The human mind seems to have an aspect that is non-local, some people far more than others. Myself, I have dreams of the future, they are usually very short lasting less than two minutes, but when the time comes I will recognize them and things will play out exactly as I had dreamt. For example, I had a dream of listening to the Art Bell show (back when it was The Art Bell show before Coast to Coast), and when the time came, I knew what he was going to say, and just to dismiss the hemisync theory of de ja vue, I spoke out loud what I knew Art Bell would say and I preceded with my own voice what he would say by a couple of seconds for about two minutes, word for word spot on.
Another non-local thing that I have are either waking out of body experiences or lucid dream out of body experiences. In either case, I can travel anywhere I want to go and observe. These tend to last somewhat longer than the future dreams but not more than about fifteen minutes. The ability to go places includes time. Going either to very distant locations, for example 40,000 light years to another planet, takes subjective time, about 15 seconds, and closer objects like Mars, a fraction of a second. The distance to subjective time is not linear. 40,000 light years is far greater than the distance to Mars which might be say 15 light minutes, depending upon where it is in it’s orbit relative to Earth, this is a huge ratio yet the perceived time is maybe a factor of 15 different. I’ve tested the reality of these experiences by doing an experiment in which I went to some place I had not ever been but that was within driving distance, observed what I saw there carefully, wrote it down, then drove to that location and verified my observation, spot on.
I think our ability to do this has something to do with a very special case in quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, an object exists as a wave function without a definite location or velocity until observed, and then it’s location or velocity, but not both owing to the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, is fixed, it is said that the wave function is collapsed.
This applies to particles and it applies to human beings. We exist as a probability of being in a given location wave function, right where we are the probability is the highest but we can be anywhere in the universe, only the farther from where we are the less the odds.
The nature of the wave function, what is known as the De Broglie wavelength, is a function of mass and momentum. A large stationary object has a very short De Broglie wavelength and the result is that the probability curve is very sharp, there is a very high probability of us being in one very tiny space and an almost extremely infinitesimal probability of us being anywhere else, and that probability drops with distance very rapidly. A very small mass has a much longer wavelength, and a massless particle is essentially infinite, it can be everywhere at the same instant with almost the same probability.
Human beings brains are made up of neurons and a host of supporting cells but the neurons communicate directly with each other via either chemical synapses or direct electrical connections, the latter are faster. The axons, the connecting elements, of these neurons have what are known as micro-tubules and these are so small that quantum effects become significant, the De Broglie wavelength can be much longer which means the probability of them being elsewhere is much higher than that of our body as a whole.
I believe it is these that account for the non-local aspects of our minds while incarnate. But there is something special about human beings, we can self-observe, and in so doing collapse these quantum wave functions to a definite location.
More than that however, I believe that intention can affect the outcome of the collapse, that is to say the chosen point on the wave function curve isn’t just random probability but can be influenced by thoughts and intentions.
I think it is this that is the mechanism behind some of the more fantastic feats that can be accomplished by a seasoned meditator. In meditating, we are turning our observation inward and observing ourselves, we are collapsing our own wave function and the wave functions of internal components with intent of influencing them, and I believe influence them we do.