Interview with Prof. dr. Dirk K.F. Meijer in Epoch Times Magazine, Israel.

Date: 8th of july, 2019. Extended English translation.

Do thoughts really come only from the brain: the deeper connective principles of consciousness

Interviewed: Dirk K.F. Meijer, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Interviewer: Rakefet Tavor

Conscious or unconscious?

What makes us follow complex ideas without thinking about it or taking a quick action without really considering it? A new consciousness model suggests that our thoughts are not only affected by the neurons in our brain, but also by external forces acting on us and shaping our consciousness

Early in the morning. You buy coffee, get into the car, drive and set off. Thoughts sink into meetings planned later in the day and tasks that must already be closed. Ten minutes later you notice that you have been able to travel quite a bit, even though the thoughts were completely elsewhere. You did not give a thought to the process of driving, but your hands moved alone and the foot pressed the accelerator. In fact, you were not focused at all, and driving was conducted as if by an invisible motorist. How did it happen all the way without you noticing?

Brain researchers who try to understand what is called "consciousness" using brain imaging

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technologies such as EEG and fMRI, will argue that this apparently happened in the subconscious. In other words, the neuronal networks in the brain, the neurons, and the connections between them. But Professor Dirk Meijer of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands claims, in an interview with him, that the many studies carried out every year and following the activities of neurons in the brain look only at the surface of things, with regard to what happens inside our brains, since they ignore another important layer. "It's impossible to explain our extremely quick brain responses to signals, from the speed with which the brain responds with neurons alone," he tells me in tis interview.

What makes us move our arms and legs quickly without having planned to do so or have we given thought to it? What makes us think of a complex idea in the second without considering it in depth or even thinking about it? "Neurons have a chemical way of processing information in the brain, but their transmission of information is relatively slow, so there must be another factor that affects the brain and can explain our immediate reactions to things," he says. And here ends the conventional concept of consciousness. Prof. Meijer postulated an alternative model according to which this phenomenon is not only found in our brains, as is now believed, but affects brain function via a receptive workspace situated around this organ. "We need to see consciousness as something much wider than only those collective cell functions that are expressed in the various known cell types in that organ," he says.

Informational source of consciousnessFor many years Prof. Meijer studied and specialized in the field of pharmacology, where he developed innovative drug carriers. He, in some stage, led a laboratory of 45 researchers and his team published about 600 articles from 1980 until now. Since his retirement in 2007, and especially in recent years, he has devoted his time to the field of a novel research that fascinated him - the study of consciousness. Although the field was quite new to him, his endless curiosity and extensive experience in academic research helped him to penetrate the matter. In fact, when he embarked on this research journey, he never imagined that within a few years the revolutionary scientific articles he would publish in the field of consciousness would be read by tens of thousands and together with many other current studies would contribute to a quiet revolution that is now taking place in the field.

Particularly, a researcher that interested Prof Meijer in the beginning of his research was Professor John Wheeler, a leading American physicist who was a pioneering scientist in quantum physics and like many of his colleagues also participated in the development of the atomic bomb (the Manhattan Project). Prof. Wheeler focused on the development of relativity theory and introduced important cosmological terms such as "black holes", "worm holes" and more. Beginning in the 1980s, Meijer began to delve into "information theory" that deals with measuring information and the ability to transfer it from one source to another. As he deepened the subject, he finally concluded that everything in our world consisted of three basic elements: matter, energy, and information. Think of a grain of sand. It is composed of matter - sand, but it also contains energy and information. "Information is what gives form to matter and energy, and also gives shape to cellular proteins, DNA, and more," explains Professor Meijer. "In addition, all three of these components can be mutually converted to each other, such as converting energy into information, and vice versa."

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Holographic information storage

Why is this so important? Before we understand this, we will dwell on another important idea that helped Professor Meijer reach his insights: the holographic principle. According to the holographic principle, any complex material contained in any volume in 3 spatial dimensions can be fully described on a 2-dimensional surface on its boundary. Think for a moment about the holographic postcards that show three-dimensional images. The images look three-dimensional, but all the data needed to display them reside on a flat, two-dimensional surface.

The holographic idea is not alien to the world of physics. Many people describe black holes as holograms, meaning that all the information contained in a black hole resides in its surrounding shell - an area called the "event horizon". One of the great proponents of the holographic idea was the renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, who had done a lot of research on black holes. In his last article, which was finally published after his death (Hawking and Hertog, 2018), he even expanded his approach of the holographic principle and described the whole universe as a single hologram. In other words, our universe has an envelope containing all the information about it.

The holographic idea is related to another principle that exists in the universe - "fractality". In nature, you can see the fractality in cauliflower heads, for example, made up of smaller heads, each of which resembles the shape of the large cauliflower head. Even if we examine snowflakes of various sizes, we will find such self-similarity in the sense that that each extension of the flake is similar to the whole snowflake. "The universe may also be organized like a fractal, which is a fairly typical characteristic of it," says Meijer. "The holographic idea is related to it, which means that information about a particular body may not only be found in its shell, but any small part of the represents the whole picture." Meijer: this all means a fundamental connectivity in the whole universe that is also reflected in our brain. Since this organ is involved in information processing, we may apply the holographic principle

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also on this human scale: it implies an event horizon type of information storage associated with the brain. Meijer: Because we have self-consciousness, reflecting on ourselves, an extra degree of freedom is required, expressed in a 4th spatial dimension (not time). This dimension is not observed in our 3-D world, but its shadows have been identified in recent brain scanning studies. Such multidimensional 4-D concepts are already well known in physics.

Brain power in actionWhen talking about consciousness, Prof. Meijer makes a point of distinguishing between two similar terms - Awareness and Consciousness. Human beings are usually aware of what is happening around us - that is called awareness. But at a deeper level, when we think about the information we gathered from our environment and how this expresses itself within us - our emotions, our thoughts and our decisions - consciousness is at work. "Consciousness is when you know for yourself that you have experiences," says Prof. Meijer. "When you feel that you are a person with this awareness, you have a kind of world view that was build up in you and that unique picture of the world belongs to you personally."What distinguishes Professor Meijer’s theory from the usual view on this subject is the understanding that when our brains gathers information from the environment - information that shapes our feelings, sensations and thoughts, it not only absorbs visual information from objects we see through our eyes, but also directly receives trillions of invisible photons from a variety of physical influences. "We are permanently embedded in dynamic force fields and subject to their physical effects - gravitation, dark energy and zero- point energy, etc. " Zero-point energy, for example, is an accepted concept in the academic community in that there is a constant quantum energy field around us. From this field information carrying photons are being emitted from all directions at any given moment. Prof. Meijer argues that our brain absorbs these photons through resonant vibrations with fractally structured water layers in brain liquor and to interactions with coherent oscillations of ion-channel proteins, microtubular proteins and, particularly, DNA. This oscillatory information will contribute to specific changes in gene expression and ion-gradients that in turn will modify the electro-active landscape leading to overall consciousness. There is abundant experimental proof for long-distance communication in life systems, that is based on fluxes of photons, phonons and mixed wave/ particles of them with electrons, called solitons. We have shown that their wave frequencies are discrete and

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clearly show semi-harmonic features, indicating an almost musical background field that seems to guide nature.

Quantum Biology

"We have a layer in our minds that collects all these different field effects, and I call it the 'events horizon' workspace of the brain. When we make decisions or experience something, these effects play a role in the final perception and interpretation of our mind”. Interviewer: You're actually saying that our thoughts cannot be fully constituted from the neuronal activity in the brain. Meijer: more blatantly so – in special cases such as near- death experiences they can certainly not come from the non- functional brain cortex. Since the EEG in the individuals is flat, the impressive amount of information experienced in this condition, for instance in a complete life panorama, should reside elsewhere.

"My idea, and I'm not the only one who claims it, is that beyond the “neuron doctrine” that everything in information processing in the brain depends on the functioning of the neurons with their neurotransmitter release across synapses, axons, etc. there must be additional mechanisms required. We hold that this dynamic process also depends on internal and external physical field activity. that has experimentally been shown in our brain and can modify our perception. This may sound revolutionary relative to the conventional view, but there is growing scientific evidence for it. The idea that quantum processes (and related wave/ particles like photons) play a crucial role within the brain derives from a whole new part of biology called quantum biology.

"In the past, people thought that quantum processes could not exist in the brain because quantum effects are known mainly in a micro setting with low temperatures and a non- humid environment. But it is known that the brain is warm and wet, so the conventional view was that such processes in brain tissue are simply impossible. Yet, in fact in recent years there has been a turning point and people are considering really that quantum transfer processes like this could occur in the brain, too. "Let's drop it to the ground: what is a quantum world really saying?

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When I speak with to you, I'm aware of the fact that I'm talking to you, but I'm not completely certain of the actualized meaning of every word I say. I do not weigh it seriously or even think about it before it is spoken: quantum theory may be used as a metaphor and for example introduce a crucial aspect of what is known as quantum uncertainty, that some scientists see as a basis of our free choice”.

How do you explain human communication using your model?"I suggest that the brain's 'events horizon' also plays a role in interaction between people, and can evoke almost intuitive responses in our brain. Brain scanning studies from recent years, mentioned in the last part of our article, indicate that when two people talk to each other, the EEG patterns exhibited by their brains are soon beginning to correlate with each other, almost as if they are one person. This provided an example that indicates that there is some type of connection between them that relies not only on visual and audio signals, but also on extremely rapid photon/phonon communication, generated by electromagnetic fields. This implies what is called, subliminal messaging, (messages that that one is not unaware of).

The current position in brain science

How are your studies accepted in the current scientific community? "My theories are certainly accepted by at least some renown scientists in the research field. Our article in 2017 about the “event horizon brain was read and/or downloaded now by about 20.000 people around the world. ResearchGate even reports 600-1200 international views/downloads per week of my total published work. So, there is quite some interest in our scientific ideas, but of course it will take time for standard paradigms to change. You have to remember that science tends to be implicitly conservative. As scientists we often claim that we are open to novel concepts, but the struggle for recognition and save financial conditions makes us wisely move to mainstream positions. We all should be quite critical to current science in this respect "

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An extended type of consciousness

Professor Meijer does not stop here and explains that not only human beings have consciousness. "Every creature in this world that aims to survive, gathers information from the environment, keeps it and employs it to continue living. That is, consciousness is not unique to humans, there is certainly consciousness in animals and to some extent in plants, and even single-celled creatures such as bacteria may have at least some proto-consciousness. Gathering of information from the environment and employ this as information to survive was crucial in biological evolution. If there is a sort of consciousness in other bodies of nature, such as plants and bacteria, the fractal principle we dealt with earlier, suggests that it may even exist in much larger elements than humans. "I argue that consciousness is manifest at any scale in the cosmos. That is, universal consciousness is always present as such in the whole nature that we observe, it is present in the greatest of black holes to the smallest sub-atomic scales we can imagine. When you picture this fantastic variety of forms and sizes, we humans are exactly in the middle with regard to relative size in our universe (see picture below). Perhaps that means that humans have a central place in the expression of cosmic consciousness and thereby a major responsibility for survival of our planet. "

What do you actually claim? That each of us is part of a larger consciousness?"Yes, consciousness is treated in a lot of current philosophies, various of these highlight the conviction that each one of us is indeed part of a large cosmic consciousness Trough all our ideas, decisions and experiences, every one of us, and even all living entities, participates in building up this type of consciousness. In this respect, I think we should also forget the idea that we are so different from each other, that there is a real separation between one individual to another. Interviewer: through this collective consciousness we affect any other person that we encounter? "The answer is likely yes, although we often fail to realize it…."But Professor Meijer takes all of this further step forward. If there are structures that repeat themselves in all the different sizes of the universe, according to the fractal principle, what is their functional shape? And how does this relate to consciousness? When Professor Meijer plunged into academic literature with already published studies, he soon identified possible structures for the fractal model of the universe – there was one form that fascinated him particularly: the geometry of the torus. The torus is a little like an American donut, but even still a lot fatter than that… It looks almost like a ball with a narrow canal inside and in physics it is used as a model for information

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integration. In cosmological terms this torus channel may be looked upon as a “wormhole” that is supposed to connect different part of spacetime as a sort of short-cuts in the cosmos.

The “event horizon brain” article in NeuroQuantologyAs Professor Meijer explained in one of his articles (Meijer and Geesink, 2017, see below), the form of the torus has in physics already been attributed to modeling of a variety of phenomena in the universe, such as the structure of the electron and at the other extreme that of the black holes, and even for the universe as a whole. This dynamic rotational form allows information to circulate within any structure as a spiral that returns to itself. Recent studies indicate that a matrix of connecting wormholes may actually form space-time and he maintains that at all fractal scales the torus could be instrumental in that.

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Prof. Meijer explains that the torus may be functioning as an information processor (operator), and that in this toroidal structure one can recognize again a surrounding "horizon of events" that we have mentioned above.

By gathering fluxes of energy and information continuously at all fractal levels, like our own living planet Earth likely does, it is reasonable to assume that not only in our world but also distant planets and stars are equipped with such a memory workspace. "Since consciousness is actually a flow of information that repeats itself by creating a spiral of information flux that returns to itself, a crucial aspect is created here: that of self-reference, that is essential for any life system. Can our personal information survive?

This is where the "information theory", mentioned above, comes into play. Assuming with Wheeler that everything in the universe is composed of matter, energy, and information, according to the “Energy Conservation Law”, energy cannot be destroyed. It follows that also the information that constitutes us, may not disappear altogether. In this context, Prof. Meijer brings me back to the supposed consciousness workspace, that preserves an up-to-date picture of our total personal state of art. "If quantum information, like energy, cannot be destroyed, it is theoretical possible that when our brain dies, when we pass away, the information stored around our brain survives in some other dimension, an aspect that may be revealed in NDE conditions. But, states Prof. Meijer, I do not want to give a religious interpretation to this idea ...

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Anyhow, he says, we should entertain a multi-disciplinary approach when we explore these aspects of consciousness. We need to have an integral research program in which we do not only look at the information processing related to our own whole organism, but also study its meaning related to our precious planet and that of the entire universe. "

Reference:

Meijer D. K.F. and Geesink J.H. Consciousness in the Universe is Scale Invariant and Implies an Event Horizon of the Human Brain. NeuroQuantology , 15 , 41-79, 2017. Link to its PDF: https://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/1079/852

Other references:

Meijer D. K. F. (2012). The Information Universe. On the Missing Link in Concepts on the Architecture of Reality. Syntropy Journal, 1, pp 1-64. http://www.sintropia.it/english/2012-eng-1-1.pdf

Meijer D. K. F. (2013a). Information: What Do You Mean ? Syntropy Journal, 2013 (3), pp 1-49. http://www.lifeenergyscience.it/english/2013-eng-3-01.pdf

Meijer D. K. F. (2013b). Immortality: Myth or Becoming Reality ? On the Conservation of Information. Syntropy Journal, 2013 (3), pp 166-203. http://www.lifeenergyscience.it/english/2013-eng-3-04.pdf

Meijer D. K. F. and J. Korf (2013). Quantum Modeling of the Mental State: the Concept of a Cyclic Mental Workspace. Syntropy Journal, (1), pp 1-41. http://www.lifeenergyscience.it/english/2013-eng-1-1.pdf

Meijer D. K. F. (2014). The Extended Brain: Cyclic Information Flow, in a Quantum Physical Realm. NeuroQuantology, vol. 12, pp 180-200. http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/754/651

Meijer D. K. F. and Raggett S. (2014). Quantum Physics in Consciousness Studies. The Quantum Mind Extended. (review, 180 pages). http://quantum-mind.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Quantum-Ph-rev-def-2.pdf

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Meijer D. K. F. (2015). The Universe as a Cyclic Organized Information System. An Essay on the Worldview of John Wheeler. NeuroQuantology, 1, pp 1-40, http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/798/693

Geesink J. H. and Meijer D.K.F. (2016a). Quantum Wave Information of Life Revealed: An Algorithm for Electromagnetic Frequencies that Create Stability of Biological Order, with Implications for Brain Function and Consciousness. NeuroQuantology, vol. 14, pp 106-125, file:///C:/Users/Dick/Documents/911-2447-1-PB.pdf

Meijer D.K.F and Geesink J.H. (2016). Phonon Guided Biology. Architecture of Life and Conscious Perception are mediated by Toroidal Coupling of Phonon, Photon and Electron Information Fluxes at Discrete Eigenfrequencies. NeuroQuantology, vol.14, issue 4, pp 718-755 http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/985

Geesink J. H. and Meijer D.K.F. (2016b). Bio-Soliton Model that Predicts Non-thermal Electromagnetic Frequency Bands, that Either Stabilize Living cells. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.04855 and: ELECTROMAGNETIC BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE, 2017, vol. 36, no.4, 357-378 https://doi.org/10.1080/15368378.2017.1389752

Geesink J.H. and Meijer D. K.F. (2017 a). Electromagnetic Frequency Patterns that are Crucial for Health and Disease Reveal a Generalized Biophysical Principle: the GM scale. Quantum Biosystems, 8, 1-16 https://www.scribd.com/document/376962852/QBS-8-1-1-16

Meijer D. K. F. and Geesink J. H. (2017 c). Consciousness in the Universe is Scale Invariant and Implies the Event Horizon of the Human Brain. NeuroQuantology, 15, 41-79 https://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/1079/852

Geesink J.H. and Meijer D. K. F. (2018 a). Mathematical Structure of the GM Life Algorithm that May Reflect Bohm’s Implicate Order. J. Modern Physics, 9, 851-897https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JMP_2018041015321535.pdf

Melkikh, A. V. and Meijer D.K. F. (2018 ). On a generalized Levinthal’s paradox: the role of long- and short range interactions on complex bio-molecular reactions, including protein and DNA folding. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 132, 57-79 https://science.urfu.ru/en/publications/on-a-generalized-levinthals-paradox-the-role-of-long-and-short-ra

Meijer D. K. F. and Geesink J. H. (2018a). Favorable and Unfavorable EMF Frequency Patterns in Cancer: Perspectives for Improved Therapy and Prevention. J. Cancer Therapy, 9, 188-230 https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=82944

Geesink J. H. and Meijer D. K. F. (2018b). A harmonic-like electromagnetic frequency pattern organizes non-local states and quantum entanglement in both EPR studies and life systems. J. Modern Physics 9, 898-924 https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JMP_2018041015494906.pdf

Geesink J. H. and Meijer D. K. F. (2018c). Semi-Harmonic Scaling enables Calculation of Masses of Elementary Particles of the Standard Model. J. Modern Physics, , 9, 925-947 https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JMP_2018041015591721.pdf

Meijer D. K. F. and Geesink J. H. (2018b). Guided folding of life’s proteins in integrate cells with holographic memory and GM-biophysical steering. Open Journal of Biophysics, 8, 17-154 https://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJBIPHY_2018071615175972.pdf

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Geesink H. J. and Meijer D. K. F. (2018c). Evidence For a Guiding Principle in Quantum Physics. Quantum Biosystems, 9, 1-7 http://www.quantumbiosystems.org/admin/files/QBS%209%20(1)%201-17%20(2018).pdf

Meijer D. K. F. (2019). Universal Consciousness. Collective Evidence on the Basis of Current Physics and Philosophy of Mind. Part 1. ResearchGate, https://www.academia.edu/37711629/Universal_Consciousness_Collective_Evidence_on_the_Basis_of_Current_Physics_and_Philosophy_of_Mind._Part_1

Meijer, D. K. F. (2018) Processes of Science and Art Modeled as a Holo-flux of Information Using Toroidal Geometry. Open Journal of Philosophy, 8, 365-400. doi: 10.4236/ojpp.2018.84026. https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=86591

Meijer, D. K. F. and Geesink J.H. (2018 c). Is the Fabric of Reality Guided by a Semi-Harmonic, Toroidal Background Field? International Journal of Structural and Computational Biology. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/43a5/dbabe7ce98c06d45451e2329a19327c42dbc.pdf

Geesink, J H and Meijer, D K F (2019a). A novel biophysical quantum algorithm, predicts superconductive properties in animate and inanimate systems, Quantum Biosystems, 10, 1-32 https://www.quantumbionet.org/quantumbiosystems/

Geesink, J H and Meijer, D K F (2019 b). Water: the cradle of life in action, water in cells is guided by coherent quantum frequencies as revealed in pure water, Submitted.

Sonderkamp, T, Geesink J.H, Meijer D K. F. (2019). Statistical analysis and prospective application of the GM-scale, a semi-harmonic EMF scale proposed to discriminate between “coherent” and “decoherent” EM frequencies on life conditions. Quantum Biosystems, 10 (2), 33-51 ttps://www.quantumbionet.org/quantumbiosystems/

Meijer D.K.F, Geesink J. H, (2019). Life and Consciousness are Guided by a Semi-Harmonic EM Background Field. NeuroQuantology ,Vol. 17, Issue 4, 37-44 https://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/2074

Scientific profile and all publications of Dirk K.F. Meijer, at 1-5-2019, on ResearchGate: See: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dirk_Meijer4

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