Quantum Psychology
Quantum Psychology
Quantum psychology and Ebenezer Scrooge reveal the secret of happiness.
One hundred fifty years ago, Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, which, in addition to being an entertaining ghost story, reveals deeper psychological truths. When the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, goes to bed Christmas Eve, he is an unhappy, solitary, miserly old man. He wakes up Christmas morning – transformed. Instead of “bah, humbug,” he laughs joyously as he buys gifts, wishes people a “Merry Christmas,” and plans how he will help Tiny Tim, the handicapped son of his clerk.
Scrooge did not transform his life by talking about his problems or working 
on his “issues.” His transformation occurred while he slept and dreamed of four ghostly visitors. These ghosts are metaphors for what happens in real life.
The psychological insights expressed in A Christmas Carol correspond to the insights into personal growth provided by quantum psychology, which is a combination of Eastern philosophy and Western science. Perhaps the most revolutionary insight is that talking about problems does not bring about transformation but hinders it. Dreams are produced solely by the unconscious mind and just as we dream in pictures, fundamental change emerges from communicating with the unconscious mind in the language it prefers – pictures. When we do, the brain responds immediately.
Good/evil, Quantum Psychology, Survival Instincts
Gang Rape: Look in the Mirror for Answers
The rapists acted like animals – Homo sapiens variety.
We were all shocked when we learned of the brutal gang rape of a 15-year- old girl on school property, while other teens watched and took pictures; no one called the police. What can we make of all this? The only way to make sense of heinous acts such as this one is to – look in the mirror. When you do, looking back at you will be your own image. Look deeper and you will see the human nature that we all share.
At the deepest, most fundamental level of our human nature is something we share with all life forms on this planet – survival instincts. These instincts tell 
us how to find food, reproduce (sex), and compete to the death for survival of the fittest. We must credit our survival instincts with allowing our species to defeat all competition and dominant the planet. The reason these instincts are so effective is because they are not moral or immoral. They are amoral and underlie our potential to do evil. Psychologically, they manifest as wanting to control, which is the driving force underlying rape.
The rapists acted like animals – Homo sapiens variety.
We find it easy to point the finger at a few individuals and wonder how people can commit such horrendous acts, such as gang rape. We don’t like to acknowledge that the actions of both rapists and spectators were not unusual. Nor can they be attributed to mental illness.
You might recall a time when, for years, rape, torture, and murder were the order of the day, and the perpetrators were – ordinary people. And who were the watchers who saw people being beaten in the streets, saw their 
neighbors being dragged away from their home, and moved into the now empty houses? Who were the French/Italian/ Hungarian policemen who rounded up the victims, and the Polish farmers who saw the skeletal victims peering through the barbed wire of concentration camps. Throughout Nazi occupied Europe, “normal” people, bakers, housewives, judges, and bankers participated, watched – and did nothing.
In America, the government watched and did nothing. In Italy, the Vatican watched and did nothing – except help Nazi war criminals escape to South America and pray for the Jews – to convert to Catholicism. Compared to the rape, torture and slaughter of millions, what’s’ one more rape? It’s not as though women and children are not raped every day America. As for the pictures the teenage spectators took of the rape, the Nazis took tens of thousands. Why should this rape matter? Poet John Donne:
Each man’s death diminishes me,
for I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
Quantum Psychology
Forget Your Troubles Get Happy
During our recession, like the depression of the thirties, Hollywood is thriving. At that time, when nearly 25% of the workforce was jobless and wages fell almost 43%, escapist films were the most popular: The Wizard of Oz (1939), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Gone with the Wind (1939). So also, today, we like escapist films. So far, the top three films this year are: a science fiction film, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, another Harry Potter and UP, an animated film. As the lyrics of a song, popular in the thirties explains: “Forget your troubles, common get happy, chase all your blues away,” at least for a while.
Although we are presently not as bad off as the thirties, our problems are more complex. America’s failing schools, imploding financial system, growing poverty, environmental destruction and the takeover of government b
y big corporations requires fundamental change. Gearing up to fight the Second World War ended the Great Depression. The two wars we are fighting today are driving us deeper in debt.
The fundamental problem is that we are living at a time when our technology has created an environment on this planet that has never before existed; our former solutions to problems no longer work – they are what created our present dilemma. This is a period of transition between the end of the Industrial Age and the beginning of the new age of… who knows? The fundamental question for our times is: can we get smart enough, fast enough, to progress to another Age of Enlightenment – or will we regress to another Dark Age? › Continue reading
Health, Quantum Psychology
Natural Childbirth/Unnatural Death
Heads/Tails, Life/Death, Two Aspects of the Same thing.
By Jean Boyd
I was supervising some student nurses, caring for Joseph, an old man in his eighties, when the doctors stopped by on their rounds. We had to keep the head of Joseph’s bed upright so he could breathe and stick a tube down his throat to suction out copious amounts of brown liquid from his lungs so he wouldn’t drown in his own secretions. Joseph’s eyes were full of dread, his 
face tight with fear. The doctors looked at his urine bag, which was hanging from his bed frame; his urine was also brown. “We better get a urology consult,” one of them murmured as they left.
This experience was the last straw for me. In my career as a medical-surgical nurse I have cared for many patients like Joseph, who suffer while their dying is prolonged by medical procedures and good nursing care. My objection was ethical: no one had asked Joseph, or his family, what they wanted. “I’m no different from the Nazis who excused their behavior by saying, ‘I was just following orders,’ ”I thought. In my case, I was following doctor’s orders. Shortly thereafter, I left medical-surgical nursing for good and entered the mental health field where dying patients were rare. That day, before I left Joseph’s bedside, I did something we nurses sometimes do in such circumstances. I held his hand and silently, in my mind, I gave him permission to die: “Joseph, it’s all right to let go now.” He died the next day.
Quantum Psychology, Survival Instincts
Jaycee and the Survival Instincts
By Jean Boyd
Why did Jaycee Lee Dugard, held captive for 18 years, not leave, or even use the phone, when she had the chance? Why do battered wives keep returning to the husbands who beat them? Kidnapped by domestic terrorists, why did Patty Hearst help them rob a store? Why did Stalin’s brutal dictatorship produce good Communists and the Inquisition produce good Catholics? Why did so many people cooperate with the Nazi’s? Why do people who are taken hostage by terrorists quickly identify with them, a phenomenon known as the Stockholm Syndrome? All these events have a common denominator: our human nature.
We are primates, and like other animals we have survival instincts that tell us how to find food and shelter, reproduce and compete for survival of the fittest. They also tell us how to respond to dangerous situations: physically, we can flee or fight; psychologically, we can get control of the situation or 
seek the approval of those who have control. If you are the one with a gun, then you control the situation and decide who lives and who dies. If you don’t have the gun, but get the approval of the man with the gun, he may shoot the person next to you, but maybe not you. These powerful instincts are unconscious and are not moral or immoral, but amoral; our normal human nature allows us to do anything to survive.
Physically weaker, confined, isolated, dependent and brutalized, Jaycee’s only survival option was to seek the approval of her captors and accept her life as “normal.”Just as Muslim women, who live in similar circumstances, accept their lives as “normal.” Just as, when Western Europe was a brutal theocracy, from the Pope on down, people came to accept the burning alive of people in the village square as “normal.” Just as, for centuries, we accepted slavery as “normal.” Just as the “bad cop” creates fear in a suspect, who then bonds with the “good cop” and cooperates. Just as today, politicians attract supporters by warning people of imminent terrorist attacks or losing their health insurance.
Quantum Psychology
Where Eastern philosophy and Western science meet
Philosophy begins where religion leaves off; science begins where philosophy leaves off.
By Jean Boyd
As a child, you may have played with a puzzle, the pieces of which consist of the individual states that make up the United States. As you put each piece in its proper place, a picture of the whole country gradually emerges. So also, a new psychology has emerged, Quantum Psychology, which puts together “puzzle pieces” from philosopy and science, in particular quantum mechanics. From this synthesis emerges new insights into our behavior and our ability to transform ourselves, our society and our planet. For example:
Zen Buddhism teaches us that, living in a universe that ultimately consists of enery and information, being able to perceive reality, “just as it is,” requires a mind that is free of preconceived ideas and emotions. Einstein tells us that in the realm of energy, the realm of photons, atoms and subatomic particles, the presence of an observer influences the event being observed. Quantum Psychology tells us that in the realm of enery that exists inside our heads, we have a psychological function of pure awarness, an Observer, who is as objective as a TV camera. As your go about your daily life, your Observer, who is free of all preconceived ideas, beliefs and desires, observes you, and influences immediate changes in you, at the level of transformation.
Our bodies are a lot smarter than we have previously imagined and our expectations of what is possible have been way too low. Encoded in our DNA, and hard-wired into our brains, is a brilliant learning program that knows how to produce rapid change — with a little help from us. This program gives us a simple way to heal our psychological wounds, free ourselves from the past, enjoy life, have satisfying personal relationships and evolve to higher levels of consciousness, including achieving spiritual enlightenment.
What has long been known in the East as the Tao, with the addition of Western science, has become the Quantum Path of personal growth. Following the Quantum Path involves the practice of two techniques that are simple, but not always easy. Quantum Technique #1 frees us from the past, not by talking about problems, but by communicating with our unconscious mind in the language it understands – pictures. When we do, the brain responds immediately. Quantum Technique #2 gives us the open mind we need to accommodate an expanding consciousness by freeing us from the preconceived ideas we acquired from our cultural indoctrination, which is really a form of brain washing. Both techniques wake up Observer.
If you should choose to follow the Quantum Path, after you get over your initial surprise that rapid personal growth is possible, you would soon come to accept the new abilities that emerge as normal - which of course they are. Quantum psychology views such abilities as courageousness, individual power, creativity and thinking for yourself as characteristics of a healthy, mature, adult consciousness. Equally normal is that you would transcend the illusion of separation that characterizes everyday life and experience your connection to all things. At some point, you experience the tree in your back yard, the bird in the tree and the person who stands in front of you as being both you and not you. When your awareness expands to include the whole, holistic, holy realm that exists just underneath the surface of our ordinary lives, you would discover how you are a piece of the biggest puzzle of all – the universe.
Quantum Psychology
Insight into Social Change
Without Moral Confrontation, Neither Them nor Us are Going Anywhere
Our failing social institutions attest to the fact that “business as usual” is no longer good enough. We have failing schools, ecological collapse, a huge national debt, a deep recession and two wars we are charging on our Chinese credit card – and that’s just for starters. The fundamental problem is that our technology has created an environment on the planet that has never before existed, creating new problems that require new solutions. Philosophers and scientists have long recognized that change is the only constant in the universe and we have elected a president who campaigned on the promised of change. And yet, resistance to change is formidable – why is that?
Change means doing something different from before and that requires letting go of the past.
Martin Amis, in his book about Joseph Stalin, said: “Before humanity can move forward, all crimes against itself must be given their day in the sun, their victims mourned, and proper conclusions drawn.” News commentators, historians and philosophers bring the dark side of our society into the light of our mainstream culture; moral confrontation is how we draw proper conclusions and stimulate social progress.
When Indians morally confronted the British Raj, India achieved independence. After WWII, when Jews morally confronted the Holocaust, the former victims became Israeli warriors. In the sixties, when African Americans morally confronted the modern version of slavery, Jim Crow, they made great strides in civil rights and began to transcend their victim status. Feminists morally confronted their inferior status and made significant progress toward social equality for women. Morally confronting the fact that millions of Americans can’t pay for health care gives us insight into what direction health care reform should take.
Modern communication technology is accelerating social change by quickly bringing information associated with the dark side of our society into the mainstream culture, including, most recently, the dark side of Christianity. For example, the word “inquisition” is no longer limited to the infamous Spanish Inquisition, but has become part of the modern lexicon, referring to any harsh investigation. When a reporter for the Boston Globe printed an expose of sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests, almost immediately, victims around the world came forward, empowered themselves and prompted changes in Church policies. Jews morally confronted the inaction of the Vatican during the Nazi years and decreased the institutional anti-Semitism that has characterized Christianity for centuries. In recent years, the Vatican acknowledged some responsibility for its part in the subjugation of women and pardoned the scientist, Galileo, for saying that the earth revolved around the sun. That people are still so reluctant to morally confront not religious beliefs, but the behavior those beliefs engender, like opposition to birth control, indicates that much work remains to be done.
Albert Einstein said: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Albert Schweitzer said: “Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.” Jean Boyd says: “Moral confrontation is the key.” What do you say?
Quantum Psychology
The Last Rite of Passage: Old Age
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, AD 121-180
Here is a reality check into what it means to be old in America, and it doesn’t look good. According to the US Census Bureau, more of us are living longer. Our present life expectancy is 76 – 80, and by 2030, people 65 and older will make up 20% of the US population (71 million). When you reach 65, you will have an 80% chance of acquiring at least one chronic condition (most probably arthritis), and a 50% chance of having two. In addition to short term memory loss, there is the dreaded Alzheimer’s, which affects 10% of us over 65 and 47% of us over 85. When you get old, you can expect unrelenting deterioration of your physical health, mental faculties and quality of life – and soaring medical expenses.
So, is there anything good about getting old? Based on my recent experience at age 73, my response is a resounding, “Yes!”
By 72 I fit the aging profile (arthritis, two hip replacements) and shared my displeasure with my friend, William, then 87. “I’m younger than you,” I grumbled, “but now I have your symptoms: short term memory loss, can’t concentrate and I’m depressed and preoccupied with death. All I do is read novels, watch Netflix movies and eat ice cream. Remember, when your mother was on her death bed and told you: ‘Sonny, life is ‘bullshit?’ Well, she got that right. Do you think maybe we have Alzheimer’s?”
Now a year later, I discovered that rather than Alzheimer’s, I had been experiencing a normal life passage, one of several that occur throughout our adult lives. The first passage is adolescence, when, at about age 13, we begin to leave childhood behind. The second passage, which occurs around age 35, is the infamous midlife crisis, when we leave youth behind. The third passage occurs around age 50, when we confront the imminence of old age. When we actually reach old age, at around age 70, the challenge is to leave everything behind and confront death.
