The nature of consciousness and its place in the universe remain mysterious. Classical models view consciousness as computation among the brain's neurons but fail to address its enigmatic features. At the same time quantum processes (superposition of states, nonlocality, entanglement.) also remain mysterious, yet are being harnessed in revolutionary information technologies (quantum computation, quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation).  A relation between consciousness and quantum effects has been pondered for nearly a century, and in the past decades quantum processes in the brain have been invoked as explanations for consciousness and its enigmatic features.  Critics deride this comparison as a mere "minimization of mysteries" and quickly point out that the brain is too warm for quantum computation which in the technological realm requires extreme cold to avoid "decoherence", loss of seemingly delicate quantum states by interaction with the environment. However quantum computation would surely be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective, and biology has had 4 billion years to solve the decoherence problem and evolve quantum mechanisms.  Furthermore recent experimental evidence suggests quantum nonlocality occurring in conscious and subconscious brain function, and functional quantum processes in molecular biology are becoming more and more apparent.  Moreover macroscopic quantum processes are being proposed as intrinsic features in cosmology, evolution and social interactions.  Following the first "Quantum Mind" conference held in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona University in 1999, "Quantum Mind II" will update current status and future directions, and provide dialog with skeptical criticism of the emerging paradigm.

Remote Viewing (RV) is an application of consciousness that permits a person-viewer "to describe or give details about a target that is inaccessible to normal senses due to distance, time, or shielding.  For example, a viewer might be asked to describe a location on the other side of the world, which he or she has never visited; or a viewer might describe an event that happened long ago; or describe an object sealed in a container or locked in a room; or perhaps even describe a person or an activity; all without being told anything about the target -- not even its name or designation."

The example above shows the designated target (unknown to the viewer when the session was done) and a sketch from the viewer's RV session.  Obviously, a great deal of correct information was recorded by the viewer.  This RV capability of consciousness does exist and it includes gathering information from the future.  For example, the designated target can be randomly chosen from a large group of possible targets after the viewer's session is completed.  RV scientific studies were initially performed at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) with replication studies done at Princeton University and elsewhere.

Quantum Mechanics (QM) and Remote Viewing (RV) both involve entanglement - particle entanglement in QM and consciousness entanglement in RV.

• QM deals with particles such as electrons and particles of light, called photons.  Particle entanglement means that local measurements by an experimenter on a particle will instantaneously interact with an entangled particle - no matter how far apart the particles are.  Einstein's famous insight that mass cannot travel faster than the speed of light (this is the "local" environment) does not extend to information about entangled particles...some information transfer does occur instantaneously.
• RV deals with target information processed by human consciousness such as sights, sounds, smells, feelings, tastes and concepts.  Consciousness entanglement means that local intentions by a viewer on target information will instantaneously interact with entangled target information - no matter how far apart the viewer and target are.  Information from entangled consciousness appears available all the time.

Here is part of the summary from "Quantum Entanglement and Information" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified.  A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems."

Information from the Future and the Transactional Model of QM

Remote Viewing deals directly with information as processed by consciousness.  Memory is an example -- take as your target a time and place in your childhood bedroom -- do that now.  Look around the room, be aware of your conscious experience.  You are consciously processing previously entangled/stored information about your direct experience as a child.  You are the viewer and your entangled experience is the target.  Memory fits very nicely with the simple linear model of time that we have come to accept as the only reality based on our experience.  RV experimental result from Princeton University, as well as others, show that nonlocal precognitive (future info) connections are, in fact, also part of our reality. 

John Cramer's Transactional QM model seems to have an interpretation that comes close to fitting the facts about precognition.  This interpretation also appears to fit some recent experimental data better than other QM interpretations.  Here is part of the abstract from John Cramer's paper, The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

"A new interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, the Transactional Interpretation (TI), is presented.  The basic element of TI is the transaction describing a quantum event as an exchange of advanced {backward in time} and retarded {forward in time} waves, as implied by the work of Wheeler and Feynman, Dirac, and others. The TI is explicitly nonlocal and thereby consistent with recent tests of the Bell Inequality, yet is relativistically invariant and fully causal.  The TI permits quantum mechanical wave functions to be interpreted as real waves physically present in space rather than as "mathematical representations of knowledge".  The TI is shown to provide insight into the complex character of the quantum mechanical state vector and the mechanism associated with its "collapse".  The TI also leads in a natural way to justification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle."

Schematic representation of general transaction model. (a) Emitter E (say, a star) sends out an "offer wave" in both time directions. (b) Absorber A (say, your consciousness) responds by sending a "confirmation wave" back to emitter canceling the incident wave. (c) Process continues until the "transaction" or "handshake" is completed with all waves being cancelled outside of the E to A time-frame, similar to standing waves in a confined volume.

This model differs from other models in that it employs a two-way exchange, a "handshake", between waves traveling forward and backward in space-time.  A year after the above paper, Cramer published An Overview of the Transactional Interpretation describing the handshake as follows:

"This advanced-retarded handshake is the basis for the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is a two-way contract between the future and the past for the purpose of transferring energy, momentum, etc, while observing all of the conservation laws and quantization conditions imposed at the emitter/absorber terminating ``boundaries'' of the transaction. The transaction is explicitly nonlocal because the future is, in a limited way, affecting the past (at the level of enforcing correlations). It also alters the way in which we must look at physical phenomena. When we stand in the dark and look at a star a hundred light years away, not only have the retarded light waves {forward in time from E in sketch} from the star been traveling for a hundred years to reach our eyes, but the advanced waves {backward in time from A in sketch}  generated by absorption processes within our eyes have reached a hundred years into the past, completing the transaction that permitted the star to shine in our direction."

(The yellow highlight and {} were added by the editor to assist the reader in comprehending these QM and RV concepts about communication connections from the future to the past.)

The sketch at the right is a representation of the waves where the vertical axis is time and the horizontal direction represents space.  Note that the current QM formulation does have an exact cancellation of waves that limits any usual faster than the speed of light (superluminal) communication.  However, Cramer in a paper entitled Quantum Nonlocality and the Possibility of Superluminal Effects has a section entitled:

NONLINEAR QUANTUM MECHANICS AND SUPERLUMINAL LOOPHOLES

"However, this prohibition is broken if quantum mechanics is allowed to be slightly "non-linear", a technical term meaning that when quantum waves are superimposed they may generate a small cross-term not present in the standard formalism. Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate for his theoretical work in unifying the electromagnetic and weak interactions, investigated a theory which introduces small non-linear corrections to standard quantum mechanics [13]. The onset of non-linear behavior is seen in other areas of physics, e.g., laser light in certain media, and, he suggested, might also be present but unnoticed in quantum mechanics. ...

Two years after Weinberg's non-linear QM theory was published, Joseph Polchinski published a paper demonstrating that ... Through the new non-linear effects, separated measurements on the same quantum system begin to 'talk' to each other and faster-than-light and/or backward-in-time signaling becomes possible."

While the non-linear QM model has not been experimentally verified in physics laboratories, RV precognition experimental data support the notion of backward-in-time signaling!  QM is not yet part of a Unified Theory of Everything, and so mysterious non-local interactions may also involve general relativistic aspects of space-time.  Science does seem to be making progress toward comprehending the reality of precognition and maybe consciousness will be the link for the very small and the very large.

References