by Fred Alan Wolf

Ever wonder how lucky or unlucky you are? Or, do you think that whatever success or failure you've had, has nothing to do with luck at all? Well if the quantum world of atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles has anything to do with it, not a single moment has passed by without lady luck looking over your shoulder as you attempted to draw to that inside straight called the game of life. Yet there is way to beat lady luck at her game. All you need to do is look at the world carefully enough.

Quantum physics is the theory of the behavior of matter and energy, particularly at the level of atoms and subatomic particles. It is nearly impossible to imagine the strangeness of the behavior of matter at this level. An electron in an atom, for example, performs a trick much like the crew aboard the Enterprise in the well-known Star Trek series, when it "beams" from one energy level to another. It simply jumps from one place to another without going in between. But if we aren't watching it jump, we have no control as to when it will happen.

But suppose we do watch? Then the bizarre world of quantum physics enters our modern lives. Based on the mathematical laws of probability, quantum physics doesn't ordinarily allow us to make predictions that we can trust. Hence one might believe that nothing could be determined and that success and failure were mere whims of chance. However, it turns out that if current experiments in quantum physics are relevant to our everyday experiences and we can learn to observe our lives vigilantly enough, we can actually alter the crapshoot of life. But, there is a catch to all this; you need to begin to see things quantum mechanically.

The quantum physical worldview is very different from the world we ordinarily see. However the difference is slight in everyday life. According to quantum physics, there is no reality until that reality is perceived. We call this "the observer effect." Because we usually don't pay attention to ourselves in the perception process, our immediate experience will usually not appear to show how our actions of perception changed anything. However, if we construct a careful history of our perceptions they often show us that our way of perceiving indeed changed the course of our personal history.

That may make sense to you when looking at something new and deciding what it means. But you may wonder, "I'm not actually changing reality, am I? I'm just changing my interpretation of reality." The answer is often difficult to appreciate, but as surprising as it may seem, you are changing reality simply by observing it. In the world described successfully by quantum mechanics, ultimately and fundamentally observers affect the universe whenever they observe it or anything in it. If we refine our ability to see by looking at atomic and subatomic processes the differences would be quite magnified and astonishing to our normal way of seeing.

How do you change your way of seeing? I wish to consider your will here, specifically how it manifests in the physical world. Consider: how is it that what you wish to accomplish sometimes occurs without seeming effort, while at other times, even with great expenditure of energy, you fail in your endeavors? According to the quantum physics way of seeing, observation and awareness tie your mind to the physical world through your desire and that desire manifests as a physical force.

Desire first appears in the mind as a mental formation - the object of desire. When this form manifests, desire holds or preserves it in mind. The power to hold the image, determined by the time-span the image is held, is called intent. Next the object that appeals to your senses is sought for in the physical world if it is not present, and mind-object and the physical object are brought together and superimposed in the mind-space in much the same way you fuse two two-dimensional images together, making one three-dimensional image when you look at an object using your two eyes.

Desire, through your vigilance of observation, actually modifies and alters the course of the physical world, particularly your course through it, causing things to occur that would not normally occur if they were not desired. All of this makes up what shamans call Intent.

Intent operates in the physical world by altering the observed state of that world. Quantum physicists, Yakir Aharonov and M. Vardi discovered that intent affects the physical world. They showed that the old proverb "a watched pot never boils" might have a range of validity previously unsuspected when they discovered the paradoxical situation that arises when a quantum system is watched carefully. If it is monitored vigilantly, it will do practically anything. Imagine a tiny quantum-sized pot of water being heated on a really tiny stove. We all know pots of water boil, given a few minutes or so. You would certainly think the watched quantum pot would also boil. It turns out, because of vigilant observations, the boiling never occurs; the watched quantum pot never boils. All vigilantly watched "quantum pots" never boil, even if they are heated forever.

All of this might be considered just quantum physical speculation. However, in 1989, physicist Wayne Itano and his colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado experimentally observed the equivalent of the "quantum watched pot" and, indeed, it never boiled!1 Their experiment involved watching some five thousand beryllium atoms confined in a magnetic field and then exposed to radio waves of energy. The atoms were the equals of quantum pots of water and the radio waves the equivalent of the heat applied to the pot. Under such circumstances the atoms will "evolve" into excited atomic energy states as they absorb the radio energy. Nearly all five thousand will reach their excited state-goals in a little over two hundred fifty milliseconds, that is, a quarter of a second.

To check this, the physicists would observe the atoms after a quarter of a second by shining a short pulse of laser light into their midst. Hot (excited) atoms do not absorb and immediately reemit the laser energy. Atoms that remained cool (in the unexcited state) do. So, by observing the scattered laser light after it passed through the trapped atoms, the physicists were able to determine just how many atoms were hot.

Virtually none were after two hundred fifty milliseconds. We could refer to this as the unwatched pot that naturally evolved to the boiling state in a quarter of a second. But then the scientists became slightly vigilant. They decided to look at the atoms halfway along, after 125 milliseconds (an eighth of second) had passed. So an eighth of second after starting the experiment the laser pulse was turned on and then, at the two hundred fifty millisecond mark the scientist looked again and found that only one-half of the atoms were hot. They repeated the experiment by looking in at 62.5 milliseconds, 125 milliseconds, 187.5 milliseconds, and two hundred fifty milliseconds; in other words, they divided the one-quarter second interval into four equal parts. They were surprised to find that their enhanced vigilance resulted in only one-third of the atoms boiled by the end of the complete period of two hundred fifty milliseconds.

Next they redoubled their vigilance by looking in 16 times, 32 times and finally 64 times during the two hundred fifty milliseconds interval. In the final experiment where they watched their tiny atomic "pots" in 64 equally spaced tiny time intervals, virtually none of the atoms were ever found in an excited state, even though two hundred fifty milliseconds had passed. They all remained frozen in their ground or original states just as they were when the experiment began. In each experiment, mind you, the "heat" was on - the radio waves were continuously sent into the magnetically trapped beryllium atoms.

This implies there is a deep connection between the observer and the observed. So deep, in fact, that we really cannot separate them. All we can do is alter the way we experience reality. This is where intent comes in.

If a system were unobserved, it would certainly undergo the natural physical transition. The pot would boil. The observer effect causes the anomaly to occur. When the system is first observed, it is seen to be in its initial state. When it is observed just a smidgen of time later, well before the time in which it should change, the system is observed with more than 99.99 percent chance to be in its initial state. Like resetting a stop-clock, this flips the odds from 99.99 percent to 100 percent. In other words, the system is found to be exactly where it was initially. Now repeat this measurement again and again, each time just a tiny bit of time later, and with a very high probability, the same observation occurs: The system is found in its initial state.

As time marches on, and eventually we pass all reasonable time limits for the transition to occur; it still doesn't happen. The system "freezes" in its initial state. The only requirement to freeze the motion is that the observer must have the intent to see the object in its initial state when he looks. This intent is determined by the frequency of his observations. He must look and find the object in the same state repeatedly in very short time intervals. Eventually a longer period of time passes.

We might question the physicists as to their mental intent on doing the experiment. We don't have to. By observing the system as they did, their intent was already established, already "out there," regardless of what they were actually thinking at that time. In other words, their intent was already a physical manifestation determined by the frequency of their observations. The old adage with a twist: you will see it when you believe it.

Suppose a physicist doesn't watch vigilantly or suppose that she or he does but with the intent of seeing it evolve naturally. Then what? Take the quantum pot. If the physicist looks intermittently, expecting it to boil eventually, the pot will follow its natural unobserved course and will boil as proved. These observations, because they are infrequent, have little effect on the natural result. Or if the physicist wishes, she or he may observe the object vigilantly along its natural evolution, and will observe the same result. In other words, a watched pot boils if you intend it to.

Finally, there is another bizarre element to this. Suppose the system could be observed to evolve along a bizarre path, a highly improbable mission, so to speak. If the intent to observe that occurrence is vigilant enough, the object will actually follow the bizarre path of evolution. You can make things happen simply by intending them to happen if you observe with great vigilance - intense observation occurring over very short time intervals - more or less continuously but along a new, unexpected track.

I need to caution the reader here. The bizarre path of evolution seems strange because it violates the second law of thermodynamics. It seems to move energy from a cold to a hot body without performing any work. Although such a path of evolution does not violate the law of conservation of energy and, therefore, is possible, it certainly is not very probable. However, this is no problem in quantum physics: Even the most improbable occurs once in a while. The observer here is vigilantly watching for that rare occurrence and ignoring the usual by not even looking for the normal path of evolution. Hence a watched pot boils on a cake of ice, if you intend it to.

I need to point out that intent and intentions are not the same. Intent refers to a vigorous action of vigilant observations along a specific path of evolution. It matters little what you hope for or even what you passively expect will happen. You need to actively pursue your vision to manifest intent in the physical world, not passively dream about it and hope it will come true. The direction of evolution is determined as you go and depends on where you focus your observation. Thus, intent requires a quantum physical basis. Intention, on the other hand, is a classical mechanical concept. One sets in motion a certain expectation and then hopes for the best. The old adage "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray" tells the whole story.

Our brains may be composed of like quantum systems, and consequently our paths through history may be governed by the "pot-watched-with-intent" theory. Thus, this may be how will and intent actually govern the movement of living sentient systems. Luck has nothing to do with it.

Dr. Fred Alan Wolf aka Dr. Quantum earned a Ph. D. in theoretical physics from UCLA. He continues to write, lecture throughout the world, and conduct research on the relationship of quantum physics to consciousness. An award winning author, Fred Alan Wolf has written many books, including The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist's Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter, and Self. [1]