Understanding the Consciousness Field

Textbooks tell us that our brain is the source of all thought. Like a computer, we learn to react and make deci- sions based on past programming and what we have learned from our environment. However, now scientists like Henry Stapp from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stuart Hameroff from the University of Arizona are researching brain functions that work beyond classical physics. They are no longer content with seeing thought as being simply the chemical processing of neurotransmitters. What has emerged are theoretical proposals that the brain's processing of in- formation takes place through quantum mechanical processes where consciousness, itself, is being seen as part of a sec- ond-order quantum field. Quantum mechanical processes have provided researchers with an entirely new field of understanding of thought and memory processes. They are examining the chemical processes in the ionic flow of elements (e.g., in actin filaments) which are equally if not more complex than the chemical neurological processes. In quantum mechanics, electrons behave like waves. In a quantum world, there exists also the wave-particle duality of matter, where the wave can contain all the dynamical information about the system, in the manner of a hologram. This means that the total information of the system is available in every part and information becomes active in a "non-local" environment. "Non-locality" reveals that pho- tons can exist simultaneously in an infinite number of locations or quantum states within the wave showing measurable interactions at a distance.