness is not simply produced by a complex set of neurons. It's there, in the whole body, and in all of existence.” ~Ervin Laszlo, Philosopher

Sometimes we have to address the external realities of a situation and sometimes its spirit or essential nature. The same is true for our bodies and souls. Significance is extracted from the experiential responses of our whole being - soma significance, the felt-sense wisdom of the bodymind, which we can personify as Soma Sophia.

We can use the wisdom of the bodymind to face stress, pain, loss, illness, even catastrophe. Creative transformation of our instinctive reactions produces the gold, whether we call that essence health, art, flow, or inspiration. Psychic sustenance is found within. Once the mindbody connects with Source, all of our self-expression becomes soulful. We truly embody spirit.

That Source is the source of psychic energy, our libido, which becomes available for negentropic or entropic expression. Its tangible root lies within our very energy/matter as the plenum that science calls the vacuum fluctuation or zero-point energy, the groundstate of existence. It is a bit of the cosmos, of the universe that lies within our bodies, which are composed of elements cooked within the stars.

The body itself is the Hermetic vessel for the transformation of instinctual drives. That creative process can take place through trance, art, or meditation, or any combination of them. There are many techniques, which help us process pain, stress, trauma, or depression. Often therapies address higher levels of organization, often at the conceptual level, rather than reordering the physical core of distress, which inhibits our well-being.

A dynamic combination of focus, concentration and flow undergirds our conscious existence and how we relate to others and the world. In meditations such as biofeedback, Tai Chi or Yoga, we intentionally create dynamic changes in our psychophysiology. We temporarily drop our identification with the body only to reinhabit it with even more awareness or mindfulness. This is the artful life; creative fulfillment of our collective destiny.


The Field Body

“The interaction of our mind and consciousness with the quantum vacuum links us with other minds around us, as well as with the biosphere of the planet. It "opens" our mind to society, nature, and the universe. This openness has been known to mystics and sensitives, prophets and meta-physicians through the ages. But it has been denied by modern scientists and by those who took modern science to be the only way of comprehending reality.” Laszlo

We can return to Nature and our nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory - physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a process of recursive self-generation. This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment.

We are each a temple of living light. We arise from and are sustained by field phenomena, waves of biophotonic light and sound, which form our essential nature through acoustic holography (Miller & Miller), which is similar to the formation of matter via sound in cymatics. Cymatics is the science that describes how sound creates forms via resonance phenomena. Bioholography is thus a form of cymatics - acoustic holography.

Holography is the artform of producing virtual 3-D spatial images of objects. Its artifact is an ephemera, though the holographic plate which records the interference pattern is not. Projections are most compelling when they converge on the viewer. Virtuality is the condition of pure potential, non-actualization. Virtual images are created from diffracting lightwaves and reading the interference patterns.

But virtual particles from the vacuum potential (ZPE) pop in and out of our reality perturbing, even creating actual particles. Cybernetic virtuality involves interaction with a computer system to render certain potentialities actual within certain rules. In holographic systems, a body of fiction can potentially trigger future facts, opening new windows of reality. For example, rituals of quantum biofeedback, can manifest as nonlocal healing, whether through tangible interaction or the power of suggestion and placebo effect.

Our bodies are created from the virtuality of scalar field interactions with our 4-D reality of this spacetime. The mechanism is by projection via our DNA by biophotons or coherent light produced within the body. This coherent light transduces itself into radio waves, which carry sound as information that decodes the 4-D form as a material object, such as ourselves.

The study of this phenomenon of light and sound forming an organism using DNA as a holographic projector is called quantum bioholography (Miller). This process is true not only of formation of the body but also extends into its maintenance, a continual process of creation and renewal.

Light and sound carry the information that shapes us and our environment. In a sense we are essentially “frozen” light. Universe congeals within us each moment in a unique way, never to be repeated. Science now tells us this is so, that each of us extends nonlocally far beyond the skin boundary through our embedded field body (Pribram/Bohm, Wan-Ho).

Nature works through self-organization at the creative edge of chaos (Gleick, Peat), and so do we. Complexity is the fine line between chaos and order, "a chaos of behaviors in which the components of the system never quite lock into place, yet never quite dissolve into turbulence either" (Waldrop, 1992, p. 293). The creative edge of chaos is a transition phase.

Self-reinforcing, autopoeitic morphogenesis creates specific forms. Yet a meta-theory eludes us. We still don’t know exactly how that works; there is currently no consensus in quantum physics at the level of the unified field, but we have many working theories, which help us grope our way toward understanding. Likewise, there is no generally accepted paradigm in consciousness studies. Ambiguity surrounding our psychophysical Mystery also shows up in the split between conventional allopathic and energy medicine.

Mystics suggest even more subtle connections of soul and spirit through time and space, evolutionary intelligence. Even without a mystical approach, we can rest and refresh ourselves by aligning our intentionality with the very fabric of spacetime. Consciously participating in this universal process helps heal and integrate our mindbodies, psyche and matter. We can learn to self-soothe cumulative daily irritations by practicing self-regulation.

Cosmos resonates within each of us, but we have lost touch with that due to electromagnetic pollution and the distracting demands of modern life. But we can rediscover this integral context in which we are embedded as a field of timeless, radiant abundance. It is plausible that spacetime is a plenum rather than an empty vacuum. It abides not just outside us in the depths of space but within the fabric of our being. We are pulsating dynamos of cells, organs, and dynamic systems.

We can learn to wrap our minds around this quantum reality that we are not separate from the ongoing process of creation, even if an energetic field of information defies detection. The source of creation always flows through rhythmic pulsation or waves of energy/matter, perhaps even dark matter. The manifestation of each so-called particle of our being is orchestrated through a self-organizing process (Penrose/Hameroff).

This dance is a harmonic continuum from the smallest to the largest scales, permeating all domains of assembly and observation – subquantum, quantum, molecular, chemical, even cultural, global, and cosmological. The evolution of our dynamic system obeys universal laws. Likewise our behaviors flow into manifestation from our beliefs, thoughts and emotions, including our self-image.

By opening to system dynamics we can reorganize away from the entropic, reductionistic, destructive habit patterns that plague our species. We can make stress-reducing negentropic choices for structural and psychological adjustment, which improve our quality of life. Integration is a synergistic process rooted in primordial bodymind consciousness.

The brain is not confined to our skull, but permeates our whole being through the intracellular matrix and sensory system, as well as the strong EM fields generated by the beating heart. Research suggests activities in the brain may be pre-conditioned by the DC field of the organism (Oschmann; Becker). Our molecular system extends beyond the nervous system and is the bedrock of intuitive, subconscious and unconscious processes.

Hypnosis suggests the fabric of the body also helps store our memories, embodying our triumphs and traumas. Ideomotor signaling (Rossi) can elicit revelations about ourselves not available from our conscious minds. There is a reciprocal action between our inchoate perceptions, thoughts and the chemistry of our bodies, and therefore our current and future states.

Jung (1932) identified at least five kinds of drives: hunger, activity, sexuality, creativity, and reflection. But he gradually came to conceive of "libido as a psychic analogue of physical energy,” a more or less quantitative concept, which should not be defined in qualitative terms, though libido includes drives, love, desire, aspirations. The important point is that this energy is never destroyed, but flows throughout the psyche activating now this part and now another.

Psychology describes psychic contents, including the role of the body, with psychic means. Psyche - the realm of soul -- is subject and object, medium and message, source and goal; there is no relative point of observation outside the human psyche. When we get down to it, we find only unprovable but assumed beliefs, which seem to work and therefore seem meaningful. We tend to have experiences that confirm our view or perspective of the world.

Physics, by contrast, pursues material reality both via and, to the greatest degree possible, beyond the human experience, but it also uses the mental medium in both its conceptions and inventions. All models of reality are “soft” technologies, but our beliefs and worldview condition the reality we experience. Just as matter is in a constant process of redefinition, so too must psyche and spirit be continuously redefined.

The psychic energy that directs and motivates the personality is called libido, which is simply a generic form of psychic energy which can be redirected or "canalized" into both sexual and non-sexual activities. Psychic energy balances the energy flowing between spirit and instinct. This non-specific energy can consciously be deployed and channeled for self-transformation.

Go with the Flow

Research has shown (Csikszentmihalyi) that self-teaching is strongly correlated with quality of life and the ability to experience refreshing concentration and flow in ordinary activities. Maslow called this quality self-actualization, first as an emergent property which can becomes a stabilized steady-state of personality. The “good life” is not only enjoyable and growth promoting, it reduces the sum total of entropy in the world.

Yet finding flow in our busy lives can be elusive. Flow is neutral, as a source of psychic energy, focusing attention and motivating action. It can be used for constructive or destructive experiences. The more we allocate to the negative, the less we have available for the positive. So we need to become jealous of our spare energy, spending it wisely as our psychophysical organism tells us through bodytalk and feelings.

The amount of energy available to our consciousness and will varies. We can respond to stress by being active rather than reactive. Self-regulation means scanning, listening to, and intentionally recalibrating the mindbody. It requires focusing and concentration our attention, then “letting go”, seemingly releasing all effort - self-accepting, non-striving mindfulness.

Some suggest there is a Platonic field (Symposium) that restores our energy. It is compatible with the description of stages of pure consciousness described by the Yoga Sutras and other Eastern traditions (Buddhism, Taoism, etc.). The secret of the universe lies within “empty” space, which turns out to be a virtual plenum of potential. It is a nourishing essence, which feeds our psychophysical being.

Non-locality is regarded as accepted fact by physicists. They say that the twin photons are aware of each other instantaneously even if they are at opposite ends of the Universe. Laszlo says this new concept has primacy over matter. Puthoff says that matter is driven by this energy source (ZPE). And so is our matter. The interconnections among EM fields are not the external interactions described by Maxwell's four equations, the interconnection is "in the deep" inside those interacting fields, our own fields.

Inexhaustible psychic energy is the single most distinguishing trait of self-teaching individuals. Most creative people are self-taught, often achieving breakthroughs by investing surplus energy playing with the apparently trivial. No matter the subject, each of their new little discoveries parlays into excitement at the moment of discovery, in a self-reinforcing reward. These rewards build motivation to continue.

Have the “creatively gifted” learned a subtle secret for drawing on the essence of the cosmos by investing in their curiosity and delight? Some learn how to draw this surplus energy from the psychic well early in life and drink deeply through their attempts to understand, invent, express and solve problems. They manifest a determination to participate as fully as possible in life.

Self-actualizers pay more attention to what is going on around them with surplus energy to invest their attention in things or people for their own sake, rather than for strokes or gain. Most people hoard their attention in self-absorption, material or emotional advantage rather than growth, empathy and compassion.

Most guard their energy for immediate role or stress responses, or become bound by those factors, numb or apathetic. Those less concerned with themselves actually have more psychic energy to experience life. Everyday giving is an antidote for self-obsession and negativity.

It’s a free-floating type of attention pursued without recognition or support, easily captured temporarily by any subject or interest, rather than strictly tied to goals and ambitions. Wonder, novelty, surprise, awe, and transcendence are boundary breaking allowing us to move beyond ignorance, fear and prejudice. Often this experience becomes a valuable element of later full-blown realizations - new synthesis.

We can cultivate this quality and it’s intrinsic reward by 1) doing whatever needs to be done, even the routine, with concentrated attention and skill, rather than inertia, and 2) approaching them with the care it takes to make a work of art.

Instead of using our leisure energy wastefully we can learn to direct it from passive activity toward new experiences, which only become interesting once we devote attention to them. Time management and husbanding of psychic energy can be directed to create increased enjoyment of life, here and now. In flow we forget ourselves, rather than wallowing in the apathy, worry and boredom of unmet personality needs. Life is too short to remain depressed or exhausted.

We need time and psychic energy to pursue our curiosity. So, we have to be alert for those issues and people who would negatively feed on us, draining, subverting, or sabotaging our creative flow. We can complain, reflect on our stuckness, or actively invest our psychic energy in harmonious relations and goals, creating positive feedback. Having clear goals helps us focus and concentrate, whether we achieve them, or not.

Owning our own actions helps us focus desires and priorities for an improved life. The self-motivated individual can concentrate more or less at will. Interest leads to focus and focus leads to interest. We take over ownership of our lives by learning to direct psychic energy toward our intentions. There is more consistency between inner desires and outer experience. When we learn to love what we have to do, the vector or arc of our development shifts.

When we learn to control attention, we learn to control experience, and therefore the quality of our lives. We invest less psychic energy in painful events and draining resentments, and more in self-affirming and rewarding activities, enjoying them for the control we acquire over our own attention. This simple process can lead to great leaps in transformation, and is also the basis of mystical practice simply for its own sake.

If you learn to love your fate, it reduces entropy not only in your own consciousness but for those you contact. In contact with source, you don’t have to feed on their energies in a negative way. We feel even better when creatively connected to something greater or more permanent than ourselves; it gives us energy. We can even find joy fighting a losing battle for a good cause.


Being in THE ZONE

Folklore has it that artists and sportsmen such as Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird can enter a state of consciousness where they are actively entangled with their surroundings and perhaps even the future. In tennis, the body must be in motion somehow anticipating trajectories even before the serve in order to return the volley. Surfing or boarding are also good examples. Gamers report a similar flow for their virtual states.

Likewise, artists enter a flow state in both inspiration and artistic production or performance. Artists, too, are often accused of anticipating expressing a symbolic change in collective culture, whether they are consciously aware of it, or not. They seem to have an uncanny knack for symbolizing the zeitgeist of the time.

Musicians speak of their own kind of telepathy among one another, especially when jamming or improvising. Someone playing a spirited fast musical break knows the flow is rolling on and at the same time they are aware of the details, although they couldn’t consciously decide each action.

Sudden alarm experiments explore how dominant field dynamics can happen faster than consciousness can respond, using purely internal physical mechanisms. Part of the role of consciousness as an overseer is to allow the conscious periphery to have immediate access in the case of a threatening signal.

We all know we can react with lightning speed automatically while only dimly aware of it. We are aware of it sufficiently to anticipate and react to save our lives. The critical advantage of subjective conscious comes in, even if it is almost subliminal and not consciously thought through.

The BITZ experiments explore the existence of entanglements beyond the human body. Books have been written on 'Being In The Zone' (BITZ). Most of us cannot repeat these super-athletic experiments. But, then, how many of us can smash an atom? We must trust the honesty and ethics of atom-smashing scientists. We just need a measure of BITZ that is not too subjective.

All of these examples are, in some sense direct verification of entanglement on a conscious level. But in practical terms we can still learn what qualities and practices lead to the flow state. In this subjective sense, BITZ has already been experimentally verified; indeed, we are all entangled with our environment, some more actively than others, but only a few can intentionally exploit it, though many have experienced it by accident or intent.

What we need to learn is how to deploy this capacity for creativity and/or healing. Anyone can learn through practices that require concentration in one area to translate that capacity to other areas, such as creativity. Certain orientations and qualities are involved and most of these can be adopted or developed. Many of them include the body, through kinesthetic muscle memory or other physical expressions that take learned behavior and put it on “auto-pilot”, making it seem virtually effortless.

Many activities elsewhere described as BITZ are actually products of a light trance state, such as flow state people report while driving a car. Others, such as sports and music, explicitly require skill development to achieve fluency.
We can most easily apply ourselves to those things, which inspire a passion in us - those things we cannot help but do because the drive is strong, so motive and opportunity are there. But if a person has no passion, creative flow will remain elusive. With passion you can always learn the techniques to accomplish your creative goals. Still, many wrestle with the experience of trying to maintain vitality, passion, and inspiration while getting caught up in the daily grind of paying the bills and other mundane necessities

Reports of solutions include:

“It's a matter of intention. I try to make a conscious choice every day to do everything the best I can. For me, this has been a self sustaining and exponentailly growing energy sorce. The harder I work at doing things well, the better I do things, the better I feel about doing things, the more energy I have to work on doing things well, and so on, and so on.”

“For me, it's a matter of being Present, no matter what my external circumstances are. The loss of vitality comes not with the grinding work, but from the fact that we resist Life while doing that work. The only solution is to surrender to the moment, be present with what you are doing, and accept whatever comes as a result. Sometimes what comes won't be so pleasant, but as long as you accept that, then more and more often it will be pleasant things that come your way. “

“I feel like we can get through anything if we assert that it's only temporary. It's too easy to get dragged down by the slave paradigm, especially when you've got a higher mission you'd rather be tending to. We need to be that much stronger and clearer about our Great Work on this planet to get through the daily grind and seemingly endless servitude to the inane.”

There are two ways of looking at our predicament, one crippling, one liberating:

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: psychospiritual reality and mundane patterns are at odds with each other, bringing stress and a feeling of self-betrayal. This splits intent and energy, divides and conquers by lack of wholeness. Thwarted by a feeling of not living in sincere harmony with your true self Power (psychic energy) leaks away.

METANARRATIVE: realize that mundane activities are a result of will or intentionality, and that you are manifesting the mundane patterns that you see before you, either by conscious will or by default. The life you've created can manifest as a song, a poem, an art project, a great disovery. When you chose to make it surface, your full power and as a manifestation engine emerges.

Flow in intellectual and spiritual processes emerges from removal of blocks to creativity (such as competing activities and focus; poor self-image; poor judgment, thinking and work habits; conventionality, mediocrity; numbness; intolerance of complexity or solitude) and certain positive attitudes and behavior patterns, such as commitment to vision.

The most often cited examples facilitating creativity include the following: fluency, flexibility, sensitivity to problems, problems, originality, curiosity, openness to feelings and the unconscious, motivation, persistence and concentration, ability to think in images, ability to toy with ideas, ability to analyze and synthesize, tolerance of ambiguity, discernment and selectivity, ability to tolerate isolation, creative memory, background of fundamental knowledge, incubation, anticipation of productive periods, ability to think in metaphors, aesthetic orientation, etc.

If your desire to be creative is strong enough, nothing will prevent you from applying yourself if you have passion. Can the flow state be far behind? It is a form of transcendence, whether it comes through the physical flow of the body, the conceptual high of the A-ha state, the absorption and aesthetic satisfaction of the artistic process, or any conditions, which promote emotional flow. The latter might range from love, to the high encountered learning from one’s mentors, to the perception that Cosmos is facilitating your intention in a given direction, though the latter is a synchronicity, flow with the environment.

In trance states the process is largely automatic and unconscious; no “learning” is required. Trance possession and ‘white line fever’ arise from the same level, while the former includes a transpersonal experience. In artistic fervor the doors of the subconscious swing wide and there is mixing of the inner subjective world with the object world of tangible expression.

In pure creativity, including nonlocal healing and the bliss of meditative states, focus and concentration are consciously applied directly with intent. Trance, art and creativity are all forms of transcendence of the ego and connection with deeper than conscious levels of existence.

Exercising one’s talents helps remove the blocks mundane life would like to introject. Fluency, a creative ritual, a workstation, and making time available help increase the drive needed to carry a project to completion. Intentionality and a conducive environment increase the probability creativity will emerge.

But the secret is that connections or open channels to primordial SOURCE tend to provide a degree of flow, self-realization, or illumination. So, the real key to creativity in all its forms seems to be an enhanced capacity to connect tangibly with source bringing back some material or immaterial boon from that inspiration.



Conclusions

There are many plausible ways that quantum theory can help with these profound mysteries of the groundstate of energy/matter, consciousness, awareness and flow. It will likely be many decades before some understanding of the actual mechanisms are finalized. So, despite the pluses and minuses of existing quantum theories of mind, these kinds of theories should be encouraged. If consciousness is or is related to quantum effects then scientists will have to think in these directions to figure it out.

"Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfill other physical functions of which, perhaps, we have as yet no conception, but also to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present-is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation.”, says Maxwell.

Most natural philosophers hold, and have held, that action at a distance across empty space is impossible. In other words, that matter cannot act where it is not, but only where it is. The question "where is it?" is a further question that may demand attention and require more than a superficial answer.

Arguably, every atom of matter has a universal though nearly infinitesimal prevalence, and extends everywhere; since there is no definite sharp boundary or limiting periphery to the region disturbed by its existence. The lines of force of an isolated electric charge extend throughout illimitable space.

No ordinary matter is capable of transmitting the undulations or tremors that we call light. The speed at which they go, the kind of undulation, and the facility with which they go through vacuum, forbid this. So clearly and universally has it been perceived that waves must be waves of something, something distinct from ordinary matter.

Faraday conjectured that the same medium, which is concerned in the propagation of light, might also be the agent in electromagnetic phenomena, and he called it “the ether”. Now we speak of it as the zero-point domain of virtual photon fluctuation. Romantically, we refer to it as the plenum, since it is infinitely full of potential.

Some philosophers have reason to suppose that mind can act directly on mind without intervening mechanism, and sometimes that has been spoken of as genuine action at a distance. But, in the first place, no proper conception or physical model can be made of such a process, much less how that deploys intentionality in distance healing.

Nor is it clear that space and distance have any particular meaning in the region of psychology. The links between mind and mind may be something quite other than physical proximity. Since we don’t know how it works, in denying action at a distance across empty space we are not denying telepathy or other activities of a non-physical kind. Brain disturbance or mindbody healing are plausible physical correlate of mental action, whether of the sending or receiving variety.

There is no consensus in physics, nor in consciousness studies, though there is a correlating theory for nearly every one proposed in physics. Spontaneous healing may bypass all of these suggested metatheories. A field becomes a nearly innacurrate term in the subquantual domain or metaphysical level of observation.

According to Hameroff, “Everything (matter, energy, you, me) is part of the hidden geometry of spacetime, of which the Platonic is one aspect. Smells and colors and melodic tunes are complex assemblies of fundamental qualia embedded as configurations in fundamental spacetime geometry.

The qualia in spacetime geopmetry *out there* caused qualia *in here* within us because there is spacetime geometry within our mindbodies as well. Because spacetime geometry is inherently nonlocal it could be that *out there* and *in here* are connected, or actually the same. Only in the classical world is there a spacelike distinction. Pure consciousness is the experience of a total lack of phenomenal content while still awake and alert, and thus able to remember there was nothing.

[Some theories alledge] cognitive functions reflect consciousness which exists in the universe. I am saying that quantum processes in the brain (related to cognitive processes) are connected to protoconscious quantum information inherent in the universe. The connection results in OR which is a moment of consciousness (the protoconscious/unconscious quantum information becomes conscious) But remember the universe/spacetime geometry out there is also in our heads.” Hameroff

Several Vedic and Taoist texts (and perhaps other traditions as well) suggest that, with proper refinement of consciousness, the “outside” world can be cognized holographically, in a superposed, interpenetrating state where everything is experienced in everything else. If evidence can support such claims, perhaps the human mechanisms of perception have the capacity to directly experience an uncollapsed universe in which what is normally unconscious is merged into consciousness (or vice versa). Its like a dream.

But somehow consciousness is; somehow creativity emerges; somehow healing works; somehow we are, and are interrelated. Perhaps real meaning comes from our struggle to try to understand how these things work, to struggle toward wisdom in both the material and spiritual realms. There is meaning in the struggle to create, to heal, to know, to be.

_______________________________

FIELD CONCEPTS AND THE EMERGENCE OF A HOLISTIC BIOPHYSICS by MARCO BISCHOF

International Institute of Biophysics, ehem.Raketenstation, Kapellener Str., D-41472 Neuss, Germany, and Future Science & Medicine, Gotlandstr.7, D-10439 Berlin, Germany Published in: Beloussov, L.V., Popp, F.A., Voeikov, V.L., and Van Wijk, R., (eds.): Biophotonics and Coherent Systems. Moscow University Press, Moscow 2000, pp.1-25.

ABSTRACT

Due to recent advances in several disciplines, the basic features of a holistic biophysics are now emerging. It is proposed that the postulates for such a field must include that it will be based on the intrinsic holism of quantum theory and the properties of macroscopic quantum effects, that it should include the principles of nonlocality, nonseparability, and interconnectedness, that it will be based on a field picture of reality and the organism, and finally must include consciousness.

The paper attempts to show why field models are appropriate tools for the holistic modeling of the organism, proposes a hierarchy of regulation systems based on fields, gives a review of field models proposed in biology, biophysics, consciousness research and social science, and discusses the possible role of fields in bridging the mind-body gap.

Finally, a discussion of the perspectives that may be opened up for biophysics by some recently proposed extensions of electromagnetic theory leads the author to suggest a role for the physical vacuum in the organism.

INTRODUCTION

“Can Physics deliver another biological revolution ?” asked an editorial in the journal Nature of January 19991. However, the so-called “new physics-biology agenda” which several U.S. universities, foundations and government agencies intend to fund heavily, is actually a very old agenda going back to the 1930’s, namely that of molecular biology, which now in a gigantic effort of total genetic mapping, called by some “the New Manhattan Project of Biology”, strives to bring the molecular biology project of total technological control over life to a final fulfillment.

Is this the kind of “new biophysics” we want to be supported with all that money and effort ? I am certainly not alone in asking this question, and with the growing dissatisfaction about the reductionist, molecular-genetic approach to biology the number of those who develop and support an entirely different kind of biophysics is increasing 2-16.

A look into the history of biology and biophysics shows that there always have been alternative traditions to the molecular-reductionistic approach now dominant in these fields. In biology, during some periods, e.g., in the first half of this century holistic or organismic approaches have been far from marginal, in some disciplines, such as developmental biology, even constituting the dominant trend. Biophysics itself, although a relatively young field of science, has already experienced several changes in emphasis in the course of its history17,18. The German founders of biophysics at the beginning of the 19th century, people like H.Helmholtz, E.Du Bois-Reymond, E.Br C.Ludwig, E.H.Weber and G.T.Fechner, usually are depicted by historians of science as staunch reductionists and opponents of vitalistic and idealist ideas in biology. However, as Culotta has shown, in reality they were not in such a sharp opposition to the romantic Naturphilosophie spirit of the time, and nearer to the antireductionistic approach of Claude Bernard, than is generally assumed. Likewise, in the 1930s when molecular biology started its rise that has made it the dominant approach in biology and biophysics, there were a number of other viable biological programs, some of them holistic, that could have been chosen for promotion by the Rockefeller Foundation20. The reason why the officers and scientific advisers of the Foundation chose to promote the molecular vision of life was that they sought to develop, under the influence of Jacques Loeb’s engineering standpoint21 aimed at controlling life, a mechanistic biology as a central element of a new science of man whose final goal was social engineering.

Originally, the Rockefeller Foundation had intended to promote its goal of social control by eugenics, supporting several research projects concerned with eugenic selection. When eugenics lost its scientific validity amd social acceptance, the molecular biology program of creating a new biology grounded in the physical sciences and able to rigorously explain and eventually control the fundamental mechanisms governing human behaviour, promised a surer, if slower, way toward social control by eugenic selection based on the more readily accepted principles of genetics and protein science. Even within the scientific developments that stood at the origin of molecular biology22, before it definitely took the reductionist turn leading to the present situation, at least one also forms an important element in the foundation of a modern holistic approach in biophysics: the quantum philosophy of Bohr, Schroedinger, Jordan and Delbra

BIOPHYSICS AND THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION

The philosophical contribution to the rise of molecular biology originated in Niels Bohr’s speech On Light and Life“ at the International Congress on Light Therapy at Copenhagen, August 15, 1932 23 where he postulated that a new physics was required for interpreting life; life was not reducible to atomic physics. A few of the key figures in molecular biology, mainly M.Delbra dinger, were strongly influenced by Bohr’s views, which Scroedinger took up in his book What is Life ?“ 25. The book inspired many young physicists traumatized by the wartime use of physical expertise, to go into biology and had a strong influence on the development of molecular biology 26.

However, the book certainly was more influential by interpreting the genetic viewpoint of H.J.Muller, T.H.Morgan and M.Delbra in physicist’s terms and by backing it with the prestige of physics than by convincing biophysicists of the Bohr-Schradinger hope of discovering new physical laws through biophysical investigation of biological phenomena27. These ideas which have to be seen in the context of the rather strong holistic tendency of the biology of the time - did not exert any lasting influence on molecular biology. On the other hand, they have been, and still are, a seminal influence for the later emergence of a holistic biophysics.

Today, molecular biology proposes itself as as the manageable project of refashioning life and redirecting the course of evolution that the Rockefeller Foundation and some of its early pioneers like H.J.Muller and W.Weaver had envisioned. Because of the enormous technological and social power promised by molecular biology, even the increasing awareness of the bad science on which it is based in many respects, such as the many weak points in genetic and evolution theory28, does not prevent it to carry us into such immature and dangerous projects as genetic engineering biotechnology in agriculture and medicne, and the “Human Genome Project”, whose deeper nature is revealed by the military epithet of a “Manhattan Project of the life sciences”.

The noted quantum chemist, Hans Primas, agrees with this fundamental criticism29,30. He writes that molecular biology, as it exists today, is in fact engineering, not science. It is pragmatic, instrumental knowledge which aims at the power over nature, but not at understanding. It does not constitute a scientific theory of life able to give us orientation to live rationally with nature, but only provides technological control over life. Contemporary molecular biology has become a scientific technology which has lost contact with the epistemological sciences. Aspects of life that cannot be treated or understood from the molecular viewpoint, such as morphology, are glossed over. The assessment Robert Rosen made in 1967 31 is actually still valid: it must be pointed out that the older problems [he refers to the questions that preoccupied an older generation of biologists] have merely been displaced and not solved by the recent developments at the molecular level. These problems involve the very core of biological organization and development: homeostasis, ontogenesis, phylogenesis“ .

For Primas29, the primary shortcoming of molecular biology is that the holistic character of the physical world now recognized in quantum theory is either not acknowledged by the bioengineers or rejected as irrelevant. He emphasizes that molecular biology, though well grounded in empirical knowledge, has no foundation whatsoever in the principles of quantum theory, contrary to a widely held belief to the opposite. It uses the methods and technologies of quantum mechanics, but its way of thinking is still committed to the classical physics of the 19th century and has not taken notice of the fundamental insights of quantum mechanics on the structure of the material world.

According to Primas, on whose statements the following is mainly based 29,30,32-36, the atomistic-molecular view of matter and the reductionist-mechanist philosophy have no more any scientific foundation, according to the actual understanding of quantum theory. The description of reality by isolated, context-independent, elementary systems such as quarks, electrons, atoms, or molecules is only permissible under certain specific experimental conditions, and these entities cannot in any way be considered as fundamental building stones“ of reality. Besides the molecular one, there are other, fundamentally different descriptions, complementary to the molecular one, which are quantum-theoretically equivalent and equally well founded. Quantum theory is much richer in possiblities than is admitted in the worldview of molecular biology.

In Primas‘ view, the feature of quantum theory that is most significant for biology is its intrinsic fundamental holism. For quantum mechanics, the scientific theory most widely recognized as fundamental and best confirmed by experiment, material reality forms and unbroken whole that has no parts. These holistic properties of reality are mathematically precisely defined by the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations which are experimentally well defined. Primas postulates that, by virtue of this, quantum mechanics constitutes the first and up to now only logically consistent, universally valid, mathematically formulated holistic theory14. In quantum mechanics, it is never possible to describe the whole by the description of parts and their interrelations.

With this view of quantum mechanics Primas follows Bohr and the school of Heisenberg 37, 38, while quark physics as founded by M.Gell-Mann continues to cultivate democritean atomism with their clinging to the concept of elementary particles39. Similar holistic views of quantum theory are the bootstrap theory“ of G.Chew 40, D.Bohm’s Causal Quantum Theory“ or Holographic Theory of Reality“ 41, 42, and others advocated by H.Stapp43, A.Goswami 44-46, Kafatos & Nadeau47, Friedman48, D.Peat, F.Capra, H.Atmanspacher49, and many others. This holistic view of quantum theory, although the phenomena on which it is based are not yet completely understood theoretically, cannot be rejected anymore because the strange EPR quantum correlations of non-interacting and spatially separated systems have been amply demonstrated in many experiments50-54. Therefore the world-view of classical physics, atomism and mechanistic reductionism definitely cannot anymore be the basis of our worldview, and of biophysics. Quantum mechanics has established the primacy of the unseparable whole.

Another important epistemological consequence of quantum mechanics, complementarity, is also connected to its holism. As Primas writes, there is no single description, such as the molecular-reductionistic one, which can alone represent the whole reality of the subject of a scientific investigation, or is better or than any other. Nature is extremely diverse and stratified; each description comprehends only a minute partial aspect of its unfathomable multiplicity. Any scientific description of a natural phenomenon is only possible if we renounce the description of its complementary aspects.

Quantum theory can only be applied if we abstract from certain aspects and thereby break the holistic symmetry. However, the kind of abstraction we use is not prescribed by the first principles of the theory, such that quantum mechanics allows, and even requires, many different, but equivalent, complementary descriptions of nature. As an important postulate for future science, Primas therefore emphasizes that we will have to learn to work simultaneously with several complementary descriptions of nature29 .

In this perspective, the molecular view is legitimate and important and should not be abandoned; molecular biologists can be rightly proud of their successes. It should be cultivated, but not at the expense of other viewpoints. It is its extreme one-eyedness that must be criticised. However, as Primas points out, biology is more than molecular biology“. He postulates that science must now redirect ist attention to the wholeness of nature, and therefore will have to ask radically new questions. It has to develop a concept of reality which does not exclude any part of it. Those properties which belong to organisms only as wholes must remain within the scope of science. Therefore, it will be necessary to consider the phenomena as well from as in mechanistic understanding, as from top-down“, as in vitalistic and holistic understanding. According to Primas, the notion that the latter is not legitimate or secondary is a prejudice that must be overcome. From the viewpoint of the quantum-theoretical worldview, both are completely equivalent, but lead to fundamentally different research agendas and insights. Even the criteria according to which the scientist decides what is scientifically defendable and interesting, are completely different from these two viewpoints. Also, according to quantum theory functional and teleological explanations are completely legitimate and equivalent to causal ones; even the primacy of causality has no foundation in the first principles of physics. Primas points out that it is not possible to distinguish between causal and final processes by purely mechanical means and that such a distiction only makes sense for irreversible processes. As to the existence of the hypothetical vitalistic forces, modern physics is well able to integrate new forces into its system.

Thus, matter has become dematerialized“ by modern quantum theory, and this property of thinglessness“ in the quantum worldview is closely connected to the property of interconnectedness“. The emphasis is no longer on isolated objects, but on relations, exchanges, interdepences, on processes, fields, and wholes. Quantum theory is a nonlocal theory43. It is important to see that we cannot retain the classical world of objects and only add the interconnectedness as a supplementary property of these objects. They are two of the complimentary descriptions or aspects of reality which Primas has alluded to and cannot be used simultaneously; thus they rather should be considered as different diomensions of reality. The holistic interpretation of quantum theory in fact may also be taken as implying a multidimensional structure of reality 48,55. In this view, there are, besides the world of objects, one or several more fundamental levels of reality where interconnectedness rather than separatedness dominates. Fields certainly belong into this category; however, apart from electromagnetic and other physical fields which are still among the phenomena considered as belonging to the four fundamental forces of the observable world, we must assume the existence of additional field-like levels of reality not directly observable at present, which may be beyond space-time and represent the realm of potentiality56, or of the noumena“, the realm behind the phenomena according to Newton, in contrast to the actuality of the observable. The Schroedinger wave function of quantum theory actually describes this hidden domain of potentiality, of the non-observable, unmanifested, pre-physical world of non-local correlations and superluminal, instantaneous connections, rather than the world of observable phenomena 48. Only with the act of measurement this infinity of potentialities, described in the Schroedinger equation as a superposition of all possible quantum states, is collapsed“ into one single actuality. Connected to the concept of potentiality is the concept of entanglement“ which describes the characteristic of interconnectedness51. In the absence of any interaction (such as a measurement), two systems are in an entangled state in which neither system by itself can be said to be in a pure state“, i.e., can be fully specified without reference to the other.

This hidden domain can be considered as a fundamental dimension of reality, a domain of dynamical connectivity, from which the patterns of the physical world arise. According to some authors, this realm of pre-physicality is not only the basis of the physical world and of matter, but also seems to be connected to, consciousness, which some see as the fundamental field underlying it 41,44-46,48,55,57,58,59-61. In physics, it is treated by the various models of the physical vacuum. Its possible relevance to biophysics as a basis for a true quantum biology 62,63 seems obvious to us, as we will explain later. Therefore we postulate the development of a vacuum biophysics“ (see last chapter) .
The hidden domain“ of connectivity has characteristics completely different from those of the classical, macroscopic world of separated objects. For a long time, the quantum description that reveals the properties of phenomena belonging to this domain, or arising from it, was taken to apply only to the microscopic world of atoms and molecules, while the world of macroscopic phenomena of our experience was considered to be purely classical and not to manifest quantum properties. However, today we know that this is not true, and that there are many macroscopic quantum manifestations, although our knowledge about them is still limited64-68. Biological systems obviously possess the characteristics of macroscopic quantum systems.

THE REDEFINITION OF BIOPHYSICS

From what we have just heard, we can conclude that traditional biophysics, based up to now on classical physics and equilibrium thermodynamics, needs a redefinition in terms of the revolution brought by the last few decades of quantum-mechanical experiments and interpretations. As there is still no agreement on the definition of the field, we are free to attempt such a redefinition. In the following I will try to determine what the postulates for such a new biophysics could be, as it actually is already in development since about ten or fifteen years.

First of all, it indeed will entail a revolution based on physical concepts however, not of the kind alluded to in the Nature editorial. While the physical view will be fundamental, it will not be that of classical physics, and the goal will not be the reduction of biology to physics but an understanding of the physics of the living, and physics must not replace, but support profound biological understanding. Thus, the new biophysics should be more than just an empirically based bioengineering technology; it will need epistemological and philosophical foundations. Its goal should be to develop an adequate theory of life, and it should balance the mastery of life with the understanding of life.

As a complement to the onesidedness of the molecular approach, the new biophysics will focus on holistic aspects of organisms, and will attempt to provide a vision able to synthesize the wealth of molecular details accumulated by molecular biologists. Its basis must be the insight into the fundamental interconnectedness within the organism as well as between organisms, and that of the organism with the environment.

Therefore it must be inter- or transdisciplinary and truly integrate biological, biochemical and medical expertise into its physical models, but also connect to knowledge from fields such as geophysics, biometeorology, heliobiology etc.
It will be based on quantum theory, and not classical mechanics therefore it may also be called quantum biology“ and also, instead of equilibrium thermodynamics, it must refer to non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Organisms clearly are open systems far from equilibrium. Other central concepts of the new biophysics, related to the latter, will be coherence and macroscopic quantum states.

I postulate that field thinking and field models will have to be one of the central elements of the new biophysics, as a complement to the molecular view, as a means to sythesize the wealth of its details, and to adequately model thinglessness, interconnectedness and non-locality therefore bioelectromagnetics will play a central role in the new biophysics. However, recent experiments have shown that the existence of hitherto unknown, non-electromagnetic fields in and between organisms cannot be excluded. Of course, the field aspect of the organism has to be seen in close connection, and constant interaction, with the solid aspect. Attention should also be paid to the field aspect of biochemical processes, for example in collective processes, reactivity and molecular recognition.

I suggest that the existence of a pre-physical, unobservable domain of potentiality in quantum theory, which forms the basis of the fundamental interconnectedness and wholeness of reality and from which arise the patterns of the material world, may provide a new model for understanding the holistic features of organisms, such as morphogenesis and regeneration, and thus provide a foundation for holistic biophysics therefore I propose that the usefulness of the theories of the physical vacuum for understanding the phenomena of life is investigated - one important aspect of their usefulness may be as a link between the domain of biology and consciousness.

I postulate that the new biophysics needs to extend its interdisciplinarity even beyond natural science. Consciousness cannot be excluded anymore from biophysics, although the difficulties of such an extension should not be underestimated. There is now enough evidence showing that consciousness is a causal factor in biology and not just an inconsequential epiphenomenon. Starting from the analysis of the phenomenology and the experimental evidence for mind-body interaction, field models and vacuum theories may provide the necessary tools for bridging the mind-body gap. However, it is also necessary to acknowledge the limits of the scientific approach, and value the goal of understanding highly enough to include non-observables into our models, if this supports understanding.

HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF HOLISTIC BIOPHYSICS

Not only theoretical considerations as those of Primas, but also the history of biology and of biophysics show clearly that the reductionistic concept of molecular biology is not the only possible concept for biological science; there even have been several periods in which holistic approaches have been dominating biology, or at least parts of it69. Even in biophysics proper, there have always been holistic schools of thought, although they usually are not mentioned in contemporary reviews of the field, or not thought of belonging to biophysics.

An early instance of holistic thought in biology is the school of rational or transcendental morphologists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, such as G.de Cuvier, E.Geoffrey St-Hilaire, and R.Owen, who deduced, from their detailed studies of organismic morphology, the existence of principles or laws of form operating in the biological realm70. Similarly, the holistic biology and medicine of the Romantic period, including J.W.Goethe, A. v. Humboldt, C.G.Carus, K.E. von Baer and J. M , regarded the ideal form of a species as a transcendental guiding principle in morphogenesis71. A strong tradition of antireductionistic physiology starting with F.Magendie was mainly created by Claude Bernard72. Bernard’s concept of “internal environment” (“milieu interne”) developed in 1857, stood at the beginning of the research in physiological regulation, to which E.Starling, L.J.Henderson, J.Barcroft, and W.B. Cannon (“homeostasis”) have been contributing; other holistic physiologists were J.S.Haldane, H. Selye, R. Dubos and A. Carrel.

In the period of 1900-1950, the main thrust of developmental biology, especially in the work of H.Driesch, H.Spemann, P.A.Weiss, A.Gurwitsch, R.Harrison, C.M.Child, J.v.UexkÃÆ’Æ’J.Needham, E.S.Russell, J.H.Woodger, A.Meyer-Abich, and A.M¼ller, has been holistic and centered around the concept if biological fields 69,73-74.
Very much fallen into oblivion has today the important work done during this century in the German tradition of holistic physiology, pathology and medicine, represented by names like G.v.Bergmann, H.Schade, F.Kraus, F.Buttersack, A.Bier, Th.Brugsch, B.Aschner, L.R.Grote, F.Hoff, R.ssle, G.Ricker, H.Eppinger, W.Petersen, H.Pischinger, O.Bergsmann. Holistic schools of medical thought have also been active in Britain, the USA, and France, mainly in the interwar period75.
Important contributions to holistic science came from Gestalt theory and other holistic theories in psychology, neurobiology, and psychiatry, as exemplified by W.James, Chr.v. Ehrenfels, M.Wertheimer, W.hler, K.Goldstein, K.Lewin, C.v.Monakow, C.S.Sherrington, K.Lashley, G.Murphy, V.v. Weizsecker, A.Maslow, K.Pribram 74-78.
The work of the Austrian-Canadian biologist L.v.Bertalanffy is particularly significant for the emerging holistic biophysics; Bertalanffy’s “organismic” conception of life, which also was the starting point of his “General System Theory”, actually constitutes a first attempt to create a holistic picture of the organism based on physical laws and detailed biological knowledge, and ist still a valuable guide for our contemporary efforts 79-84. The German school of Beier 85-86 has continued this tradition in biophysics.
An early tradition of holistic biophysics developed from Claude Bernard’s school in France, represented by A.d’Arsonval, W.Kopaczewski, F. VlÃÃs, and G.Lakhovsky.
Russia has its own tradition of holistic biology, biophysics and bioelectromagnetics with the work of V.I.Vernadsky, A.L.Chizhevsky, A.G.Gurwitsch, E.Bauer, and A.S.Presman, among others.
An important contribution to holistic thinking comes from the tradition of mathematical biophysics with its concepts of optimality, and relational and similarity principles, represented by D’Arcy W.Thompson, N.Rashevsky, R.Rosen, and R.Thom.
Holistic concepts in philosophy of relevance to biology and biophysics have been developed by J.Smuts, A.N.Whitehead, O.Spann, A.Meyer-Abich, H.Conrad-Martius, H.Plessner, H.Friedmann, among others.
Last but not least, the contributions of psychosomatic medicine, such as those by V.v.WeizsÃÆ’Æ’Æ’ÃÆ’‚¤cker, F.Alexander, Flanders Dunbar, G.Groddeck, and G.R.Heyer, must be mentioned.
In the time of 1900 to 1950, holistic approaches in biology, usually connected to field concepts (see next chapter), far from being marginal, have formed one of the dominant schools of thought, at least in developmental biology69,73,74. For various reasons, the plausibility of this approach has strongly decreased from the 1950‘s87. The main reason was the rise of genetics as an alternative program to explain development.
Much of this work is anything but obsolete, but it is now necessary to actualize the fundamental observations and concepts developed by these pioneers of holistic science with the up-to-date knowledge in the respective fields.

FIELD CONCEPTS AS A NECESSARY BASE OF HOLISTIC BIOPHYSICS

Modern physical field theories, such as those developed by Faraday and Maxwell, have their origin in metaphysical concepts arising from the participatory consciousness of archaic man88. Field and particle theories arise from complementary modes of human self- and world-experience rooted in bodily awareness, with the field perception of reality probably being much older than particle theories, which could only arise when the participatory world-view slowly gave way to individual consciousness and the perception of an objective world, by way of an increasing differentiation between inside and outside, I and the world, the subjetive and the objective, and matter and consciousness. This objectivation of the world has reached its climax in the worldview of the classical physics of the late 19th century, with the assumption that all there is to reality is solid particles assembled in various degrees of complexity.

The electromagnetic field theories of Faraday and Maxwell proposed in the second half of the last century have inspired biologists already from 1900 to the development of the first field theories, but it was only with Einstein’s General Relativity, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, that physics overcame the mechanical world picture and conceived reality as a field phenomenon.

Biology still bases its picture of the organism on the building-stone view of classical physics which physics itself has already given up since a couple of decades. One of the first and most fundamental steps in the development of a holistic biology must therefore be not only to complement the classical view with the field aspect, but even to build its model of the organism on the field picture.

As I have shown elsewhere, the concept of the field has alraedy occupied a central place in the school of “organismic” or “holistic” biologists in the first half of this century69.

Leading biologists such as H.Spemann, R.Harrison, P.A.Weiss, J.Needham, and C.H.Waddington, A.G.Gurwitsch used the hypothesis of a biological, or morphogenetic, field, introduced by Weiss and Gurwitsch in the early 1920’s, as a tool for understanding the phenomena of development, regeneration and morphogenesis and to make predictions for experimental testing. Although their field concepts referred to the model of physical, especially electromagnetic fields, the organicists generally considered the biological field as a purely heuristic concept and left the exact nature of the fields open. The time (and electromagnetic science) was not yet ripe for the notion of real electrical, electromagnetic or otherwise physical, fields of long-range force.

ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD THEORIES IN BIOLOGY

At this time, there was not enough experimental evidence for the existence of bioelectromagnetic fields nor for the biological effects of EM fields. Thus, the various electromagnetic (EM) field concepts proposed since the first decades of the 20th for biology, as those by Keller, Burr, Burr & Northrop, Crile, Lund, and Lakhovsky89, were premature. The breakthrough and beginning of modern EM field theories in biology came only in 1970, with A.M.Presman’s report of the pioneering work of Soviet bioelectromagnetics researchers, which also contained a first outline of a holistic EM field theory of the organism and his relationships to the environment90. Since then, there is ample evidence for bioeffects of EM fields and endogenous EM fields. It is now established that organisms react sensitively to the impact of electromagnetic fields, including very weak ones; effects of various types of endogenous physical fierlds on cellular organization and morphogenesis are very likely. We also know that several kinds of electromagnetic fields, including microwaves and optical frequencies (biophotons), are emitted from living beings. There is also evidence that weak endogenous electrical currents are involved in regeneration and growth of new tissue; the role of ionic currents in morphogenesis and development has also been demonstrated. Communication by electromagnetic fields is established for fishes and insects, which suggests this may be a more general phenomenon.

A number of further developments have contributed to the full development of modern biological field theories. They include the work of A.Szent-Gyorgyi on the excitation-deexcitation dynamics in biochemistry and the role of charge transfer in the organism91-93; the work on open, non-equilibrium systems and the coordinated collective behaviour of particles culminating in Prigogine’s theory of “dissipative systems”; H.Frohlich’s work on coherence of the EM fields coupled to these particles and connecting them 94-97; the Dicke theory of the coherent emission of coupled multiatomic emitters 98; the theory of quantum coherence developed by R.J.Glauber 99-101; and several recent developments in quantum optics, such as the work on non-classical light and Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics 102,103.

MODERN BIOELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD THEORIES

These achievements became important elements in the “biophoton theory” developed by Popp and his group104-106. Like most modern field-theoretical proposals, it tries to reconcile particle and field approaches. Based on the evidence for the coherent emission of ultraweak luminescence by organisms, it conceptualizes organisms as biological lasers of optically coupled emitters and absorbers operating at the laser threshold. The solid part of the organism is coupled with a highly coherent, holographical biophoton field which is proposed to be the basis of communication on all levels of organization; the components of the organism are seen to be connected in such a way by phase relations of the field, that they are instantly informed about each other at all times. The biophoton field is also postulated to be the basis of memory and the regulation of biochemical and morphogenetic processes.

A related approach, “bioplasma theory”107-114, was developed from early suggestions by Szent-Gyorgyi, who pointed out that biomolecules in the organism are predominantly present in the excited state, and that the energetics of living systems are based on excitation-deexcitation dynamics which are also the basis of chemical bonding. Biological plasma is described as a cold“ plasma of highly structured collective excitations produced by the dielectric polarization of biological semiconductors, which functions as a single unit.

The collective excitations of the molecules propagate in the form of excitons.The complex aggregates and configurations formed by the plasma particles serve as an energy network in the organism. External and intrinsic radiation is stored in the bioplasma in the form of trapped cavity oscillations which form the biological field; it has a complex broadband holographic wave structure of great stability. The biological effects of external radiation are ascribed to resonance properties of the whole system, and not to any of its parts. Like biophoton theory, the bioplasma concept implies non-equilibrium and electronic population-inversion, and therefore laser-like processes, as postulated by Inyushin in the early 1970‘s.

Pribram’s holographic theory of perception and memory“, first proposed in 1971115, 116, has been an important contribution to modern biological field theory. It proposes that information from the sensory input is enfolded by Fourier-like transformations and stored in the brain in the form of holographic interference patterns, i.e., coherent EM fields. For reading it out in remembering, it is unfolded again by inverse Fourier transformation. In 1975 Pribram synthesized his model with the more general holographic theory of reality“ proposed by Bohm in 197141. It suggests that the organization of reality itself may be holographic, the world of objects we perceive explicate order“) being a second-order manifestation of the more fundamental implicate order“ or holomovement“ forming the basis of the world’s fundamental unbroken wholeness.

The holographic concept of reality” proposed by Miller et al.117,118 is a useful attempt to sketch the outlines of a possible synthesis of field models emphasizing the particle aspect, like bioplasma theory, and those who focus on the connecting and/or underlying fields, like biophoton theory and the holographic theories. At the same time, it tries to elucidate the significance of biolectric phenomena and physico-chemical parameters like the acid-base and electrolytic balances and redox potentials within the bioelectromagnetic fields.
Today, the field view of the organism and its interactions is finding increasing acceptance in biology, biophysics and medicine 119-124.

BIOPHYSICS AND CONSCIOUSNESS: ON THE POSSIBLE ROLE OF FIELDS IN BRIDGING THE MIND-BODY GAP
The German founders of biophysics in the early 19th century recognized consciousness as the ultimate problem of biology“, but science at that time was not prepared to include consciousness into biophysics, although the necessity was not denied19. Today, the situation is different. Since around the turn of the century, Freud and his followers have made the problem of consciousness a central topic of a broad research effort whose results widely influenced Western society, but were hardly taken seriously by the natural sciences.

The last few years have changed this: consciousness has ceased to be a non-subject“ and is now definitely on the scientific agenda127-128. An increassing number of authors are emphasizing the necessity of introducing consciousness into the scientific worldview, and some believe it should even become its very foundation 41,44-46,49,57,131-135. As to the consequences of a biology without consciousness“, Efron136 has pointed out the disastrous epistemological confusion the exclusion of consciousness from biology has caused.

Although the highly animated discussion in consciousness research is characterized by widely divergent standpoints, the decades-long dispute about the inclusion of the observer and the possible role of consciousness in quantum mechanics137,129-130 has certainly been a significant influence. As can be seen from the new discipline of Quantum Neurodynamics“ 138-140, Pribram’s and Bohm’s holographic theories, together with Eccles‘ suggestion that fields analogous to the probability fields of quantum theory could be responsible for the coupling between consciousness processes and neural events141, have also been of considerable influence. Thus, an important segment of the most recent efforts in consciousness research is based on the hypothesis that consciousness may have a field-like nature, and/ or that fields may play a mediating role between consciousness and the biological organism. This hypothesis has already a considerable history and is more widely held than commonly is known 88.

It was probably W.James who first introduced the concept of a field of consciousness into modern psychology in 1890. C.G.Jung’s “Collective unconscious”, first proposed in 1917, is conceived as a deeper, fundamental field-like unitary psychophysical reality (“unus mundus”) occasionally producing “synchronicity” effects. Gestalt Theory, initated by Chr.v.Ehrenfels and W.KÃÃhler, postulates an isomorphism between psychological and psychophysiological processes, mediated by fields analogous to Maxwell’s electromagnetic fields and not bound to the nervous substrate, whose geometrical structure mirrors that of the perceived stimuli. In the 1930’s K.Lewin proposed in his field theory of social psychology that social interactions are best understood by a field model. In the 1940’s G.Murphy developed a field concept of the organism, of personality, and of communication and suggested the existence of an interpersonal field which he thought to be part of a wider universal field. Murphy also explained Psi effects in groups as a loosening of the usual interpersonal barriers and opening up to the interpersonal field. Paul Schilder demonstrated the existence of a “body-image”, a 3-dimensional picture of the “perceived body”, different from the body of anatomy and physiology, a kind of a constantly reorganized field that is constructed from the visual, tactile, kinesthetic, postural etc. experiences of an individual’s lifetime. In 1964, Aron Gurwitsch proposed a field theory of experiential organization in the tradition of Gestalt theory, Lewin and Husserl’s phenomenology. The Russian mathematician and philosopher, V.V.Nalimov, has recently proposed a theory of the “semantic vacuum”, according to which there is a deeper, unobservable process from which ordinary, reflexive consciousness emerges which he calls the semantic vacuum, in deliberate analogy to the concept of the physical vacuum.

A school of thought that has found wide interest and has led to a new branch of neuropsychology, has its origin in the work of Pribram and Eccles. In the early 70’s K.H.Pribram has proposed that coherent holographic fields mediate between consciousness and neurological processes; J.Eccles has postulated in 1977 that consciousness has an existence independent of the brain, and that the self interacts with the body and the material world using the brain as an instrument. H.Margenau in 1984 suggested mind may be a unique type of non-material field, analogous to quantum probability fields; this suggestion was taken up in 1986 by J.Eccles who proposed that this field may modify the probability of emission of neurotransmitters at the dendritic synapse. This finally led to the formation of the new field of Quantum Neurodynamics, based on the hypothesis that brain processes are to be understood on the basis of quantum field theory and are based on quantum fields, or potentials. Long-time memory is conceived as a structured complex of vacuum states; remembering as the emission of coherent biophoton signals from the vacuum state. The coupling of neurophysiology with the “quantum sea” of the vacuum is assumed to be the basis of brain processes.

Quantum neurodynamics illustrates the many recent efforts to find approaches bridging consciousness as an entity which is not directly measurable, and the solid material aspect of the organism, with the hypothesis of a mediating field domain. Similar efforts have been made in the last few decades in many areas, not least in connection with the scientific investigation of Eastern medical systems, such as acupuncture, of contactless healing and various other phenomena.

OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF INTERPERSONAL FIELDS OF UNKNOWN NATURE
The existence of electromagnetic fields emitted by living organisms, including humans, is now well established, even if there is not much established knowledge about their biological functions. On the other hand, man has a long history of subjective experience of field-like interpersonal connections which usually are relegated to the realm of imagination by the scientifically minded. More recently, however, a number of scientific experiments have to some extent given evidence for the physical reality of these field observations 88.

As to the observations, an important example are the studies of nonverbal behaviour that have shown a synchrony of the body motion of speakers and listeners with the speech pattern, which probably serves to establish empathic resonance. A related phenomenon is the well established phenomenon of “emotional contagion”. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists have been familiar since decades with the “praecox feeling”, the field-like aura displayed by their patients announcing impending psychosis or schizophrenic episodes, and have been well aware of the contagious nature of these states. The phenomenon of “transference” between therapist and patient is equally well known and has led a number of authors to the hypothesis of an “interpersonal field”. In “mutual hypnosis” two persons create a common psychic field which in the deeper stages can turn into a shared hallucinatory or dreamlike reality. Families may, according to some psychotherapists, possess a common unconscious and shared emotional field.

A number of recent experimental studies give evidence that such interpersonal field effects may have some physical basis. Studies of empathically bonded pairs by J.Grinberg-Zylberbaum have shown interhemispheric and interpersonal EEG coherence and the appearance of transferred (evoked) potentials in the unstimulated partner after separation by a Faraday cage. The “field-REG experiments” done by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies (PEAR) Laboratory demonstrate anomalous influence of group events with a “high degree of subjective resonance between participants”on the random output of portable random events generators (REG) that suggest the presence of a field within such groups. Experiments on distant mental influence on living systems (DMILS) show that persons are able to exert direct mental influences upon various distant biological systems shielded from all conventional informational and energetic influences.

While these experiments suggest the possible non-electromagnetic nature of the studied fields, the measurements of the “Copper-Wall Project” performed by E.Green demonstrate that in healing sessions, exceptional subjects, such as healers and sensitives, are able to generate anomalous voltage surges in electrical body potential which are transmitted to and measured by electromaters attached to the four highly polished copper walls surrounding them in some distance.

BIOLOGICAL FIELDS IN THE LIGHT OF SOME PROPOSED EXTENSIONS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY

In some of these experiments showing the existence of interpersonal field phenomena (Grinberg-Zylberbaum, DMILS) electromagnetic fields have been excluded; therefore we must use the hypothesis that some kind of probably unknown, non-electromagnetic field(s) may be involved. Recently, a number of authors have suggested that electromagnetic potentials (vector and scalar potentials) may play a role in living systems63,142-147, and a series of preliminary experiments (which still have to be reproduced independently) seems to show biological effects of vector potentials different from those of ordinary electromagnetic fields 147-153. It has been proposed that there may be a whole class of non-electromagnetic fields underlying electromagnetic phenomena, which have been called subtle energies“ by some authors, following a suggestion by Einstein 142, 145,146.

In fact, while the potentials have long been considered mere mathematical conveniences without physical reality, the reevaluation of their significance made possible by the groundbreaking paper by Aharonov & Bohm 154, is now opening up a new field of electromagnetic research which we suspect may turn out to be highly significant for bioelectromagnetics and biophysics in general. A number of recent attempts to formulate extensions of electromagnetic theory point to the existence of an additional, hitherto unsuspected dimension of electromagnetism, which seems to be able to interact with the very structural fabric of space and time 155,156.

Aharonov & Bohm 154 have shown that in certain cases the potentials act as real physical fields and must even be consdered more fundamental than the electric and magnetic forces; in the experiment they proposed the potentials exert an physical effect on charged particles in a field-free volume but not in the way force-fields do they only influence the phase, and thus are fields of information.

However, the reason for the now well proven Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect has only become evident in the wake of its analysis and generalization by Wu & Yang157,158. Barrett 159,160 has given evidence that in the AB experiment the electromagnetic field, normally of U(1) symmetry, is conditioned“ into SU(2) form (in other cases even higher symmetries can be obtained) by the geometrical constraints of the experiment, which adds a degree of freedom to the field allowing an interaction with the space-time metric (neutrino network) and its topological structure, and endows it with a gravitation-like essence and form. Barrett also has shown that the AB effect is only one of a whole class of effects where this is the case.

According to Tiller142 potentials have the important function of mediating between electromagnetic fields and the macroscopic quantum states of solid matter on the one hand, and the physical vacuum on the other hand, because of their property of controlling the phase of electromagnetic fields. He suggests that the subtle energy“ fields of the vacuum domain, belonging to a higher dimension beyond space-time, organize the structure of space-time, which in turn, by the intermediate of the potentials, generates the corresponding electromagnetic fields. These finally give rise to the observed processes in space and time.

This hypothesis is supported by the work of Barrett159,160 on the conditioning of the electromagnetic field. In this process, the phase-controlling property of potentials is central. This is highly significant for biophysics, not only because of the coherence of biolectromagnetic fields; its importance can also be illustrated by the fact that the living organism with its many rhythmical processes basically is a complex system of oscillating fields coupled nonlinearly by their phase-relations.

Apart from potentials, a number of further non-electromagnetic fields have been forwarded in the various proposals for extensions of the Maxwell theory, as possible elements of an intermediate subtle realm“ between particles and force fields and the vacuum, or as elements or aspects of the vacuum itself, for instance, torsion fields“161-166 and the B(3) ghost field“ of longitudinal magnetic polarization 167-173.

THE CONCEPT OF VACUUM BIOPHYSICS

We are convinced that it is one of the central tasks of biology and biophysics, as it is of physics itself, to investigate the process of becoming and of manifestation, the arising of actuality from potentiality. It is clear that this is not yet completely realized in quantum physics, although the recent discussions about the interpretation of quantum theory and the alternatives to the Copenhagen interpretation have shown that it is groping in this direction. The same tendency can be found in the recent attempts at developing unfied theories of all physical interactions.

In the various unification programs the concept of the physical vacuum occupies a central place. The vacuum is fast emerging as the central structure of modern physics“ (Saunders & Brown,1991)174. We postulate that it also merits such a central place in biophysics 62,63,147. It has in fact already been used in a number of recent models, e.g. by Conrad175,176, Grandpierre58, Laughlin177, Laszlo59,60, Jibu & Yasue139,140, Shacklett 55, and Tiller142-144. We would not be surprised if it would turn out to be the very foundation a holistic quantum biophysics needs. The holistic quantum logic of biological processes and structures may not be sufficiently understood without the explicit inclusion of the vacuum concept into biophysics. Biophysics should be able to explain how, in the generation and development of organisms, pre-physical potentialities are transformed into physical realities. For practical reasons, it should also be interested in improving our knowledge on the more subtle, early levels of biological manifestation, where we may have access, for instance, to the formation of preconditions for illness. The assumption of a pre-physical dimension of potentiality is a prerequisite for the full understanding of life. To quote the Heisenberg pupil Hans-Peter Living systems prove that actuality (factuality) is not all there is, but potentiality is also important. Like all macroscopic quantum systems, they are emergences of potentialities into factuality“ 178.

We postulate that the concept of the vacuum is the appropriate framework to model the fundamental quantum-mechanical domain of potentiality. The vacuum is the ground of being“ from which the information for the structured development and regeneration of inorganic as well as living forms arises. All the features of the unbroken wholeness of reality implicit in quantum theory non-separability, non-locality, fundamental connectedness which are so fundamental for biological understanding, are an expression of the properties of the vacuum. The vacuum is the origin of microscopic and macroscopic coherence, an essential feature of living organisms. And, finally, the understanding of the vacuum may provide the crucial insights on the role of consciousness in physical reality, and in the various stages in which the creativity of the ground of existence unfolds on its way from pure potentiality and information to physical manifestation.

The concept of of the quantum vacuum may provide an important tool in developing both, a holistic terminology, and a holistic methodology for the integration of biology and physics necessary for the emergence of a holistic biophysics, or quantum biophysics. Especially significant may be its usefulness as a suitable framework for the treatment of organisms as macroscopic quantum systems (cf. the significance of vacuum degeneracy).

However, it must be clarified that we are not only talking about the electromagnetic vacuum of zero-point fluctuations, but of a more inclusive and fundamental unified vacuum of all four interactions.

SUPERFLUID VACUUM MODEL OF THE ORGANISM

In biophoton research first considerations on the possible role of the vacuum have been made in the 1980‘s in connection with the stability and optical properties of DNA and the optimal signal/noise ratio in the information transfer by biophotons. The central role that the vacuum plays in the Dicke theory and in Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics is well known. In 1985, Popp has suggested that biophoton emission as measured may arise from a non-measurable, virtual, delocalized, highly coherent field within the tissue, denoted by him as the realm of potential information“ in the organism; he conjectured it may be a kind of vacuum state 179-180.
More recently, Zeiger62-63 has developed a superfluid vacuum model“ for understanding the biophoton emission of seeds and its connection to their viability. According to this model, seed vitality and biophoton emission are two parallel expressions of the same underlying reality: the superfluid Bose-condensate of photons. He proposes that the radiation field coupled to biological systems has to be understood on the basis of a twofold ground state. It consists, on the one hand, of a non-perturbative, collective-coherent state responsible for stability, internal communication and photon storage, which endowes the organism with a quiet background field connecting all its components by long-range phase relations with each other and with the environment.

The second ground state, a perturbative, fluctuating-coherent state consisting of the excitations of the collective-coherent state, is responsible for flexibility, adaptation and external communication, and from it the observed biophotons are emitted. The two states are separated by an energy gap which controls the behaviour of the system and is a basic measure for the overall state of the organism. It is a parameter that promises to become an important new tool in biophysics proving additional information on the living system. Zeiger’s model may be a significant step in the biophysical modelling of the process of the emergence of becoming“ from the potentiality of the ground of being“.

Thus, if we speak of the electromagnetic field, or biophoton field, of cells, tissues or of the whole organism, as opposed to the biophoton emission measured, we may actually be dealing not with an electromagnetic field in the usual sense, but with a virtual field, or vacuum state. This has actually been proposed by Bearden181-183 and is partially supported by the work of Barrett and others, already mentioned, on one or more deeper level(s) of electromagnetism.

If we define vacuum physics as that branch of physics concerned with the fundamental pre-physical level of potentiality from which matter and fields arise and which contains the information for their dynamic structuring processes, I suggest that the corresponding field of biophysics concerned with the investigation of the biological role of the physical vacuum and of the mediating role of potentials and other nonelectromagnetic fields between the vacuum on the one hand and force fields and solid matter on the other hand, should be called vacuum biophysics“. It may become an important theoretical element and research subject of the new biophysics.

Under the above assumptions a hierarchy of levels of biological function, or regulation systems, based on fields, may be envisaged as a working hypothesis, where we have, between the solid body on the one hand, and consciousness on the other hand, the intermediate levels of holitic regulation systems and physiological-biochemical regulation, bioenergetic (EM) fields, and finally bioinformation fields.



HIERARCHY OF LEVELS OF BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION
Solid body (tissues)
Holistic regulation systems (nervous system, hormonal system, extracellular matrix, immune system etc.) Physiological-biochemical regulation (acid-base balance, redox potential, bioelectronics (electronic excitation , electron flows, proton flows), etc.
EM FIELDS Bioenergetic fields (EM fields)
DOMAIN OF THE VACUUM Bioinformation fields subtle energies“ (potentials etc.)
Unified field, consciousness

CONCLUSION

Can physics deliver another biological revolution ? There is good evidence it indeed can and will, but it is not the further perfection of the reductionist program of molecular-biological control of life devised in the 1930’s that will produce the much needed revolution, but rather the renewal of the alternative tradition of holistic understanding in biophysics whose features are now beginning to emerge more clearly. It will draw on the still valid findings of the various holistic approaches in physics and the biomedical sciences of the first half of the last century which it will actualize by linking them to the many recent advances in physics and molecular biology, and it will incorporate the interaction of consciousness with biological matter as a key element in understanding the phenomena of life. The new holistic biophysics will be based on a field model of the organism and its interactions with other living systems and the environment; besides electromagnetic fields it will also consider the possible role of novel, non-electromagnetic fields and of the physical vacuum in biological processes.

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