If you wander into scientific theory on any topic, it can seem a bit elusive. That is because scientific theories are developed to elucidate behavior that is exhibited, while the cause is not often understood. It is important for a layperson to understand that at the root of science in general resides mystery. Take electromagnetism for instance. Electromagnetism is a fundamental part of both the universe and our daily lives. It powers our household electronics, cell phones, and computers, yet most people have no idea what it is, how it works, and whether it could possibly affect our health. Part of the confusion may be due to the fact that, like science in general, at the root of electromagnetism exists a mystery; something not understood or explained.
The fundamental mystery of electromagnetism is charge. Magnetic fields are created by electricity. Electricity is created by charge and charge is not understood.[i] Charge simply is. Electromagnetism, or waves of electrical charge, is a part of our environment – the organism of Earth – to which we belong. This is true whether it is naturally occurring (electromagnetism that is created by Earth and its many life forms) or human created (that which we create to run our technology—electromagnetic pollution).
Imagine yourself in the center of Earth, in a womb-like space, in total darkness. What sounds and feels like the steady beating of a drum is coming from this warm, dark core. The waves emanating from this drumbeat wash over you and your being begins to beat in time with it. It is a primal beat, a pulse of waves keeping you alive. You are reminded of being within the body of your mother before you were born, and being in intimate connection with the rhythmic beating of her heart. This electromagnetic pulsation is your umbilical cord to Earth.
Our planet has a beat, an Earth beat, a very low level electromagnetic rhythm that its lifesystems have evolved with and are synchronized with. Studies have shown being cut off from this pulse upsets the “clocks”—the rhythms and biocycles a lifesystem uses to regulate itself—in plants, animals and humans.[ii] Earth is an organism, a being, a system, that has, through a process of creativity that took 4.5 billion years, made the space for every life system on the planet to emerge, including the human species. Evolution is a process of interacting with the environment one finds oneself in and responding, adapting, aligning. The electromagnetic fields of Earth played a very crucial part in the process of the evolution of life on Earth and continue to inform it at all times.
Mysterious charge emerges at both the atomic and subatomic level. Atoms are made up of electrons and protons which have opposite charge. Atoms can change their charge by losing or gaining electrons. This charge is randomly termed positive or negative. Opposite charges attract each other and the same repel each other. This is the fundamental basis for electricity. Atoms become charged and interact, and waves or particles are created as a result of this charged interactive state.[iii] Electricity is the movement of electrons—the most moveable components of atoms—and their messenger particles, photons. Electricity creates magnetism and magnetism creates electricity. As it oscillates, this cycle is repeated over and over.
Electricity and magnetism are entirely related and interconnected, thus the term electromagnetism. They are two halves of one whole; as interrelated as light is to dark, as yin is to yang, as life is to death. In fact one could even use the yin/yang symbol as an image of electromagnetism. Imagine them giving birth to each other in a self sustaining cycle of interaction.
Fields are a vital way to begin to conceptualize electromagnetism. An “electromagnetic event,” which can be as small as one charged particle or as large as an entire galaxy, is surrounded by a field which carries information about that event. The field of information emanates out from and around the event in circular waves. These fields perpetuate more fields, the circular lines of information intersecting each other, and these interactions create further perpetuation of themselves and more “electromagnetic events.”
An even better image to envision is a web. We are essentially engulfed in a web woven of interacting and intersecting circular fields. Even our bodies, which are electric and magnetic, create fields and these fields intersect other fields. Information is exchanged and energy transferred and entangled within these webs. The reverberation of the energy transferred depends on the intensity of the resonance encountered.
Michael Faraday, the 19th-century physicist who proved the existence of electromagnetic fields, called them “strange circles” because they affect objects at a distance in a way no one at the time believed was possible. These omnipresent circular lines, though nonvisible, shape the fabric of the cosmos.
Our planet is an “electromagnetic event” which creates a field called the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere, discovered in 1958 by Explorer 1, extends far beyond the atmosphere into the larger solar system. Earth’s spinning, molten core of iron and nickel is its “electromagnetic event.” This powerful electric charge creates this magnetic field around the planet. We are contained and protected from galactic space by this magnetosphere created by Earth. It is the protective womb within which Earth holds us.
This image is of the sun interacting with the magnetosphere of the earth. Note that the earth is the small sphere within the very large magnetosphere, the force fields portrayed here in blue lines. 
(www.nasa.gov)
We are not wildly unprotected beings on the surface of a vulnerable planet in the middle of cold, unfriendly space. We are cradled within this womb-like field. Earth’s field interacts closely with the cycles of the sun and the moon. The electromagnetic field of the sun, the heliosphere, blows against Earth’s magnetosphere, causing it to form a tail behind Earth which trails into space.
The pulsations of the sun’s fields affect Earth’s magnetosphere. They are in relationship to each other, forming a web-like matrix of interwoven fields. The heliosphere is larger, and embraces the entire solar system. Woven together, these pulsing, vibrating fields—Faraday’s “strange circles”—enclose us, hold us, surround us.
An image of the sun’s heliosphere, within which the entire solar system is held. (http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov)
The Light/Dark Spectrum
The term “electromagnetism” refers to both the visible and nonvisible spectrum however, all of electromagnetism is habitually called “light.” Calling electromagnetism “light” gives the impression that we are speaking only about visible light. It also implies that we should be able to experience all different kinds of electromagnetism the way we experience visible light. This is incorrect and misleading. There are both light and dark forms of electromagnetism. Visible light is one form of electromagnetism—a small range within a spectrum that we are able to see with our eyes. However, there is a larger range of the spectrum that we are unable to see with our eyes. These “dark” fields intersect and interact around us. They are invisible, unseen, yet present. Webs woven of interacting darkness. X-rays and gamma rays are examples of “dark” electromagnetism yet they are called “light.”
Microwaves are another example of “dark” electromagnetism. We cannot see microwaves, but we allow them to cook our food and power our cell phones. With this technology, we are creating and inviting these electromagnetic fields into our homes and lives in ways never before interacted with by humans and other lifesystems. Though we cannot see “dark” fields with our eyes, studies are confirming the fact that other organs of our bodies hear, feel or sense “dark” electromagnetism with sensitivity equal to how our eyes sense waves of visible light. The pineal gland, the hippocampus, the ovaries, testes, the adrenal glands, and the collective network of our cells are now understood to be acutely sensitive to “dark” fields.[iv]
The pineal gland, located in the center of the head, is a gland in the human body that senses and responds to electromagnetism of the visible and nonvisible kind. As master gland of the endocrine system (the system that controls and produces hormones), the pineal gland produces melatonin, the hormone of darkness. Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant and regulates our sleep cycles. It tells our body when it is time to go to sleep and enables our body to sink into a deep sleep—a sleep that includes dreams.
Exposure to abnormal electromagnetic fields has been shown to reduce the amount of melatonin the pineal gland produces.[v] The long-term effects of this are unclear. Though we are mostly unaware of it, something as essential as our sleep and our dreaming are related to our body’s interaction with the invisible webs of woven darkness. We cannot see the waves signaling us it is time to sleep, but we obey them nonetheless. In fact, many animals surrender for the whole winter to the influence of these invisible fields.
Photons—The Epitome of Cool
I graduated from college without learning what a photon is. Everyone should know what a photon is and they should learn about them very early on, because photons are the epitome of cool. In the quantum realm, there are particles that mediate the interactions of the four identified forces: the electromagnetic, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces. The photon is the mediator for electromagnetic interactions. An electromagnetic field is a force field and the photon is the particle carrier, the conveyer of that force. We live in a matrix of photons which is the electromagnetic field of Earth. A photon is the quanta (the amount of energy that the photon carries) of the electromagnetic interaction.
What does all this mean? Electrons communicate their attraction or repulsion by passing photons back and forth. This relationship is the glue of the electromagnetic interaction. Without electromagnetism, everything would fall apart! Photons act as mediators, keeping electrons connected and carrying information about the interaction that created them. In other words the photon is the memory of that interaction.
Like all quantum particles, a photon can be a particle or a wave. It is, in fact, both. Some have called photons “wavicles.” What a cool word! Very appropriate for that which is the epitome of cool. Wavicles. It was Einstein who first theorized the existence of photons, a notion rejected for some time by his scientific peers. He described light as a “rain of particles”—more specifically, photons. A rain of wavicles.
Photons get to decide on the spot, instantaneously, whether they will be a wave or a particle. Nobody tells a photon what to do. Quantum physics reveal that photons dwell in a timepace of possibility and when they “choose” what it is they want to be, they “collapse” into the chosen form. This collapse is temporary. It is also instantaneously changeable depending on what happens next. Photons can be either wave or particle depending on how they are observed which means that how they are observed affects how they appear. Photons are quantum shamanic shape-shifters.
Another cool factor about photons is that they travel through time and are allowed the highest speed limit in the cosmos, the speed of light.[vi] The speed of light is 670 million miles per hour. Take that, Ferrari! As far as we know, there is no faster speed allowed in the universe. This high speed of travel, combined with their infinitesimal mass, also enables them to go right through solid objects. Lest you think photons are created and speeding around “out there,” remember you are creating them right now! You are interacting with them right here and right now. You are full of photons, photonic through and through.
Photons are indeed “wavicles of light,” but they are also “wavicles of dark,” meaning there are photons we cannot see with our eyes passing through us right now. There are photons which carry darkness. There are nonvisible photons all around us.
Amplification
The meeting of a photon in the visible light spectrum and a molecule in the human eye sets off a cascade of reactions which miraculously lead to sight. The process of the retina receiving one photon and the cascade of reactions which follows is possible due to a process called amplification. This amplification is created by a phenomenon called coherence. (We will explore coherence in more detail later) This process, which leads to “sight,” illustrates the acute sensitivity the retina has developed for the presence of the photon in the visible light spectrum. It is an interactive relationship that evolved over millions of years. When the photon wavicle hits the eye, its energy is amplified a million times.[vii] A million-fold amplification!
This type of response requires resonance, a synchronous vibration that occurs when an organism has developed the appropriate sensitivity. The presence of “stored energy” enables that the resonance can be long lasting. If intersecting photonic wavicles share resonance, they have the ability to sense and receive each other, to “notice” each other. When the waves are “noticed,” energy is exchanged and functions, like sight, occur. This is the definition of intimacy: A developed sensitivity that allows an organism to respond to what is present, to exchange energy, and eventually transmute that energy.[viii]
One illustration of such intimacy is between the hippocampus and electromagnetic fields.[ix] The hippocampus, located on either side of the temporal lobe, has been called the “transducer of electromagnetic waves.”[x] This means it is able to convert electromagnetic messages from the cosmic web into a language the body can understand. The hippocampus is involved with spatial orientation and memory. Many people suffering from depression or Alzheimer’s disease are found to have a shrunken or damaged hippocampus.[xi] Both of these diseases are epidemic in our culture. Anti depressants are the most commonly prescribed drugs[xii] and Alzheimer’s is predicted to quadruple in the next forty years.[xiii] Recent research by a team in Sweden has shown that the microwave radiation from cell phones causes neural damage to the cortex and hippocampus.[xiv] Research in the Soviet Union in the ‘80’s showed similar results.[xv] It would be worthwhile to follow this line of research further.
Humans have added an enormous amount of electromagnetic pollution into the spectrum of Earth’s field over the past one hundred years. The magical hay days of Tesla and Edison started in the 1890’s. Once humans figured out how to harness this charge in the atom, when we began to understand the power of electrons, we began to capitalize on it, creating what is now called the electronics industry. Starting with a lowly light bulb, we have transformed into a culture where every house is wired with all kinds of fancy devices. Now wireless, portable electronic devices that use microwaves, and are held close to the body, are ubiquitous. These portable devices are held against people’s brains, inserted into their ears, and sit in back or front pockets next to their reproductive organs. Where is all this leading us? Have we even asked? That person talking on her cell phone next to you is not only annoying because she is blasting her conversation into your space, she are also irradiating it. Is this any different than puffing on a cigarette beside you? We have removed tobacco smoke from our public places and let in cell phones. Have we considered the consequences with enough balance and seriousness?
The electromagnetic frequencies of Earth, humans, and other species on the planet are in the very low frequency and extra low frequency ranges: 0-100 Hz. Brain frequencies, cellular metabolism, and heart frequencies match the frequencies of Earth. They are resonant with them. Previously these ranges were believed to be too weak to have any substantial or meaningful effect on each other. But now that we understand amplification (the ability of systems with “stored energy” to take weak signals and increase the signal by as much as a million-fold) we know this to be incorrect. We are sensing fields and we are responding.
Could it be that after the “fallout” of the nuclear horrors of the post modern world we have been seduced into the assumption that more subtle forms of radiation are not dangerous? In fact, the “safety” level for radiation of any kind is still determined by measurements of “heat and thermal effects” established during that time period. This is misguided. As we have seen through the responses of the pineal gland and hippocampus, many subtle electromagnetic interactions not detected through the current “heat standards” are known to interact with and disrupt the innate coherence of life systems.
Unfortunately, these claims are easily disputed. Tests can be manipulated because there are many extenuating circumstances and varied environmental factors that play a role. A person is never exposed to only one field. There are always varieties mixing together in the atmosphere around us.
Coherence
Bio-Physicist Mae-Wan Ho informs us that all life is liquid crystalline.[xvi] This is a new finding, one that is hard for us to comprehend. How could we believe that we are liquid crystals? A crystal is matter in which the atoms are in an ordered, repeating pattern that extends in all three spatial dimensions. Crystals have long been used in electronics to amplify wave transmissions. Because of their coherently arranged pattern of atoms, crystals are exquisitely responsive. Now cutting-edge, scientific research is proving that all of life, including human life, is liquid crystals. The liquid crystal state is one between liquid and solid, a “mesophase,” which is a tunable responsive system. Humans and life are tunable responsive systems. Liquid crystalline systems respond and tune themselves to electromagnetic messages in the environment. They can do this because they are coherent.
From quantum physics, quantum coherence is the way physicists describe the ability of quantum particles to be in touch with each other at very far distances and, though separated by space and time, to act as a unified whole. Quantum particles displaying coherence, though they appear to be separated, are able to communicate and respond instantaneously to messages and incoming information with no measurable time lapse and without traversing intervening space.
Coherence is a wholeness, a oneness, a unity, that exists outside the usual limitations of space and time. Mae-Wan Ho states, “Quantum coherence does not mean that everybody or every element of the system must be doing the same thing all the time, it is more akin to a grand ballet, or better yet, a very large jazz band where everyone is doing his or her own thing while being perfectly in step and in tune with the whole.”[xvii]
Dr. Ho asserts that thephenomenon of coherence exists in organisms at the macrophase level (larger than the quantum, micro realm), as well. This includes humans, animals, plants and planets. Coherence is a biological reality. The bottom line: We are quantum beings. The quantum realm is not disconnected from us, it is not some disembodied realm out there or under there that is fascinating but separate. It is not just a “scientific discovery.” It is the actual matrix of our being, of life, of the universe.
Life is a series of nested coherent systems, from the quantum level up, which creates more nested systems of coherence. Particles like protons, which are made up of smaller particles called quarks, make up atoms and atoms make up molecules, which in turn make up cells. Cells learned, through evolution, how to store energy. Stored energy is also coherent energy. In fact, macroscopic life is stored energy. The whole earth is stored energy.
The electromagnetic waves created by our bodies are at the extremely low level of the frequency spectrum, yet because our bodies are coherent, they have the ability to amplify these waves, as well as waves encountered in the environment, in very meaningful ways—ways similar to what we saw previously in the description of the photon and the retina.
Mae-Wan Ho is not the only one identifying coherence as an integral function in the overall process of living organisms. Recently scientists at Berkeley Lab have been able to empirically detect coherence at work in plants. Photosynthesis, a plant’s ability to capture photons from the sun and transform them into green food for the plant to use later (stored energy) is now proven to be a coherent event. The photon captured by the chlorophyll molecule creates a resonance through the cells of the plant. The cells in turn amplify the photon into an instantaneous coherent conversion. Now the solar energy is transmuted into chemical energy throughout the plant.[xviii] This all happens in what is called a femtosecond, which is 10-15 of a second.
The single photon’s amplification in the photosynthetic process displays coherence at work. The plant is coherent at the macrophase level. The chlorophyll molecule has evolved a sensitivity to—an “intimacy” with—the photonic field of the sun. It is in resonance with it. This highly developed, acquired sensitivity has led to more complex organisms which thrive on photosynthetic life.
The nested systems of coherence exist from the micro level up into the macro level, from atoms to plants, humans to trees, planets and theoretically the solar system, the galaxy and the universe at large. It is important to remember that what the coherent system is exquisitely tuned to and able to amplify are electromagnetic messages in the environment, both naturally occurring and human created.
Earth took 4.5 billion years to form the delicately balanced, interrelated systems that work together to maintain homeostasis in the human body. These systems evolved within the context of the electromagnetic environment of Earth. The hippocampus and endocrine system are extremely receptive to electromagnetism. They are designed to listen for the electromagnetic messages and transfer them to the rest of the body.
Each individual will react differently to electromagnetic “smog,” depending on exposure, overall well-being and levels of stress or happiness. Our body’s responses to electromagnetic pollution are circuitous, not a clear, linear path of cause and effect. If the pineal gland is the master gland of the endocrine system, and its function is compromised, this could lead to a cascade of abnormal hormone production.
Communication runs amok. The body gets a bad or mistranslated signal from an unknown source and reacts, setting off a chain reaction, the end result looking nothing like the original communication. It is rather like a game of telephone played among children, where the ending sentence is far removed and unrecognizable from the original sentence uttered into the first child’s ear. If, however, we can finally appreciate that our coherent bodies are reacting electronically to the electronic messages they are receiving and amplifying these messages in ways never before imagined, this may offer us a better understanding of how to work with this energy safely.
~Theresa C. Dintino
[i] Pamela Eakins and Brian Swimme, The Lightning Papers (Unpublished manuscript, 2007) p. 2-26.
[ii] Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden, The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, (New York: William Morrow. 1985) p.245.
[iii] Words like frequency, duration, vibration, oscillation, resonance arise when we speak of this. For clarity: Frequency is the speed, the number of times the wave arises per second in a repetitive charge situation. Resonance is when frequencies match. When they match they are inclined to have more of an effect. Vibration is something moving. Duration the length of time is lasts and then there is oscillation: moving at a regular speed or that which creates and responds to electromagnetism. Fluctuation is an irregular pattern
[iv] Becker & Selden, p.249. Mae-Wan Ho, The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms, (Singapore: World Scientific.1999) p.137.
[v] Robert O. Becker, Crosscurrents: The Perils of Electropollution, The Promise of Electromedicine, (New York: Penguin. 1990) p.277.
[vi] In some scientific circles there is intense debate around whether or not the speed of light is the fastest speed in the universe. However, for now, it is the accepted scientific fact.
[vii] Mae-Wan Ho, The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms, (Singapore: World Scientific.1999) p.92
[viii] Brian Swimme, The Powers of the Universe, Disc 1, program 2, DVD (San Francisco, CA. The Center for the Story of the Universe & California Institute of Integral Studies , 2004)
[ix] Becker & Selden, p.264
[x]Paul Devereux, John Steele and David Kubrin, Earthmind, (New York: Harper & Row. 1989) p.78.
[xi] Lawrence K. Altman, “Alzheimer’s Disease Linked to Damaged Areas of Brain,” (New York Times, September 7, 1984) & Ron Sterling M.D., “How Stress Produces Major Depressive Disorder,” (www.MindMatters.ws, Dec. 12, 2006)
[xii] Elizabeth Cohen, CDC: “Antidepressants Most Prescribed Drugs in U.S.,” (CNN.com July 2007).
[xiii]Own Dyer, “Alzheimer’s Surges Unchecked,” (National Review of Medicine, June 30, 2007, volume 4, no.12)
[xiv] Leif G. Salford et al, “Nerve Cell Damage in Mammalian Brain after Exposure to Microwaves from GSM Mobile Phones,” (Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 111, number 7, June 2003.)
[xv] VS Belokrinitskiy, “Destructive & Reparative Processes in Hippocampus with Long Term Exposure to Non Ionizing Radiation,” (Effects of Non Ionizing Microwave Radiation, USSR Report, 1982)
[xvi] Mae-Wan Ho, The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms, (Singapore: World Scientific.1999)
[xvii] Mae-Wan Ho, “Bioenergetics & Biocommunication,” (www.ratical.org/co-globalize/Mae-WanHo/biocam95.htm/ March 2008)
[xviii] Lynn Yarris, “New Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis,” Science@BerkelyLab (http://www.lbl.gov.Science-Articles/Archives/sabl/2007/Jul/quantumSecrets.html, September, 2007)
