Nothing I See Means Anything: Quantum Questions, Quantum Answers

FOREWORD

When I first picked up this book, the title informed me that nothing I see means anything. That obviously included the book. Why, then, read it if it had no meaning? But like so many of the penetrating insights that David Parrish has woven into these pages, I discovered that it is necessary to consider this one as thoughtfully as he presents it.

There is a profound difference between saying that no thing has meaning and that seeing has no meaning. As is shown through Dr. Parrish’s brilliant examination of the phenomenon of projection, the way we see the things—the people, the circumstances—around us, holds the key to all meaning. Our take on the world and the significance we assign to everything from casual conversations to catastrophic events, determines whether we live a life smothered in illusions or a life of expanding freedom.

In this book Dr. Parrish takes us on a walk. The flagstones we tread are concepts, each seemingly unique and separate. Yet because we are walking with a teacher who sees not only the path but its destination, we begin to notice that each concept leads gently and logically to the next. Subjects such as quantum physics, mysticism, cognitive psychology, and existential philosophy are interspersed with fascinating discussions of the effects of humor and the dynamics of loving relationships. The result is that we discover that we already know more than we believed we did. We simply had not noticed the connections between the ideas already within our mind.

While introducing us to what some may think of as exotic and daunting thought systems, Dr. Parrish opens our eyes to the truth that all knowledge is already ours, although still locked, perhaps, beneath layers of unconsciousness. We further discover that there are multiple ways this knowledge can be drawn on and utilized now, today, in highly transformative ways. The chaotic landscape of our lives, this perplexing and often cruel world we seem hopelessly trapped in, can be transmuted into a comfortable and softly embracing Home. In short, projection can be put to Divine use.

By way of example of how Dr. Parrish takes seemingly separate concepts and weaves them into a usable whole, consider the following six:

       1.  Nothing I see means anything.

       2.  Everything I see is a projection.

       3.  My body’s eyes are used to see what I outwardly project as separate from me.

       4.  Within the Divine nothing is seen because everything is experienced as One in the eternal present. Since nothing is separate, eyes are not needed.

       5.  It is therefore what is not seen that embraces us all in love, in happiness, and in an unalterable Truth.

       6.  Once acknowledged, this Truth is reflected in our projections.

Connected in this way, these concepts lead us to an ancient and familiar conclusion: I do not have to figure anything out by myself. I can safely resign as my own teacher, lean instead on the sustaining Infinite, and put all things in God’s hands. This is a teaching contained in all the great scriptures and mystical writings as well as in problem-specific approaches such as the twelve steps of Alcoholic Anonymous, and it has unlimited application.

David Parrish’s Nothing I See Means Anything, which may at first appear to be a fear-provoking inquiry, turns out to be a book that releases us from fear, frees us to trust our destiny, and makes accessible a familiar Voice within, a Presence that seeks only to bless us.

—Hugh Prather

PREFACE

This is a book I never intended to write: a book about expanded consciousness. Why? Because the content of this book is completely the opposite of what I had believed in and trusted. I had pursued a career in medicine where successful concepts were based on observation, identification, and measurement. This scientific method put into the language of everyday life is, What you get is what you see. If you don’t see it, you either are not looking in the right places or it just doesn’t exist. As I looked around and collected experience, these concepts often were very applicable and effective, and they possessed appealing logic. These concepts of observation and measurement are traditional components of training and practice in Western medicine.

After about fifteen years of using the conventional methods of scientific thinking and research, I noticed that I would periodically feel there was more that was just outside the boundaries of my awareness. For me, there was the observed world that I could verify by measurement and replication, and then there was a metaphysical realm that defied direct observation and measurement. This unseen realm appeared to be based primarily upon presumption and faith. This unobserved area is generally regarded by Western medicine as unscientific, if not intellectually illegitimate.

The two areas felt unconnected, isolated, and persistently separate.

Then, over the ten–year period 1986 to 1996, several surprising events took place. I volunteered with a hospice during that decade and became acquainted with a patient whom I will call Harry Green. Harry had a terminal case of prostate cancer that had extended into his bones, lungs, and brain, causing much pain and disability. I had not seen him for many months when the following occurred. I was walking down the street with a friend one afternoon when I looked across to the other side and saw a person who vaguely resembled Harry Green walking toward me. I remember thinking, Bob, what a close resemblance this man has to Harry Green. But the closer he came, the more he looked like Harry. Then it became apparent that this man was Harry Green. I crossed over to the other side of the street, still in a state of disbelief, and mumbled something like, Harry, is that you? He replied, It sure is. I countered, The last time I saw you, you and your family were picking out a cemetery plot. He replied, I just decided that I am not going to have cancer any longer. I hesitated a few moments and then I said, Harry, you just can’t say you’re not going to have cancer any longer. With unusual conviction and composure, he replied, Well, I just did. And it was true that Harry’s cancer had disappeared with shocking swiftness. I’d always been certain that malignant tumors are governed by fixed laws of biology, chemistry, and physics, and do not change with a whim of the patient’s mind. Yet I had to wonder, for Harry’s consciousness had undergone a massive change.

The second event that propelled me toward writing this book came about by way of a request from the Veteran’s Administration. In 1995, the Veteran’s Administration requested that I evaluate some 120 POWs to determine if they possessed service-connected posttraumatic stress disorders that would merit compensation. At this point, it is of some interest to note that in spite of the trauma of imprisonment and the related suffering, not one of the POWs had ever independently requested a medical exam for service-connected posttraumatic stress disorders to determine disability. I would regard this reticence as an aspect of their PTSD, and it is all the more remarkable when you consider that, in the United States, we live in a culture that encourages and rewards attempts to gain compensation awards (which not infrequently involve extensive punitive damages). My evaluations revealed that approximately 75 percent of these POWs had some degree of posttraumatic stress disorder. About 24 percent showed negligible signs of posttraumatic stress disorder, and the remaining 1 percent (two POWs) showed what might be called supernormal emotional health and, not surprisingly, above average physical health.

One veteran, whom I will call Steve Sloan, was astonishingly well adjusted compared to anyone and everyone. Sloan was a B-17 captain during WW II and was the last one to leave his crippled plane. The navigator, bombardier, tail gunner, and wounded pilot had already parachuted out. He was captured in occupied France and placed in a POW camp, where he remained for seven months. Shortly before the Allied liberation of France, Sloan escaped to Allied lines, narrowly escaping being killed by friendly machine gun fire. Steve Sloan’s wife stated that prior to his entry into the service he had been a very friendly, likeable, and outgoing person, but she was shocked and unbelieving when she met the person Steve Sloan had become after the war ended. She expected him, at the very least, to be resentful. He was just the opposite of what she’d feared. Somehow, a transformation had taken place. He was now extraordinarily caring, tolerant, and peaceful. Further, this change was fixed and ongoing. When I spoke to him, these characteristics were preeminent. He possessed a quiet confidence that life would proceed in a harmonious way. There was a noticeable absence of any sense of tension, scarcity, fear, or guilt. He had a quiet self-esteem that was not based on the opinions of others. He expressed the conviction that what others thought of him was none of his business. Further, he was primarily focused on the present moment, unlike most of us who have one foot firmly planted in the past and the other foot firmly planted in the future.

How was it that these people transcended their circumstances to reach much more desirable and higher levels of consciousness? They had obviously learned things that most of us had not.

Although every physician has seen people similar to the ones I’ve just described, great healers are just too rare to examine and study as a category. Consequently, we really do not know their secrets. I believe that what makes such people extraordinary is not something they do; rather it is something they are!

Taking the opportunity to explore the extent of consciousness is not something that most of us do. Some people take more advantage of this opportunity than others. They do not do more or feel more or think more. Somehow, like light passing through a crystal-clear lens, life and meaning comes through them clearer, brighter, and sharper than it does through those who choose not to explore their consciousness. Because of these enlightening experiences that were so surprising, appealing, and magnetic, I felt I had to study expanding consciousness. I did so by tracing expanding awareness through the conventional sciences and to a developed and defined metaphysical reality and a metaphysical ground.

INTRODUCTION

The brain is wider than the sky,

for—put them Side by Side

the one the other will contain

with ease—you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea

for hold them Blue to Blue

the one the other will absorb

as sponges—buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God

for heft them Pound for Pound

and they will differ if they do—

as Syllable for Sound.

—Emily Dickinson, No. 632, 1896

Who are we? Where are we going? What does all this mean? Can this universe be a place where we can live in harmony and peace? We seekers of truth have examined the world from three radically different frames of reference—psychology, quantum physics, and mysticism—for recurring and shared ideas. We have sought balance and perspective in this exploration, keeping in mind a comment by P.D. Ouspensky (1997), A religion (metaphysics) contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false. We have found sufficient similarity in psychology, quantum physics, and mysticism to construct what we believe is a coherent image of reality—an image that can open the door to a new and profound examination and understanding of our universe.

In the last half of this century, our three sources have spawned a veritable flood of new ideas that contend that humans are not as they think they are, and that their world and universe are not as they see them. This information has been met with universal shock, resistance, and disbelief. Particularly shocking is the observation that true reality is exactly the opposite of what we believed it to be. Because the new concepts appear so radical, they connect with our present knowledge only with the greatest difficulty.

I intent to provide a journey that will explain how certain information revealed by psychology, quantum physics, and mysticism was discovered, how that information interconnects, and where it will lead.

Psychology had initially indicated that much of human behavior was directed by drives and motivations totally outside of awareness. With few exceptions, humans are destined to remain unaware of these hidden forces throughout life. Later developments in psychology found that this hidden information was not completely locked in the unconscious, but was strongly denied by choice—a choice often forgotten. The discovery that the mind has a choice is an optimistic development, discovered by using scientific methods to gather data that supports the surprising conclusion that much of man’s knowledge about himself and his world has been totally mistaken.

I believe man has long held the erroneous view that his reality is quite separate from that of his fellow man, for he has lived his life, with or without intent, dedicated to separateness and fragmentation. The denial of man’s interconnectedness has left most people with lives of narcissism, conflict, isolation, guilt, pain, and depression. In other words, what we hold to be true is projected or extended beyond ourselves, and then viewed as separate from the self.

Recent discoveries in psychology have reinforced the idea that man can become capable of identifying his beliefs, and then eliminating the false beliefs of scarcity, guilt, and fear. This process can bring about a happier, kinder, more satisfying consciousness. What we think and feel determines what we experience and perceive.

With the growth of our understanding of quantum reality, all the rules for consciousness were suddenly changed. There were no stop signs. Red lights were green, dead ends were now through streets, and solid walls had open doors. Quantum physics undeniably demonstrated that we can truly choose our level of consciousness, and that we can choose either a positive or a negative collection of beliefs. It is a sad observation to see that most of us have chosen negative beliefs, and continue to believe that we are victims of circumstance. The good news is that these circumstances are situations we have constructed, and are therefore ones we can change.

Like modern psychology, quantum physics not only states that there is another order of reality that lies beneath the reality that we ordinarily perceive, but offers proof that can be confirmed by scientific experiments. The perceived reality is the one most of us believe to be real, because it seemingly can be directly measured and experienced. It is a reality characterized by apparent chance, separateness, scarcity, unending conflict, and chaos. In fact, this old reality is inside out, upside down, and backwards. The newly discovered order of reality underlying the universe speaks of wholeness, harmony, timelessness, nonmaterial intelligence, beauty, truth, and good.

What we observe in the world is the projection of our own errors of thought. Therefore, we can fail to understand only what is not understandable. By choosing to let go of these illusions, we allow the true and understandable to be known.

The prominent quantum physicist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Davies said in 1980, These statements [about quantum reality] are so stunning that most scientists lead a sort of dual life, accepting them in the laboratory, but rejecting them without thought in daily life. Valuable concepts that are clearly optimistic and peaceful continue to be rejected and isolated from mainstream thinking. Quantum physics has made the astonishing discovery that in certain experiments involving protons, the consciousness or mind-set of the observer will determine outcome and reality. Can it be that we all choose not only our awareness, but also our reality? For most of us, this idea sounds alien and strange indeed. If we seriously assess the degree of disharmony that we see in ourselves and our world, we are forced to conclude that if we have the choice of acquiring a more harmonious view, a quantum view, this choice should be sought.

Physicist David Bohm, in his 1991 book Changing Consciousness, made this illuminating remark on our need to move toward a more enlightened consciousness:

       Conflict has come from our thought, and it has evolved over the whole period of civilization. Thought has developed in such a way that it has an intrinsic disposition to divide things up…We could sum up by saying that we’ve got to look at thought. In this process, we will come upon some more subtle quality of the mind that will begin to awaken and that can spread. This subtle quality will show up collectively in a sense of impersonal fellowship that generates trust, and in the intellect as a thinking together that is free of the general pressure toward self-deception that we now feel. This can be the germ of a radically new kind of culture.

A surprising number of modern sages and mystics have supported science and in particular, physics. They have provided spiritual and metaphysical views that support the information coming from quantum physics. Finally, it has become apparent to many that metaphysics and mysticism are extending consciousness far beyond the scope of psychology and quantum physics.

In the following pages, I intend to identify bridges of information that can lead to an unfolding of this unbelievably exciting, optimistic, and enriching new consciousness. Of particular importance is the identification of projection as an early psychomarker of expanding consciousness. I invite you to learn valuable insights from physics, psychology, and mysticism that may slowly but surely alter your self and worldview. The messages from these three systems are interconnected and powerful, yet harmonious. They assert that man has the ability not only to discern the truth of his existence, but also to recognize that this truth represents his own underlying reality—a reality of unity, love, and timelessness.

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FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYTIC

PSYCHOLOGY

Hidden Desires

In the beginning, there was desire, which was the first

seed of the mind; sages, having meditated in their hearts,

have discovered by their wisdom the connection of the

existent with the non-existent.

—The Hymn of Creation from the Rig Veda

It is essential to your understanding of evolving consciousness that we consider in some depth the three fundamental disciplines that