New Physics and Shamanism in The Eagle's Quest
The Observer Effect and the World of Magic
Aug 13, 2008
Fred Allan Wolf spent several years studying shamans and shamanic practices in Europe and the Americas. His experiences have been crystallized in his book The Eagle's Quest: A Physicist's Search for Truth in the Heart of the Shamanic World (New York: Touchstone Book, 1991). Three areas that stand out in his research suggest that shamans are more than familiar with the "observer effect" in New Physics.
New Physics in Shamanic Healing
Wolf recognizes that a fundamental difference between Western medicine and shamanic healing is the healer's relationship with his patient. Western doctors see the body as a machine; their relationship with it is detached and mechanical. Shamans see themselves as "one" with their patients, part of a field of wave information or vibrations. Disease occurs when the body is out of harmony with the field. The magic in healing occurs when shamans tune into the healing frequency and cause their patients to vibrate in resonance with them.
According to Wolf, the shaman's healing power can be validated with the tenets of New Physics. The vibrational frequency is a quantum wave probability within the electromagnetic spectrum which the shaman puts into effect through "observation." According to the Uncertainty Principle of Werner Heisenberg, every unobserved situation behaves like a wave until observation solidifies the wave into an object. In other words, whatever path one focuses on comes into existence (145). Shamanic healing occurs because shamans have internalized this "observer effect" principle of New Physics in their rituals.
New Physics in Shamanic Consciousness
Wolf observes that shamans have the ability to participate in altered states of consciousness. Shamans that he researched could do magic--travel to other realms, change themselves into animals (shape-shifting) and even journey to the realm of the dead. Because of the shamans' belief in realities outside the 3-dimensional realm, they have developed a whole repertoire of senses that allow them to participate in extrasensory and multidimensional consciousness—consciousness that is, unfortunately, lost to western man.
In particle physics, atoms manifest the same ability to "undergo a shape change"(196); they do so through the atom's "observation" of the electrons and photons within them. All matter absorbs and emits light. Emitted light manifests as waves. Absorbed light changes the wave to particles. It is the "observer effect" in the atom that determines the identity of the atom—as wave or particle. Shamanic consciousness is the ability of the observer and observed becoming one, a situation that is standard in the quantum world of New Physics.
New Physics in the Shaman's Near-Death Rituals
According to Wolf, shamans have to go through near-death rituals in order to develop their intuitive and magic powers. Why, asks Wolf, are these near-death rituals so important to shamanic experience? One reason Wolf suggests is that a body close to death shifts its mode of reality perception. It desperately seeks to engage other realities that can promise it survival. In other words, death awakens the shaman to other belief systems.
Near-death experiences develop the shaman's belief in a universe that works like a hologram, a 3-dimensional visual image created by captured interfering light vibrations. What is significant about the hologram is that what is seen in it is entirely dependent on the observer. Changing the frequency or direction of the reference beam shining through the hologram changes the information perceived. To the shaman, the soul is like the reference beam. Death and birth are merely changes in frequency and direction within a holographic universe (251). Through intensification of his belief system, near-death rituals develop the shaman's ability to manipulate matter and energy through observation.
If the "observer effect' can explain the magic behind shamanic healing, shifts in consciousness and near-death rituals, it can, in no small way, alter the concept of personal power. Since Wolf's publication of The Eagle's Quest in 1991, the self-help industry has been overwhelmed with books on personal mastery and shamanism.
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