Renowned physicist Dr. Blood discusses his new book,
Science, Sence & Soul and the mystical nature of physical existence

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Guy Spiro: Talk about the path that you’ve taken. How did you go from being a scientist into metaphysics?

Casey Blood: I’d been interested in both science and religion since I was eight years old. When I got to age fifteen or thereabouts, I discovered reason and decided that reason and science were superior to religion, but I never lost my interest in religion and continued to read. When I got to be forty, someone told me that there’s a gland that matures at forty and it forces you to start looking then. So when I got to be forty, I started looking more seriously, mainly within the Sufis, but also into American Indian [traditions] and some Tibetan Buddhism.

GS: A gland that matures at forty?

CB: Metaphorically or whatever, it happens to a lot of people at that age.

GS: It’s interesting you say that, because traditionally you had to be forty before you could take up Kabbalah.

CB: When I started rediscovering religion, I felt that there couldn’t be two truths, that they had to mesh somehow, and the question was, was physics mature enough to mesh with what the mystics seemed to know?

If the physical world is a closed system, then we’re going to have a lot of trouble with metaphysics, so the idea is to use physics itself to show that it’s not a closed system. To really understand our existence, you have to have something beyond the physical, mathematical world and that’s the connection.

GS: How do we find that?

CB: What I did was study the basics of quantum mechanics, which is the basis of physics that all physicists use to describe the physical world. It was invented or discovered by a series of experiments and people, and in the end the mathematics doesn’t bear much relationship to our physical world. Quantum mechanics did not come with a manual on how to interpret it. What I’ve done in the forty years of my professional physics career has been to try to figure out the most reasonable way to interpret quantum mechanics, and to me, that [interpretation] says that quantum mechanics is not a closed system. You need something besides the physical universe.

GS: Briefly run through your approach to quantum mechanics.

CB: The place where I started was to figure out what evidence there was that particles actually existed, that there were actually little BBs, or however you want to think of them, for electrons or protons or photons or whatever, and the more I looked at the evidence, the more I found that there was no evidence — that none of the arguments in favor of objectively existing electrons and protons showed that they existed. But the quantum mechanics have all of the properties of particle life, the wave-particle dichotomy, and it turns out that the waves, whether particles exist or not, have all the properties of particles; they have mass and charge and energy and momentum and spin and so forth, irrespective of whether particles exist or not.

GS: I think I’ve heard it stated, “Is it a particle or a wave? The answer is yes.”

[Laughter]

CB: No, the answer is it’s only a wave with particle-like properties. There are no particles, there is absolutely not a shred of evidence that there are particles.

GS: Well, when they use the accelerators and they break down atoms, don’t they find leptons and gluons and all those little guys?

CB: They do, but everything they find is interpreted through the math, and the math always uses just quantum mechanics — it never uses the idea of a particle except as an afterthought when you describe it in words. So there’s no proof in any of those [experiments] that particles exist.

GS: So the particle that can be described is not the particle? So what does that tell us?

CB: If there are no particles, then quantum mechanics basically implies that there is no objective world. The example I usually use is Schrodinger’s Cat. You put this cat in a box and you put the box up to a counter of radioactive decays, and if the counter says 100 or less the cat lives, and if the counter says more than 100 a vial of cyanide is broken and the cat dies. Our usual logic says that the cat, at the end of this, is either alive or dead. But quantum mechanics says that the cat is both alive and dead, and it says not only that, but if you are looking at the experiment, there are two versions of you. One sees the cat alive and one sees the cat dead. So, in contrast to how we see the world, in the math of quantum of mechanics, there is no objective world.

GS: Is that the same as saying the physical plane is Maya?

CB: It’s very similar, yes. It’s Maya in the sense that it doesn’t exist as we imagine it to exist, but it’s not pure imagination.

GS: I’ve often said that the physical plane may be Maya, but when you stub your toe it hurts.

CB: (laughs) It is and it is not illusion. There is something actual there, but the actual is not as we think of it.

GS: How would you describe it?

CB: That gets into the next part of what I proposed and that is, because there is no objective reality, but we see an objective reality, there must be something outside the physical universe that sees just one of these versions of reality. Once you have something outside the physical universe, that validates the mystical approach, or metaphysical approach, or whatever you have. It seems to be not a necessity, but pretty close to a necessity for understanding quantum mechanics. There’s no proof whatsoever in physics that physics is a closed system.

GS: Coming from an almost strictly metaphysical background, it’s apparent that everything is made up of consciousness.

CB: Right, consciousness, and when God set up the universe He/She added a structure to things, and here, it’s this mathematical physical-like structure, and that’s what we’re conscious of. When we die, we’re conscious of something else.

GS: I’ve often said that the physical plane is more or less a theme park.

CB: That’s probably not a bad description.

GS: I’m on the Guy Ride, trying to upgrade my ticket.

CB: Right, well for that you need to do mystical practices.

GS: Give us a synopsis of your book, Science, Sense & Soul.

CB: The first five chapters of the book lay out what’s going on in the book, and I actually start with a list of deep questions that I hope the book answers: What happens to you after you die, what happened to you before you were born, what is the nature of biological life, description of a non-physical world, non-physical existence …

GS: That you take primarily from the Sufi version?

CB: Yes, although I think it matches very well with Hinduism and Buddhism. Then I start in on the physics and try to convince the reader that there is no objective physical universe, and that means that each of us must have a nonphysical part, which in traditional language is called the Soul, and that soul is free to choose our thoughts and actions. Quantum physics, quantum mechanics is incredibly in sync with free will. It lays out possibilities and then something within us chooses one of those possibilities. So we’re free to choose what we think, free to choose what we do in this world. Then, after going through the physics and showing that there’s no objective existence there, and saying that that implies the soul, the next part is a couple of chapters on how the brain works. I just felt like, when I wrote the book, that if I was going to talk about mystical practices, I needed to lay some ground work on how the brain works, because that tells us what’s happening when we do the mystical practices, at least on a certain level.

GS: Where are the divisions between brain and mind?

CB: When I started writing the book, I had the intention of being able to delineate that line very sharply and it just didn’t happen. I think it’s just a matter of experience and doing a lot of meditating and you slowly begin to see what is coming from your brain, what is good intuition, what is coming from other places and so forth.

GS: The whole brain chemistry debate comes up … is a person depressed because his brain chemistry is wrong or does the brain chemistry go wrong because he’s depressed?

CB: And the answer to that one is most certainly, yes!

(laughter)

CB: So then I go through how the brain works. In particular how, if you’re aware of what your thoughts are doing, how all of us have programmed into our brain, and non-physical minds also, certain preferences, so that as we work our way through the day, there are very few times that we see things fresh and say, hey, maybe I’ll think about that or maybe I’ll do this. There’s always that mechanism there that saying, well, that looks like the best thing to think about now, this might give me a rush. Even if it’s negative, it gives a lot of energy. So you have these rules built into your brain-mind, and that is really one of the main things that meditation works on.

GS: I think of the veil, the boundary between mind and self. Most people really haven’t made that division. People confuse mind with who they really are. The human mind is really most of the time almost an out of control computer. Whereas with a meditative practice, you can ascertain a real self which is independent of mind. Maybe better put as the real self resides above the level of mind.

CB: I think the quality of the mind changes as we go from this plane to the next plane to the Djinn Plane to the Angelic Plane. I think the basic awareness and intelligence which are part of the mind go with us. I divide it more into pure intelligence and pure emotion. They both go all the way up to the top. Intelligence is the means, and emotion is what guides us where we want to go. And sometimes misguides us, if we have things not in proper order. I’m very much against the Buddhist idea that you get rid of all emotions. Nothing happens without emotions. Although it’s nice to get rid of the lower emotions.

GS: I’ve rebelled against the Buddhist concept of denial of self. This idea of the ultimate being merging into the void with a complete dissolution of self is a spiritual death wish.

CB: Right, yes, I don’t think it’s that way at all.

GS: Well it can be, if it’s the model you want to follow, but why would you want to do that?

CB: Yes, indeed, take all the juice out of it.

GS: It seems to me that when one can achieve a silence of the mind in a meditative state, it’s really not that hard to have a moment of silence. When the mind is silent, that is the beginning of self, that’s who we really are. That’s what I was trying to say earlier. Then the mind becomes the tool it was meant to be, rather than a cruel master. Does that figure into what you’ve done?

CB: Very much. Part of the reason that I did the brain [chapters] is to talk about the rules that the brain is always imposing on what we think, and when the mind is silent, these rules are no longer operating. The longer you can stay silent, sort of averaged over days and weeks or whatever, the more these rules drop away and we see things as they are. And not just the physical world, we have a better intuition and so forth, see more what people are like, etc.

GS: Closer to what you might be able to call an objective reality.

CB: That’s true. So I go on from the brain section of the book to a description of the non-physical planes. The angelic plane is very diffuse, sometime called the land of ice and snow, very pure but not much happens there. Angels and almost all beings on the angelic plane are much less highly developed beings than we are. Some of the angels, but not all, evolve onto the next plane down, to the Djinn plane. That’s got much more structure and that’s the place where geniuses go to get their ideas. It’s the place that everything we think basically [originates], and everything that exists here has a precursor on that plane.

GS: Nobody owns any ideas, we’re just able to tap into them.

CB: Although I use one example, both Newton and Leibnitz discovered calculus at about the same time, and the example is that, suppose Newton invented calculus before Leibnitz? What he did was to find these ideas in the Djinn plane, sort of an algebraic idea, geometric idea, and this idea of limits, and he tied them together in a bundle and it was a very fruitful bundle. Once Newton tied these three ideas together, then it exists in the Djinn plane, that it doesn’t always exist there, it’s just not waiting to be discovered, we have some say in what’s there. Once he ties the bundle together, it’s much easier for somebody else to find those ideas. They basically go to the Djinn plane and say, hey, this is really great, even if Newton never told anyone.

GS: You can get into a chicken and egg thing with that, but it doesn’t matter.

CB: Well, I think it’s an important idea because not everything is already done in that plane anymore than everything is already done here. We can be creative there as well as here. The other thing that happens is the ideas there severely circumscribe the ideas that we can have here. For example, there’s idea of war still on the Djinn plane and it directs the thinking of many people on earth. And there’s an idea of materialism there, and in the same way, it almost forces people to think in a certain way. The mystics are pretty much free of these kinds of influences, most people are not.

So some beings develop from the angelic to the Djinn plane and stay there for awhile. Most of the beings that evolve to the Djinn plane stay there, but some are more driven and more fortunate, and they’re born onto the physical plane. We come to this plane with a history. Any parent knows, kids come in with a personality. It’s not just chemical or given to them by their parents. Before we’re born, we can learn certain things about life here from people who have died and gone to the Djinn plane, not usually specifics, but, for example, you might get from Beethoven a certain orientation towards music, so what you come in with depends to some extent on who you talk to on the Djinn plane.

Then we go back to the Djinn plane … One of the points of the book is that when you go back to the Djinn plane, you’ve learned a lot of bad mind habits and they don’t just go away when you die, so you really need to do practices to get rid of certain ways of thinking. As hard as it seems here, it’s much easier to work things out here than to work things out there. One way to say this is that we’re all trying to be suitable companions of God, and most people just don’t make it there.

GS: Is that where the book ends?

CB: No, I spend a lot of time at the end explaining why you do mystical practices, and it’s partly to get rid of those mindsets and partly to begin to perceive the nonphysical planes — your intuition improves, your creativity improves, and you begin to develop certain qualities. In the Koran there are 99 names of God that are certain basic personality qualities. In a way, they are not names of God, but names of qualities that would be good if we could develop here. I talk a little bit on how to work on your personality. If I were to write another book, it would be the spiritual art of personality, trying to say what personality implies or how you should develop your personality to somehow raise it above psychology, and give a reason for why we should do this and what we should do.

I give a goal of existence in the book. The goal comes in two parts. One is creativity. One of the sayings of the Sufi is that God said, I am a hidden treasure that desires to be known. There is a lot of potential there, and so existence is partly to develop that potential. The other part of the goal of existence is friendship intimacy. Most people would call it love, but it seemed the word was not appropriate, so I call it friendship intimacy. That is what the world is evolving towards. It certainly is not a random evolution. It’s evolving towards beings being more friendly intimate with others all the way up to the archangels and God Himself/Herself.

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Casey Blood received his Ph.D. in physics from Case Western Reserve. He served as a research assistant at Brookhaven National Laboratory and then took up his longtime position as Associate Professor of Physics at Rutgers University, from which he retired in 2000; retaining the title of Professor Emeritus of Physics. Dr. Blood has had a lifelong interest in religion, has participated in Native American rituals for many years, and has studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism.

Dr. Blood will be appearing at Unity Church on the North Shore, 3434 Central Street, Evanston, IL on Sunday, January 25th. He will present the Service at 10:30am and a workshop at 12:00pm. For more information call 847/864-8977.

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