t’s not hard to find well educated persons who believe they have experienced a premonition of a future event. Perhaps no one has a greater burden to bear than Chris Robinson, who claims to be a “dream detective”: a man who has learned to use his prescient talent for predicting future events, by understanding coded messages revealed in dreams. Robinson reported dreaming of airplanes crashing into buildings just prior to the events of September 11th, 2001. American intelligence authorities were notified, and Robinson claims to have been contacted by US intelligence representatives immediately after planes hit the World Trade Center. Among the many American officials Robinson was introduced to was Tom Drake of the National Security Agency Signals Intelligence Directorate. Chris Robinson’s premonitions had been the subject of a series of tests conducted by Professor Gary E. Schwartz at the University of Arizona, in August 2001. I was first introduced to Dr. Schwartz a year earlier on a private email discussion concerning the nature of human consciousness, run by San Francisco physicist Dr. Jack Sarfatti. Schwartz, a Professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery at the University of Arizona and Director of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory, had expressed an interest in how the mind could access information “beyond space and time,” something Sarfatti knew required going beyond accepted theory. Sarfatti had proposed a post-quantum theory based upon the pilot wave interpretation of quantum theory.
In the 1990s, theoretical physicist Anthony Valentini had shown how the quantum theory could be extended to allow faster-than-the-speed-of-light messaging, in apparent violation of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Valentini’s work, which is based on the pilot-wave interpretation of quantum theory championed by the late David Bohm, predicted a new kind of non-quantum matter, offering unique and almost magical properties. Sarfatti proposed that the human mind — the essence of the consciousness experience — operated “beyond space and time” in a way similar to Valentini’s non-quantum matter. Several years passed before I heard of the “Arizona Experiments” Schwartz had conducted with Mr. Robinson, who is a citizen of the United Kingdom. I would also learn that the British Ministry of Defence had been conducting secret psychic experiments following 9/11, and read that Uri Geller had told author Jon Ronson that he had been ‘reactivated’ for the Bush War on Terror. Dr. David Deutsch of Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratory is a world-renowned expert in quantum information theory. Deutsch is also one of the most vocal and respected proponents of the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Theory: Our world is just one of a countless number of parallel universes.
The idea sounds like science fiction, but over time the Many Worlds emerged as one of the most self-consistent explanations of what Quantum Theory tells us about the nature of the world in which we exist. Quantum experiments produce effects that some physicists interpret as interference from particles in the parallel worlds. Many cosmologists, like Dr. Max Tegmark, who studies the relationship between the vastness of the entire universe and the physics of the smallest scales where Quantum Theory rules, also find the idea of Many Worlds of Parallel Universes compelling. Different interpretations of Quantum Theory compete with each other in the minds of great thinkers. The idea of parallel universes does not require new physics: the Many Worlds of Parallel Universes fall out of currently accepted theory and experiment. On the other hand, Valentini’s ideas are theoretical: they predict the possibility of new physics, beyond the current model. Sarfatti, and other proponents of “quantum mind” explanations, claim that the experience of the human mind is evidence of the need for new physics. Chris Robinson claims the future comes to visit in the night, while he is asleep. Over time, Robinson developed a system of recalling and interpreting his nocturnal visions.
Robinson keeps extensive hand-written dream notes as precognitive evidence of future events. If Mr. Robinson’s mind truly does reach out and grasp the future, what are the implications for the nature of the human mind? More importantly, is it possible to imagine a ‘human time machine’ without appealing to new physics? Dr. Paul Werbos is a Program Director at the National Science Foundation. One of Werbos’ personal interests is the possibility that Quantum Theory might allow information to flow both forward and backward in time. Werbos originally imagined a realistic single universe theory, but in his most recent papers he appears to embrace many worlds. Dr. David Deutsch holds fast to the many worlds of parallel universes idea: his view is that pilot-wave theories, like David Bohm’s interpretation which forms the basis of both Valentini and Sarfatti’s ideas, is merely “Many Worlds in Denial.” According to Deutsch, the idea of information moving backwards in time also requires parallel universes, which he describes in his book The Fabric of Reality. I wrote to David Deutsch and asked about the Many Worlds interpretation of loops in time forming time machines, as an alternative to the superluminal signals of Valentini and Sarfatti. Valentini and Sarfatti require violation of a major cornerstone of Quantum Theory: the special non-quantum matter of Valentini and the post-quantum mind-stuff of Sarfatti do not obey the Born Rule that determines quantum probabilities. (To date no one has reported an experimental violation of the Born Rule.)
Deutsch wrote, “With or without such loops [in time], distributions deviating from the Born Rule are not compatible with Everett quantum theory [referring to Hugh Everett, who first proposed the idea behind the Many Worlds of Parallel Universes in 1957] . If such distributions were observed, they would refute Everett and strongly suggest that something like the Bohm theory can be made to work.” Imagine, if you will, that Chris Robinson’s claims were shown to provide evidence of a time machine. Our ‘human time machine’ is not a vehicle like the modified De Lorean of Doc Brown in the fictional “Back to the Future Series” – although it could be – but is formed of an information loop in time. The human as living time machine would be the essence of the conscious experience: it proposes to answer the question of why we awaken to an experience of our senses, thoughts, memories, and existence. In the Many Worlds interpretation of Parallel Universes, other times, including future events, are viewed as special cases of different parallel universes. For the human experience, the living time machine moves between different worlds by the action of the perception of those worlds. Typically, human consciousness demonstrates both a rate and a threshold of perception. Generally, it is accepted that we are typically aware of events to about 1/10 of a second. If the human mind is a time machine, threaded by loops in time, we would expect those loops to correspond to the rate of our perception.
The Many Worlds of Parallel Universes interpretation tells us that information moves backwards in time by connecting different parallel universes together. The magical property of a time machine is an exotic sleight of hand. Information is processed in a different universe, which we call the future. All of the ordinary laws of physics apply. The work required to produce information, like tomorrow’s newspaper, actually takes place in that other universe. News events occur, reporters research the day’s events, editors assemble the daily news reports; all of the activity and energy required to produce the information occurs, but from the point of view of the present moment, everything required to assemble tomorrow’s newspaper has taken place in a different world than the one in which we live. The magic of the human time machine happens when our universe, the one we call the present moment, is connected to that other universe we call the future. All of the work required – all of the day’s events – all of the energy and processes required – took place in an alternative universe. The connection allows information about that other world to enter the world of the present moment. From our point of view, where our perception is focused on the present world, something truly magical takes place. A rabbit is pulled from an empty hat: the time machine transfers information from another universe to our own. For the human as living time machine, self-perception emerges from the loops in time. The human mind passes from world to world as it loops through the Many Worlds of the Multiverse of Parallel Universes.
This is a radical interpretation of the nature of consciousness: the human mind exists as a trans-universe process, literally beyond space and time. Although the loops in time would typically last less than a second, rapid enough to thwart conventional attempts to detect information transfer from the future world, under special circumstances one might imagine that loops might appear connecting alternative futures from tomorrow, next month, next year, and beyond. Over the past several years Michael Mensky, a Russian physicist from the Lebedev Institute, has proposed a similar idea he calls the Extended Everett Concept. Mensky also believes that the human mind is capable of reaching outside of space and time to access information from alternative universes. Mensky has coauthored papers with Igor Novikov, one of the leading Russian experts on time machine theory. For Chris Robinson, the man who actually dreams about the future, there is no question about the reality behind the human time machine. If Many Worlds theory is correct, in a distant alternative future universe, Gary E. Schwartz passed Robinson’s information about planes crashing into buildings in New York City to the authorities, and in that universe they took action, preventing the 9/11 attacks. In our world the warning failed to elicit a response. Tomorrow’s dream-news emerged as today’s destiny. I will never forget how, in September 2001, we lost a chance and a choice to make a change of fate. “It is happening, again.”
