Events » Past Events » Norman Friedman visits Sethnet: May 18, 1999
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Subject: [Admin]
Norm Friedman's visit to sethnet online
Date: Thu,
06 May 1999 22:05:18 +0500
From: "Paul
M. Helfrich" <helfrich@cafemuse.com>
Reply-To: sethnet@onelist.com
Hi all,
We announced last month that author Norm Friedman would be joining us next week, from May 11-13, to answer any questions we have on Seth and physics/quantum mechanics.
For those of you who don't know him, Norm is a board member and regular speaker at the SNI conferences. He has authored two wonderful books that build a bridge between Seth/Jane's ideas and current scientific theory:
- Bridging Science and Spirit: Common Elements in David
Bohm's Physics, the Perennial Philosophy and Seth
- The Hidden Domain: Home of the Quantum Wave Function,
Nature's Creative Source
Norm covers some very subtle concepts of Seth/Jane's, notably consciousness units (CUs) and electromagnetic energy units (EEs), the relationship of probabilities between Framework 1 (physical reality) and Framework 2 (no-time, no-space Source of *all* probabilities for F1). These ideas form the *basis* of the "mechanics" of *how* we create our reality. Bleeding edge stuff.
Norm's books are available from the SNI web site, Brass Ring Books, and Seth Store. I highly recommend them to any aspiring metaphysician. And if you ever wanted to get a deeper sense of some practical applications of Seth/Jane's "further out" concepts, this is a golden opportunity!
Seth/Jane's ideas and Rob's insightful notes on CUs, EEs, and related concepts can be found in:
The Seth Material (Appendix: Sessions #504-506
EEs introduced)
Seth Speaks (Session #581, more on EEs)
The Unknown Reality, Vol. 1 & 2 (Sessions #682-685,
CUs introduced, 688, 694, 712, 722, more on CUs and EEs)
The Nature of the Psyche (Session #789, more on
EEs)
Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment,
Vol. 1 & 2 (Sessions #889, 890, 892, 894, 900, 904, 916, 918
more on CUs, EEs)
If you choose to review this material, you may have questions relating to:
- the "origins" of our omniverse and species, their
"age"
- the deeper nature of linear time and "space"
- the creation of ALL matter
- cool Star Trek concepts like tachyons and positrons ...
- free will, in terms of Framework 1
- the nature of probabilities
- the nature of Framework 1 and Framework 2
- the relationship of dreams to all the above
- the relationship of value fulfillment to all the above
All of this could also lead up to a nice interaction during the June 17-20 Elmira conference that Norm and some of us will be attending.
Wishing you *all* well.
Paul
List Admin
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Subject: [Quantum Cloud]
Questions for Norm Friedman
Date: Sat,
08 May 1999 00:21:00 +0500
From: "Paul
M. Helfrich" <helfrich@cafemuse.com>
Reply-To: sethnet@onelist.com
Me again,
I figured that I'd throw in my list of questions for Norm to help stimulate those of you interested in sharing Norm's rather unique perspective on things Sethian.
1. Seth talks, in the Early sessions and elsewhere (Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment), about the "origins" of our Multiverse. To paraphrase, he states that when we ask the question – when, at what precise moment in time, did our universe begin? – we are asking the *wrong* question, or a question that reflects strong beliefs in cause and effect and linear thinking. So, given that Seth says our Multiverse is in fact being created, newly emerging, in each moment of time as we perceive it, what is your take on the "origins" of the Multiverse. In other words, how would you tell the story of Creation?
2. Similar to my first question, Seth also uses the concept of Sleepwalkers to describe the "origins" of our species; homo sapien. He also states that we are not descended from apes, directly refuting Darwin's "theory" of evolution, which again shows cause and effect, linear thinking. So given that the Sleepwalkers are aspects of our entities that were responsible for the experimentation of *all* species, how would you tell the story of the origin of the human species?
3. Given your thoughts on questions #1 and #2, how would you describe the fact that consciousness (mind) is Primary, in terms of the distorted Cartesian brain/mind duality? In other words, how do we build the bridge (strategies) toward creating and maintaining dialogue with those noted scientists who don't yet understand the primacy of consciousness and its effects on their work?
4. You've mentioned the importance of developing a disciplined use of the inner senses in pursuing scientific inquiry. In The Unknown Reality, Vols. 1 & 2, Seth offers three types of scientific inquiry based upon the emerging integration of the inner senses (projections, altered states, accessing alternate/probable dimensions, etc.):
- the dream-art scientist,
- the complete physician,
- the true mental physicist.
I'll also throw in the dream archeologists from Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (Monarch and Leona). What are your latest thoughts on helping to develop these abilities and integrate them into current scientific research?
5. How would you interpret Seth/Jane's 11 codicils in the context of quantum mechanics, the perennial philosophy, and Seth?
There's so many more questions, but I'll leave it at that for today. Thanks for sharing your time and ideas with us all. See you in Elmira in June!
Cheers,
Paul H.
List Admin
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In the first part of your e-mail you asked me to open with a little background information about myself. So the next paragraph will cover that.
My academic background is physics and engineering but I spent most of my life building an electronics company. It was started in 1956 and I sold it in 1983. When I sold it and retired, I began thinking about what I would like to do in my retirement. The thing that came to my attention immediately was that I would like to investigate the philosophical implications of quantum theory. While I took quantum theory classes, none of them covered the philosophical possibilities. In the process, I ran across the physics of David Bohm and was enamored with it. I then read an interview of Ken Wilber, who is the modern authority of the perennial philosophy, and it occurred to me that they were saying the same thing. But I did not see a book at that point because there had been a number of good books comparing physics and mysticism. About that time I received a paper written by a physicist who mentioned in one paragraph only that Seth, in his pronouncements, talked about a domain similar to Heisenberg’s potentia (that’s a physics term). That caught my interest and I bought a number of Seth books and began reading them, especially for the physics content. It soon occurred to me that Seth was the bridge between Bohm and Wilber and then I saw a book. The result was Bridging Science and Spirit and my second book, The Hidden Domain. By the way, The Hidden Domain goes into some detail regarding Heisenberg’s potentia. In any case, that is my background.
In reference to your questions, Paul, I will answer them according to your number sequence.
Question 1: You are asking a question that could easily take a chapter in a book. I will attempt to answer it but if you want more detail, you will have to ask again. The first thing to say at the outset is that time is an ordering parameter that we use to make our sense perceptions orderly. To back this up without a lot of detail, let me quote Albert Einstein: "...time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live." That is what Seth means when he says that we are hung up on beginnings and endings because we are using time as part of our camouflage structure. So now, what can we mean by the universe being created. If you will recall, Seth talked about our universe pulsing in and out (as well as our consciousness) in the twinkling of an eye. I wasn’t too happy with the term "twinkling of an eye," so I went into the physics of it a little bit.
Allow me to digress on that because it might apply to other questions. What we call empty space is really not empty at all. If one uses the uncertainty principle, you come to the conclusion that the shorter the distance scale you are trying to describe, the more uncertainty there is in the energy of what you are trying to describe. Because of this, if we make an observation on a small enough distance scale, one is forced to think of empty space as consisting of an infinite sea of fluctuating black holes. The speed of their fluctuating is amazing. They go in and out at 10-44 seconds. That means that our whole universe flashes in and out that fast. An analogy would be a movie film wherein each frame goes by the projector. In any case, try to visualize this as all the matter in the universe pulsing in and out through these black wholes, white wholes. The time element came from a formula developed by Stephen Hawking. So we can see that we literally have a big bang every 10 to the minus-44 seconds which Seth would call the twinkling of an eye.
Question 2: I am not sure what Seth meant by a sleepwalker being the origin of our species. However, I can say the following. Before our reality was set up to pulse into existence, the concept of humans was no doubt already on the board, so to speak, for framework 2 and beyond. I guess what Seth is talking about is that it was a dream then. So the human species did not evolve on this planet but was a concept of something well beyond us. It is my view that the human species is investigating the problem of combining both an intellectual capacity and an intuitive capacity and merging the two to make a civilization. That’s shown somewhat in the fact that we have two sides to our brains for this purpose. Animals and species below us operate largely intuitively.
Question 3: As far as the philosophy of consciousness is concerned, I cannot go into all the details here about how it emerges in quantum theory. However, if you need more on this, I will be only too happy to do it. But take my word for the fact that quantum theory indicates that our consciousness creates reality. Therefore, in a sense, all energy is conscious and everything you see out there is the result of this consciousness.
Question 4: As far as this question is concerned, I mentioned in a previous paragraph that we are trying to combine the intuitive and the rational. Jane Roberts had a metaphor saying that our consciousness was like a house of consciousness that had two doors. The front door was the way we interacted with the outside world that we have created and the back door was where our intuition comes in. Now developing the back door and using it is a difficult proposition but that’s why we are here. Jane Roberts apparently was quite good at that. But if one studies such scientists as Einstein, one realizes that he had a tremendous intuitive grasp on what was going on. So whether you are in physics or something else, your intuitive side helps you see a problem almost instantaneously. That means outside the back door there is no time.
Question 5: This question would require that I go back and read the codicils which I cannot do at this time. However, if I do that in the future, I will answer it.
That completes your list of questions, Paul, and I thank you for them. However, I am having difficulty understanding David’s questions regarding energy. Perhaps if he could get more specific, I could try to respond, but at the moment I don’t even know what I am trying to answer.
Finally, Paul, please feel free to go into detail on any of the above, if you think it would be useful. I hope this is satisfactory.
My best regards,
Norm Friedman
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Subject: Re: [sethnet] [Quantum
Cloud] Question
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 14:21:34
+1000
From: David Hanneford <daveh@netspace.net.au>
To: helfrich@cafemuse.com
G'day Paul,
Let's try this (I've been getting myself mind-tangled trying figure out what I actually want answered. Of course in Bach's "Illusions" it suggests that when you get the question right you already have the answer - grrr!)
G'day Norm,
Having grown up with a Newtonian framework in regards to energy, inertia, etc., I think people get caught up thinking that to make a change can require massive effort/energy to "coerce" reality into a new form.
We recently had a discussion on the list re healing, in particular about healers 'channeling' energy to heal someone else and that it takes time and practice to learn to channel the large amounts of energy to do it. Someone also posted that it takes a great amount of energy to 'slow' an EE unit down to enter our framework.
Could you discuss how you see our conscious interaction between framework 1 and the other frameworks in regards to our experience of energy and using it.
David H.
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Thanks for your e-mail of 5/17/99 and passing on David’s
revised question. David is running into a problem that all
Seth readers encounter. If you will remember, Seth pointed
out that our words hang him up. That is, in trying to describe
his concepts he must use our words that originated in Framework
1 in order to get us to understand. However, these concepts in
Framework 1 do not apply to Framework 2. Unfortunately, we still
have to use these words and understand their
limitations. With that in mind, I will give you another point.
Aldous Huxley wrote the book The Perennial Philosophy in the early 1940s. Of course, one of the major undertakings of his research was that he was examining the concept of mystics from all places and all religions. One of the things he said that hit home to me was that it is literally impossible to really understand these concepts because the mystics do not have a mystical calculus. In short, when the mystic has an experience, merely by the act of converting it to words or even possibly mathematics, it will fall short. So to begin on this answer, let’s keep that in mind.
First of all, when we talk about energy, we all understand it as defined by the physicist. The definition of energy in physics is that energy is that property of a system that is measured by its capacity to do work. The concept of work applies only to Framework 1 where we have such things as matter. So what we mean by energy in this world or in this framework cannot be directly applied to Framework 2. Having said that, Seth still found it necessary to use our terminology in order to experience things. So when we talk about EE units, they exist in Framework 2 and are not like anything we have in Framework 1. However, Seth pointed out that they go faster than our light. As we know and he has said on a number of occasions, there is no such thing as space and time in Framework 2. Therefore, that an EE unit travels faster than light makes no sense since there is nowhere to travel in Framework 2. However, in all fairness to Seth, he needed to use that concept for us to understand. So the following explanation has to be understood in those terms.
If we talk about EE units, we talk about them as if they exist in Framework 1. If they did, then they would be similar to the physics particle called a tachyon. Now a tachyon normally goes faster than light because it is born that way. However, by examining the mathematics of a tachyon you find that you would need an infinite amount of energy in order to slow it down to our velocity of light. I assume Seth knew this and, therefore, talked about coordinate points slowing EE units down to our velocity. However, in my understanding, he was merely giving us a metaphor that applied to our reality.
With all the above in mind, we literally do not transfer energy in the sense that we talk about. For example, if an electron went from point A to B, it doesn’t pass in between. It may start out at A then go into Framework 2 and then goes out to B. However, it did not have any motion between A and B. So, when we say that Framework 2 is a vast ocean of energy, we are only saying that in our terms. When we say energy is transferred, we are trying to explain it in our terms. Actually, the patient who is healed by an energy healer gets a message from that healer through Framework 2 to change his or her own structure. But it is the patient himself who changes the body by explicating a different form from Framework 2.
It really does not take a lot of our kind of energy to slow an EE unit down. Just keep in mind that Seth used that phrase because that was the only one he felt we would understand. Frankly, I’m very grateful that he did that. Unlike Aldous Huxley I did not have to wish that Seth had a spiritual calculus. He definitely put it in my terms even though I know that is a reality beyond my understanding.
I realize that this may be difficult to understand because it certainly was for me when I first ran across all of this. But I hope it starts David thinking and he may come up with a better conception.
Paul, thanks for the opportunity to participate with your online group. I enjoyed it.
Norm