Dave Barnes

Note: I want to keep my long-winded opinions from interfering with the flow of the forum ... So I'll put them into a blog where they'll be a side-bar that people can ignore.

Do thoughts have mass?


-- Glenn’s shot across the bow. From where I sat, the panel reaction was incredulous. Sort of a “That’s just too obvious to think about – are you daft?” kind of response. For a group that accepts and applies concepts that only the tiniest fraction of scholars will even leave open to consideration, the question breaches the convenient bounds of a paradigm that thought and physics are separate.

(“…and they all moved away from me on the Group-W bench” -- Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant.)

It’s such a beautifully sideways question. How do you frame the ideas that go with something like that?

In my case, I’ve started by thinking along the lines of what is mass? Mass is tricky because it’s always defined relative to how difficult it is to change the speed of an object. The speed of an object is determined by the object’s position relative to another object from one time to the next. Position has to do with relative sizes of objects. Time is a set of perspectives that distinguish “relative” positions. Our characterization of “objects” or “objectification” of stuff into things is always in terms of perspectives of one aspect to another.

… And thought… What is that?

To me, thought involves changing “perspectives” or “points of view” (POV) to make this reality work. I select or “nail down” an aspect of something and swirl perspectives relative to that aspect.

From everyday experience, we know that memory or persistence of information doesn’t have to have mass. We can make a device like a memory stick that holds all kinds of information but its mass as measured by how difficult it is to carry doesn’t change if it is empty or filled with books of poetry, physics, music, programs to control the flow of water at dams, or virtual worlds of games.

From everyday experience, we know that PK occurs in association with thought. The time-position relations of objects with respect to other objects change and the “physical activity” is coupled with thought activity. “Masses” are displaced, and by the conventional philosophy of physics, something with mass is doing the pushing.

So far, I’ve thought about three possible ways to look at the “Do thoughts have mass?” question in the context of PK that have experimental precedents. They aren’t mutually exclusive and all may be correct within their scope of use.

Possibility 1: Thoughts have mass. Physical influencing thoughts might be considered as a river of something such as “particles” that we modulate using physical patterns contained in memory, then aimed through an orifice of intent.

• This possibility implies that we need to transmit or redirect enough pushing or pulling particles to put the targeted object into motion.

• This implies that if we generate and expend such particles, we would have a reservoir of them that we would, at least temporarily, exhaust when causing the action. For example, it would take more thought mass to move a brick than to move a pencil.

• If the “particles” were directed with precision and subtlety, they might just act at object boundaries like grease or a sail. Depending on the applied orientation, the thin film would act as a sail, taking advantage of ambient “particle winds”. As long as there is a “wind”, a targeted object would move with it or against it.

• Because particles are involved with this possibility, everything that occurs must occur at less than the speed of light.

• In this system, actions on objects take place after the particle have left the source.

Possibility 2: Thoughts comprise or redirect a purely energetic substance (mass-less) that interacts with targeted object mass to displace it. The idea of a redirected river of influence would still apply. In this case, the physical action at the target isn’t a result of being hit by particles but by excitation of the particles that are already in the target object when encountering the mass-less energetic items.

• This has the same action implications as above, but puts the responsibility for action on the ability of the target to convert energy forms to motion.

• This approach also handles “smart” target objects. For example, a simple message is transmitted to an agent that interprets it and takes the action.

• Excluding a placeholder explanation such as “non-local particle entanglement” (which is a way of saying “it happens, we don’t know how, but we’ll call it this in our model while we figure it out”) transmission must occur at or below the speed of light.

• Actions occur after the energy has been initiated.


Possibility 3: Thoughts and things and time and space are all relative aspects of the same stuff, a “dimensionless field”. Thoughts are our perspectives of the field. Our perspectives characterize how we perceive the structure of the field.

Spatial non-locality of “paired particles” isn’t a theory, it’s an empirical observation.
In a dimensionless field, non-locality isn’t a problem because everything exists at a mathematical point.

(“How can you be two places at once when you’re really nowhere at all?” – Firesign theater).

Distance and time are ways to isolate and objectify things, and because we have chosen to interpret our existence this way, they work for us to conduct and communicate our existence.

Spatial non-locality and temporal non-locality are empirical observations in remote viewing. When trained to observe more than one time and space, we know that this is true, but the truth conflicts with our native perception of “my place and time in the universe”.

Mass “is the somethingness” we objectify with space-time bounds. Because our observation of these boundaries is fluid, somethingness is also fluid and subject to the whims of our observation.

In this sense, we move our observation to a time and place and something (mass). This perspective, in turn, finds or creates the something to make the intended observation happen. In this third possibility, thought “creates things”. If thought creates mass, space, and time through observation, thought is that which is not mass, space, or time.

• Objects and actions are conceived and perceived from a dimensionless field.

• The speed of light is part of the conceived system so the conception and perception of objects and actions are independent speed limitations.

• Intended activities are not bound by time. Free will is outside of time, so intended actions happen relative to a chosen perspective. The perspective can be before or after a relative now.