Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2021
Alan S. Glassman – Review of The Electromagnetic Brain by S.R. Joye
The Latest Developments in Electromagnetic Field Theories of Consciousness
Author of numerous academic papers on a wide variety of subjects, with degrees in electrical engineering, south Asian studies, and Indian philosophy, and having been well-traveled living in various parts of the globe, this is Dr. Joye’s ninth published book. Her biography shows that her interests include such varied activities as painting, playing the accordion, lighting design, consciousness studies, comparative philosophy, yoga, meditation, cosmology, iconography, and software design. Along the way she worked with John Lilly on interspecies communication and practiced contemplative studies with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. All this makes her an ideal individual to give us this well-written introduction to the latest developments in electromagnetic field theories of consciousness and how they interface with the human brain.
Having had life-changing experience with entheogens, Dr. Joye became further interested in the physics of consciousness asking what its real nature is and how it manifests in the universe. As a comprehensive survey, this book attempts to answer that question by giving us insight into some of the many current theories about consciousness. She specifically delves into the work of more than a dozen notable researchers, including William Köhler, Susan Pockett, Johnjoe McFadden, Rupert Sheldrake, Ervin Laszlo, William Tiller, Harold Saxton Burr, Sir Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff, Mari Jibu, Kunio Yasue, Karl Pribram, Alfred North Whitehead, and James Clerk Maxwell, as well as her own theories. In doing so, she also helps us with substantiating material on the concepts and mathematics of information transfer and storage as theorized by such scientists as Jacob Bekenstein, John Bell, John Wheeler, David Bohm, David Chalmers, Herbert Frölich, and others.
Our author is outspokenly at odds with standard, academically accepted theories that consciousness is merely an isolated product of the electrical activity of brain neurons operating like a computer, going so far as to suggest that an electromagnetic, holographic field nature of consciousness encompasses the entire physical universe involved in the creation of matter in the material world. In doing so, she combines ancient Eastern mystical teachings and experiential practices with deep psychological explorations of people like Jidu Krishnamurti and leading-edge theories such as Lazlo’s Akashic Record, Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance and Morphogenic Field, Pockett and McFadden’s electromagnetic field, Tiller’s k* Space, Penrose and Hammerhoff’s microtubules as waveguides, Pribram’s holonomic brain, Bohm’s conscious holoplenum and implicate order, and much more in order to come up with a synthesis of her own in a chapter she entitles “Joye’s Subquantum Holoflux Theory of Consciousness.”
She begins that chapter with a reference to MIT computational psychologist Donald Hoffman’s 2019 book The Case Against Reality in which he argues that “conscious beings have not evolved to perceive the world as it actually is but have evolved to perceive the world in a way that maximizes survival….The objects we perceive in time and space are filtered, simplified, and edited before being combined and projected out onto our ‘inner display’.” Consciousness and mind, then, are different things.
Joye further agrees with Chalmers that “consciousness may be a primary category of the universe, perhaps transcending both space and time” and that “consciousness manifests at subquantum dimensions, far below the ocean of atomic ‘particles’….Thus the holoflux theory of consciousness proposes consciousness as an active awareness that projects space-time from within Bohm’s implicate order, acting from beneath a spatial depth of 10-35 meter.” (That length is the bottom threshold of spatial measurement called Planck’s constant.)
To clarify, quantum physics predicts that below Planck’s constant there are seven rolled up dimensions containing no space or time, and these are combined by Bohm into what he terms the “implicate order” (variously called by others the quantum vacuum, the holoflux field, zero-point energy, or the frequency/spectral domain). Dr. Joye agrees that the implicate order informs and produces the structures in the universe we observe while cycling information-laden energy back and forth between itself and space-time (what Bohm calls the “explicate order”—electromagnetic energy forming material objects in the observable universe of matter defined by Pribram “as an externalized, extruded, palpable, compacted form of flux”). Bohm refers to this cyclical, two-way movement flow as an “enfolding” and “unfolding” of information between the two orders (domains). The process can be thought of as a two-way cybernetic loop where information, recording events in the space-time explicate order domain, flows back into the subquantum implicate order domain to be stored in timeless eternity, “affecting and modifying the next cycle of projections into an unfolding, evolving universe.”
What is fascinating is the proposal that the mechanism of change which both continuously projects energy out of the implicate, holoflux order into the explicate one and simultaneously sends information energy back from the explicate, space-time order into the implicate one can be expressed by Fourier Transform mathematics. The region where the transformations take place exists at the Planck length, the barrier between the implicate and explicate orders. (Some physicists refer to this region as the “quantum foam” which in terms of cosmic geometry can be identified as made up of “omnipresent two-way portals, potential bridges between the explicate and the implicate.”)
More simply put by Joye, “The phenomenon can be understood as a process of projected creation, an omnipresent, ongoing holographic extrusion of information from within the implicate order into the explicate order. This explains the various structures of the cosmos (galactic clusters, stars, etc.), the complex unfoldings into space-time, that are perceived by the human eye and mind to exist in our three-dimensional time-based cosmos, though they are actually holographic projections from within the implicate order projecting from the center outward.”
Our author weaves into her narrative the relevant concepts of M-theory, hidden variable theory, plasma dynamics, wave function, quantum black holes, as well as her theory’s relationship to elements of human anatomy and physiology, ending with chapters on quantum brain dynamics and neuroanatomy, past and present varieties of electromagnetic brain stimulation, optical networks in the brain, and suggestions of areas for future research.
My advice to the reader is not to be “put off” by the seemingly technical verbiage. Dr. Joye’s writing flows if you read it from beginning to end without skipping anything. There is only one differential equation, and it’s not necessary to understand its derivation or operate its calculation. The important things are the concepts, and, beneath the words, they are straightforward and powerful. I give this volume very high marks and highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about the true nature of reality.
Finally, in order to begin to get a glimpse of what the “implicate domain” is that produces the seemingly solid, everyday world we know, it would be helpful for one to take David Bohm’s advice summarized by Joye and remember to “draw a distinction between thought and a more primary mode of consciousness that is ‘before thought’, the mode of consciousness that dwells in the present moment.” Quoting directly from page 128 of Bohm’s 1985 book Unfolding Meaning:
To dwell in the present moment requires not dwelling in thought, because thought takes duration and is a slow process. We start to find a need, not to deny thought, but to find the part of the experience which unfolds prior to thought.”