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A Medical Reality Check

by Donivan Bessinger

 

Plato: Charmides 156e:

[Y]ou ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, nor the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul. ...

[T]he cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas, because they disregard the whole, which ought to be studied also, for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.



Our concept of the whole of the physical cosmos has vastly changed since Plato, for now we have telescopes which seem to be able to detect light almost as old as the universe. Yet as our science has reached farther toward the limits of the small and the large, the more we have thought of the universe as entirely materialistic and deterministic.


A Hubble telescope view of the Orion nebula

Though that immensely complex cosmos has developed everything from planets to blossoms to brains, we have insisted that everything within it could be measured, if we could have just the right gauge.

It is ironic that as our concept of the physical cosmos has grown larger, our medical universe, our concept of the whole of the human person, has contracted.

To many people within medicine today, even the psyche (the "soul" of which Plato spoke) is merely the product of the mechanistic molecular workings of the brain. Our biomedical model is a tightly framed picture with little room for soul.

 

 

Outside the Frame

Now new knowledge from a number of disciplines has left us with many concepts which do not fit within the prevailing medical model and mechanistic understanding of the universe. Our expanding "collective brain," the very science on which we based our faith, is fracturing that golden frame within which we have worked so comfortably and confidently.


probability
complementarity
nonlocality

anthropic principle
consciousness


hyperspace


microtubules


nonlinearity
chaos theory
fractals

collective unconscious
synchronicity
dream
precognition

Somehow we must reframe our picture of the world. These new concepts must also fit into the "golden frame" by which we relate to both the physical cosmos, and the cosmos of the human person, including ourselves.

Click on the terms in the table.
How would you bring these concepts under "one frame"
???

After you have explored all the frames above,
and thought about your answer,
click here to continue.

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Hyperspace. The search for a theory which unifies the physical forces and the symmetries (e.g. the law of the conservation of energy) has led to a theory of seven or more dimensions in addition to those of space and time. These dimensions are not to be thought of as dimensions of space in which one might travel, but represent "degrees of freedom" permitting action within, and throughout, the cosmos. These extra dimensions must also be thought of as nonlocal since they are active at all points in space and time (e.g. the law of the conservation of energy is valid everywhere).

Inconveniently, experimental confirmation of this theory would require a level of energy very close to that existing near the time of the Big Bang.

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Probability.

Quantum events are not determined by mechanistic rules. Events must be calculated by probabilistic formulas. According to the current "standard model," an outcome may not be known until there is an act of observation. That is, only an interaction with consciousness, which "collapses (or reduces) the wave function" of the probabilities, establishes the reality of the quantum interaction.

Even more "weird" (from the standpoint of classical physics) is the proposal of Wojciech Zurek
(Los Alamos National Laboratory) that the environment surrounding a quantum system can itself "monitor" some of the system's observables, and thus be the observer which collapses the wave function.

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Complementarity refers to the particle/wave "duality" of "things" at the quantum level. The elemental thing may be seen as wavelike or particlelike, depending on the method of observation.

Further, there is always uncertainty about about a particle's momentum versus its position. One may not make a precise measurement of both at the same time; measuring one sacrifices the precision by which one may know the other (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle).

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Nonlocality refers to a new understanding of physical reality. The "local" reality is the world of ordinary phenomena, in which signals are limited by the speed of light, and force is mediated through a field and diminished over distance.

Physicist John Bell showed (Bell's Theorem) that if that were true, experiments must show a certain mathematical inequality. Yet the experiments do not show that result. Experiments have now been done which show that correlated photons react together instantaneously even if miles apart. No speed-of-light signal could explain such a correlation. Reality is nonlocal.

Physicist Nick Herbert writes

Bell's Theorem shows that the holistic grammar of the quantum formalism reflects the inseparable nature of reality itself. Beneath phenomena, the world is a seamless whole.

Nick Herbert: Quantum Reality, Doubleday 1985, p. 242
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Nonlinear dynamics or chaos theory, demonstrates that there is order within systems previously thought to be random or unordered. Many functions exhibit strange attractors which act as though "an entity" were pulling a constantly varying output toward a coherent pattern.

Fractal geometry is the geometry of fractional dimensions. Instead of the "design by chance" imagined by the mechanistic model, there seems to be an abstract mathematical reality underlying many familiar natural formations, such as the branching of bronchioles, ferns, plant stems, wave patterns, clouds, and shorelines. The Mandelbrot set, the most complex structure known to mathematics, seems truly to be a geometry of the infinite.

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Microtubules are cytoskeletal structures of nucleated cells, especially well organized in neurons, and apparently capable of responding to quantum-level events. Stuart Hameroff, MD, (Department of Anesthesiology, U. Arizona) and Roger Penrose, mathematician and physicist (Oxford University) propose that large blocks of microtubules produce consciousness by working together to "collapse the wave function" of quantum probabilities

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The anthropic principle. The mechanistic model of "design by chance" finds no room for theories of a purposeful universe. However, the laws of nature are so finely tuned that the slightest difference (e.g. in the gravitational constant) would have prevented conditions suitable for the emergence of consciousness. Thus, as Stephen Hawking notes, it is exceedingly improbable that the emergence of consciousness is an accident. The fact that we are here to observe the cosmos suggests that there is a purposeful link between cosmos and consciousness.

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Consciousness is a problem. Clearly it requires a functioning brain, but how does it arise within the brain? How is it that some patients can report specific and verified aspects of their resuscitation, even though at the time they were clinically dead? What is the relationship between consciousness and the clinical unconscious?

How could we explain the ability of a consciousness to describe itself? How is the unconscious made conscious? Why does the existence of consciousness seem to be intimately related to the deep structure of the universe, as implied in the anthropic principle and in quantum theory? How could a mechanistic theory describe any of this?

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The collective unconscious. Carl Jung's theory of a collective unconscious has been highly controversial within the mechanistic worldview. Yet, to deny a "phylogenetic" or collective aspect to the human unconscious is to deny an instinctual basis for psyche. It would require explaining why and how humans are exempt from a species-wide instinctual behavioral component which is present in all less complicated species. The question really is, to what extent is the collective aspect also nonlocal.

There is, of course, a "diffusionary" or cultural contribution to the content of myth, dream image, and hallucination, but prime questions remain. What is the ultimate source of the symbols which diffuse? Why is it that these symbols, even though culturally determined and diffused among cultures, are processed in a highly consistent way across cultures and across centuries, as Jung's scholarship and that of others clearly shows? The proving of a nonlocal reality by physics requires taking a new look at the theory of a nonlocal psyche.

In Jung's theory, dream symbolism follows consistent patterns, defined by archetypes. While there might be an instinctual (genetic) component involved, we might also imagine archetypes as nonlocal abstract entities, much like the strange attractors of nonlinear dynamics. These tend to hold a constantly varying output to a consistent pattern. In psyche, the functions will be expressed as images taken from personal experience in the culture. Archetypes, like mathematical functions in physics, need not have physical existence per se, to be integral to process ("output").

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Synchronicity is a strikingly meaningful but non-causal connection between events in psyche and in the physical world. Occasionally two people who are emotionally close experience shared "synchronistic" moments even when separated by great distance. As in precognition, this too implies a nonlocal "communication" not unlike the nonlocal interaction between correlated photons separated by great distance. Neither situation can be accounted for by a mechanistic theory.

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Precognition. Even though rare, clairvoyant or precognitive dreams and waking intuitions, (in which some level of information is "transmitted" across sometimes great distance between two people not otherwise in contact) are elements of human experience which can only be explained by a nonlocal theory.

The existence of the dream is itself problematic for the traditional theory of an only-physical reality. How and why would the "selfish genes" of mechanistic evolutionary theory evolve the capacity for dreaming? To what aspect of reality is the dream a survival adaptation?

(See also, archetype.)

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The Nuocontinuum

I have proposed that Nuocontinuum could be a useful concept for bringing all of the new knowledge back into one frame of reference:

1. Reflections on Reality, Healing and Consciousness
2. Further Reflections: The Nuonic Nature of Nonlocal Reality
3. Time for Eternity

Our current science now makes it clear that we must change our mechanistic biomedical model to one which integrates the local and the nonlocal reality, and physics with psyche. Such a model could have any of several names, but let us call it the nuocontinuum model.

The most important point is not the name but the idea. An integrated model would give us a much broader basis for understanding the body-mind-spirit aspects of the healing process, and the importance of patient-physician relationships:

These relationships are explored throughout the Academies website:

Introducing the Professional Academy
Healing Intentions
Medicine: the Art of Applying Knowledge to Healing
Modeling the All -- Medicine and Healing
Nuocontinuum: Homeostasis and Healing

and in several other medical articles:

Essays on Ethics and Healing


We will have much to learn as we refine our models of healing, but new models open up new vistas of new possibilities. In a purposeful cosmos, the practice of healing at any level is meaningful in and of itself.

Admittedly, the present socioeconomic milieu of medical practice is a mess for patients and physicians alike. But a new model will change the way we do things, and change the "market forces" in the process. Despite all the present strains in the system, this is an exciting time for the profession of medicine. It is an exciting time to be a physician !!

 

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Master Index: The Pleromatics Project
Academies for Unitive Healing

Copyright, Donivan Bessinger, 1997. All rights reserved.


Updated 7 Nov 1997