TIMELESS - The Human Experience through a Quantum Lens
Welcome to TIMELESS with Play Lab's, Isabel Soden, and Quantum Neuroscience Explorer, Clive Hyland.
Series 1 of TIMELESS is 9 episodes of illuminating, energising, sometimes challenging stuff that resonates with a joyful optimism.
The discussions launch with a relatable overview of physics and neuroscience, laying a necessary foundation for the conversations that follow. We shoot upward into the implications for the universe to then drill down into the implications for humans and organisations. Then full throttle we venture into how to move forward in terms of quantum thinking.
TIMELESS - The Human Experience through a Quantum Lens
TIMELESS Ep 1: Why Quantum?
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Why quantum? This opening episode of TIMELESS introduces quantum thinking as the foundation of the series, and sets out why we need to change our thinking patterns if we are to emerge from the personal and global crisis we now face. This will include an exploration of the Quantum Realm...
The episodes will include not only a scientific perspective, but also those from
Art, Psychology, Philosophy, Spirituality and Ancient Wisdoms.
Hello and welcome to Timeless. This is a podcast brought to you by me, Isabel Silvan. Together we work on Play Lab. That is the coming together of art and science to explore and minimize human potential. And this very special podcast called Timeless is about Clive.
SpeakerIt's about the fundamentals of human nature, um, bringing in some science very much in a relatable way. That's the whole point. I don't want people to think of this as um just science. It's trying to open up the pages of science to a much wider audience.
Speaker 2Yum. And um how did you come to be sitting across from me making this podcast? Give me a nutshell of your experience and interest in that.
SpeakerOkay. Well, it was quantum at work, really, but we'll we'll leave that aside for the moment. Basically, um, yeah, if if I look very quickly back on my history, I think I've always been a natural student of human behavior. Um write back at school time and all that sort of stuff. I was always fascinated by what made people react the way they did. And in my study life, that took me through areas like sociology and psychology. Um but in 2005 I discovered neuroscience, and I've been working with it for ever since that time, so 20 years, and using those insights in the organizational world primarily, but not just that. Um but I was always left with this um feeling that there was more, and whilst I love and continue to love neuroscience, uh I then started to think we need to understand the energetic domain. So whilst people may see the term quantum physics, it may mean may be more relatable of them to think in terms of energy. Uh, so it's about the scientific understanding of energy and what is happening around us and inside of us, and now that can bring to the table a new perspective on human nature. And obviously we'll expand on that as we go through.
Speaker 2Can I have a nutshell on energy as I should I and the listener should understand it?
SpeakerYeah, so I use the iceberg model, which I think you know a lot of people will have come across, and it's all about the difference between what's happening in the perceivable world above the surface and what's going on below. Um, and the reality is that when we get into the physics of it, the rules that we use in understanding the perceivable or material material world do not work below the surface. Energy works on different principles that we don't fully understand. But knowing that the material world does not work in the energetic world is an important starting point for the conversation because it all opens up all sorts of other possibilities. And I think we can, while we don't know confident about what the absolute solution is, it I think I can be confident to say our current thinking is incredibly narrow. So we have a very narrow perspective on the nature of human beings and the nature of the universe. And by the way, ultimately those things are inseparable. So is that okay as a starter?
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a lovely thing. And for our main course. Um tell me about um how we understand transformation at the moment.
SpeakerYeah, so I guess what I'm aware of is, you know, we'll get into in the next session um, you know, what some of the classic dilemmas were within physics as quantum physics emerged, you know, and how you deal with that the scope of that that emergent information. Um, but but in in essence, what we're trying to do is open up a whole world whereby you know we can take another look at human nature. Um and what that really means is that getting below the surface we can start to see uh the suggestion of huge uh potential that's untapped in that domain. And uh it's the energy and the energetic connection and dimensions of our existence that we've largely ignored up until now. They've been kept in the lab. For good reasons. I'm not saying you know there's anything sinister going on here, but uh it's about physicists doing what physicists do. But actually the implications of this are human um the consequences of human level are absolutely fundamental. Let me let me just give you one example. Okay, in physics, the you know, the first law of thermodynamics is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed. All right. So you know, other other people may have come across that, and but in physics, yeah, that's fine. But if you stop and think about that, that's hugely fundamental in our thought patterns because if energy can't be created, it must have been there forever. And it must go on forever if it can't be destroyed. Now, we as human beings struggle to cope with concepts of forever. And if you um extrapolate that outwards, that really means you're dealing with a universe that is infinite. And we can't deal with that stuff. We haven't got brains that can cope with an understanding of the infinite. And that's one just one little perspective on where our understanding of the quantum realm is challenging us and saying it ain't like you thought it was, it's actually fundamentally different, and what we've got to work out as human beings is how significant is that difference for the way that we we are embarking on our lives. Um my uh suspicion is it's hugely significant, and it explains major reasons why we've current created a mess that we currently have, the global mess, which I think few people would dispute. But also things like why we are trapped with such high levels of burnout and anxiety in societies. There must be a reason why we're in this unhappy place and we search for happiness despite our environment rather than just happiness being a natural state of who we are. Am I getting you hooked?
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm really interested. I mean, I have uh questions bouncing into my brain. One of them is when you say this is something, you know, the quantum element of material stuff is was left in a lab. Um and then we carried on in our kind of material.
SpeakerMaterialist way, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Why was it left in the lab?
SpeakerWell, we'll go in in more depth in a future session, but in in essence, it's like you know, when quantum physics started exploring and demonstrating that energy operates differently, it was such a shakeup for the physics community. This was back in the 1920s, that the physics community itself, they were the first to become aware of this, had to decide what are we going to do about this. And there were alternative views. So you had somebody like Einstein who would be saying, Look, these are life fundamental questions, and we must try to deal with them. But you'd have other people, and particularly a guy called Niels Bohr, that said, No, you know, we need to carry on focusing on what we know, what we can understand, and that which will enable us to transform our external world. So the harnessing of quantum power, if you like, which is you know drives supercomputing and has used, been used in so many other instances of you know physics as we've gone through the century. So it's about then how do you deal with these bigger questions? You can quite reasonably say, as a physicist, that stuff is too weird and it's not accessible to science. Nobody in physics actually argues that the rules are different between the material world and the energetic world. But the question is how far do you go with that stuff?
Speaker 1Yeah.
SpeakerAnd when we are now probably more so than when the this information emerged, we are more aware now of the potential crises that's facing us all. So those life questions, rather than just the physics questions, need to come back on the table. Because sitting down and just calculating, which was the phrase, is not the way to deal with it now. That's a heads-down approach. And if we don't go to heads up and look around at what's happening, it seems to me that we're gonna run off a cliff edge. We're in big danger.
Speaker 2Okay, so this is your urgent call to action and attention.
SpeakerYeah, yeah, and I see. I know there's a certain switch there from you know, a place of fun, which is important, I think, for learning, right? But it's like it's a difficult balance, and I don't want to scare people, but equally it's irresponsible not to point out the dangers that we potentially face. Um, whilst it's time to do something about it. Let's not wait until you know it's all too late. That's that's doomsday. We're not at doomsday, but we should be at wake up day.
Speaker 2Okay. Don't worry, I will keep it fun, I promise.
SpeakerYeah. You need to keep me sane as well.
Speaker 2Okay. So here we are, uh facing doomsday, possibly. Um, and we've deviated from this quantum sense of things because it didn't feel in line with our material way of thinking. But you you you just said that quantum mechanics, quantum computing is something that is now manifest in the material world. So presumably, I mean, are we still thinking, is this right, or are we just actually just failing to walk through the full consequences of I think the latter, to be honest, um, because I think we are just carrying on and doing it, you know.
SpeakerNow, I think this is where just a little discourse around AI is interesting because yeah, most people in the AI communities, including the users, are just doing it. They're looking at the potential and how they can take it forward. And look, I don't want to paint it as something sinister, it's not. It can do some amazing things, but I don't think there's enough thinking through of the consequences, but that is changing. You know, there are key players from within the AI world, including people that have stepped out of Google, etc., you know, that are saying we need to be very aware of this because there are huge um challenges associated with how we sustain the essence of human beings if we hand over the wrong sort of controls to machinery. So that wasn't an issue back in the early 20th century. You know, we hadn't got to that point. We weren't, you know, concerned with um global crises in terms of climate, and we didn't have AI on the horizon, but we do now. So this is all about, as I said, well, we got time bringing it back and saying, let's have another look, because there are dangers ahead, and now is the time to start thinking differently about our futures.
Speaker 1Yeah, okay.
SpeakerStill couldn't throw a joke in there, could I?
Speaker 2No, still not funny, actually.
SpeakerNo, still not funny, no, no, no. Oh, we'll have to jump between the two then.
Speaker 2If we if we do, let's make a promise now. If we do a whole episode that has no light-heartedness, you will end on a knock-knock joke.
SpeakerYeah, okay, fair enough. That's my penance, yeah, for not behaving myself. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool.
Speaker 2Okay, so just winding back, this 1920s, we have um we're in the laboratory and you you talk about this divergence. And tell me about what happened then. We we have this kind of rationalist point of view, and we've become terribly attached to it. What happens to science, art, religion, philosophy when we uh head down that materialist route?
SpeakerRight. So, so what I won't do at this stage is go through the you know the all the nooks and crannies of the 20th century. Let's just jump forward to where we are now, I think. So it seems that our tradition, intentionally or otherwise, has been to polarize knowledge, okay, so that you're either a scientist or you're into spirituality, you know. Even within science, you're either into the materialist perspective or into a quantum perspective. You sit in different camps, okay? And I understand from a neuroscience point of view why why that happens. We'll come back to that another time. But this is now a time when we are facing such big challenges where we need to converge that knowledge. That's my point. Is science shouldn't be dismissing stuff which is outside of science, you know, and neither should people in the non-science world ignore science. You know, we need to get the best of everything on the table so we can have these conversations. And the quantum world actually gives us permission to do that because, as I've said, energy does not follow the rules of matter, you know. When you're into pure energy, we don't really know how it how it works, but we know all our energy is connected, and that immediately brings up a whole concept around there is something bigger than us. And when we talk about there being something bigger than us, other conversations around belief, around intuition, around spirituality should all be at the table because they have a right to be invited to that in a party. Yeah. In a sensible way. You know, I am I am not patient at all with nonsense that can be talked about in some of these areas where there's no, for instance, no scientific basis whatsoever. I'm always looking for some, right? But my view would be that we are a lot of people are too rigid about the boundaries, you know, of science and basically sort of saying, you know, if if science can't prove it, it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1Yeah.
SpeakerWe know that's nonsense. Yeah. If science can't prove it, science can't prove it. All right. That doesn't devalue science in any way. It just means that's as far as we can go at this stage. And to have some respect for other views, you know, providing their this thought through, I think is really important. So that then brings this whole convergence, you know, around philosophy and psychology and you know, neuroscience, quantum physics, spirituality. We need all of that stuff on the table because while science is wonderful, it doesn't have any complete answers.
Speaker 2Yeah. And we are a living, breathing embodiment of that as immersive, experienced director and writer, and you corporate C-suite.
SpeakerYeah.
Speaker 2And here we are having a conversation. And I, you know, I can, I I mean, this is the end of uh or this is the kind of uh summit of a lot of conversations that we've had over it, and it has been lovely to see you know experiences that I've had as an as a art as an artist creating things that that you can almost explain from your scientific perspective and the high five that you get across when there is that kind of um the gap in in experience or knowledge or data point. That's where you know that's where the conversation begins.
SpeakerAbsolutely. And I I think the the props the the word that combining it's it all is intelligence, you know. So it's like intelligence can arrive in many forms, you know. You've got the very linear intelligence, if you like, of science, but you've got the associated intelligence of art, maybe the intuitive intelligence of belief, you know, and that type of stuff. So it's really about um giving that respect and bringing together in such a way that opens up a new converged form of thinking for us, rather than the polarization that you know exists at the moment, which is just not healthy. Um, and you know, you so a little aspect of neuroscience because you mentioned about that. Yeah, I understand you know, the instinctive part of the brain will is the most is the fastest moving part of the brain that will very quickly identify whether a person or a comment sits in one camp or another, because our first uh response is about, you know, the instinctive brain is looking for is there a threat or is this something I should feel okay about? Okay, if we identify somebody's thinking as being threatening, we've already you know engineering the brain at that time to look for the evidence to support the threat. Okay, so we're already, if you like, off into a negative mode. So if we if we're a scientist and we see somebody as a spiritualist, right, there's every chance we are then gonna look for all the information that destroys any spiritual argument. Okay, because at the beginning we've identified this is a threat, yeah, a threat to my pattern of thought. Okay, yeah, and part of this is challenging that and sort of saying, you know, let's try to avoid those um barriers, those that fear that creeps in that actually stops us listening and stops us understanding the other person's perspective. Yeah, you know, because we need everyone's contribution now. We need to get to a point where um we look again at what we understand, and that links back, I guess, to the whole principle of the title, which is this is timeless. It's not only about the preoccupation with science and linear thinking that we've had over the last couple of centuries, it's about timeless wisdom and continuing to accumulate everything we can bring to the table that can offer us something for the future.
Speaker 2Oh, I love that.
SpeakerGood. It wasn't very funny though, was it? No, it's still not funny. I gotta work on that.
Speaker 2Great return to the top line. Yeah. Okay. So, um, yeah, timeless thinking and the convergence of um different disciplines to get over their tribal sense of identity and and come together. I mean, and there was there was a huge convergence of of different disciplines back in the day in order to understand human existence or the you know human nature, and it's it's become very you know siloed.
SpeakerSo yeah, well, I mean the the amplification of that is um like da Vinci, you know, who was sort of as much an artist as he was a scientist, you know. And yeah, what the phrase was if physics is the king of the sciences and art is is surely his queen. Yeah, you know, so in those days, before Newton came on, you can't blame Newton, it's what we've done with it, you know. But when we then went in this um duality, you know, between science and non-science, as it could be religion, art, etc., it just pushed us into separate corners. And nowadays we really have to ask why are we preoccupied with being right or wrong? You know, why isn't it about just mutual understanding and acknowledging that other perspectives are allowed? You know, and it's then what we do with that stuff. And the quantum debate when we get into it will support that. It will say that everything we believe in is a result of our perspective, what we observe and how we interpret that. So actually, whether there's a true independent reality is highly up for debate, and therefore, whether there's any truth around right or wrong is also up for debate. It's all about perspectives and understanding. So that's when we'll get into the deeper stuff.
Speaker 2Delish.
SpeakerAnd I really have to work out a joke in advance on that one.
Speaker 2Yeah, don't worry. I um rather than a joke, I've got a giant brag. We are timeless. Yep. The Da Vinci of podcasts, King and Queen. Of course, yes.
SpeakerWhy didn't I see that? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2So, yeah, welcome to the Da Vinci Podcast. Yeah. Um, and so this was episode one. I really hope we have wet your whistle and given you a good map for the terrain that we will broadly be scampering about in the coming episodes. Episode two, Clive, tell us what it's gonna look like.
SpeakerWell, that's when we are going to get into the energy discussion, you know, so quantum physics in particular. And and the way that I will deal with that is to explain. Explain how what our current understanding of the universe is with all the anomalies and contradictions and there are many of them, but that's the point. So we'll get into things like dark energy and dark matter. Um and equally at the you know the at the genuine quantum level, we'll talk a little bit more about how energy does operate and what we discovered at the early part of the uh 20th century that shook physics to its foundations, really. Um but now we're getting it back on the table because I guess my contention is this is how can you um understand the iceberg if you don't understand what's going on below the water? You know, and we are working with such a limited view of human nature, it's not surprising we've got ourselves in a cul-de-sac and we're just going round in circles. So time to get out uh out of the cul-de-sac, get back into what's really going on, and how do we do explore those depths? I've probably mixed my uh analogies a bit there. Well, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2I mean yeah I was with you. The iceberg and the cul-de-sac.
SpeakerYeah, let me call that convergence, yeah. Don't don't say contradictions.
Speaker 2No, absolutely. I was with you, and I just did have a a dialogue.
SpeakerWe went from a boat to a car or something, then didn't we? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, let's be patient.
Speaker 2You know what? You had me, I'm settled. I can't wait to get cracking on episode two. Um, and I really hope you will join us. Um, and we look forward to feeling you with us then.