is do a thought experiment. Take a look at your hand. You know that it’s made up of tissues, blood, and bones. You may further realize that these things are each made of tiny cells, which are in turn made of minute proteins which are constructed from DNA and RNA . . . which are themselves made from molecules . . . which come from atoms . . . which come from . . . what?

Squint now . . . what comes next? Pretend that you’re seeing your hand down at its most basic level. It’s not solid at all, is it. See how there’s so much space between the atoms? What’s in that space? Nothing, you say? Emptiness? Empty space? Is that really what you’re made of?

This is where most people leave it. Good enough, they say. After all, what good is it to know more? Ninety-nine percent of us, no matter what our religion or philosophical bent, have been taught to believe in the doctrine of “dualism”: that your mind and soul are completely separate from your body. Mind and matter occupy different realms, and baby, they don’t tango. Whatever’s in that empty space is not for me to know. It’s some fuzzy border reality between matter and . . . what, God? Oh right, we don’t want to know.

So what’s wrong with this old way of thinking?

It’s just not working for us anymore.

old way of thinking, based on Descartes vision way back in the 1600s of “two realms” of existence, has broken down under the scrutiny of today’s quantum physics.

Mind and matter are becoming much harder to keep separate. In fact, the more you try to keep them apart, the more they seem to want to work together. Of course, for hundreds of years, Spiritualists and other forward-thinking groups have been suggesting that your mind and matter are really made of the same invisible stuff, and just like when you stick your finger in a pool of water and see the ripples moving away, when you think something, it can’t help but affect the matter (the world) around you. In fact, you really can’t separate them. Every thought you have disturbs the “water” around it in one way or another . . . for good or ill.

“Oh right,” said the old-guard scientists. “Your mind is only good for OBSERVING the matter around you, it can’t really affect it.”

“Not so,” say a surprising group of new scientists—from physics professors to mathematicians to biologists. A growing number are saying, “Well, your mind affecting your world—even creating your world—wouldn’t really contradict the laws of science after all, since these laws are evolving right under our noses . . . in fact it helps explain a lot of things!”

Like what? How about premonition. And intuition. And luck. And how like-attracts-like AND how “opposites attract.” And how you “know” when certain things will happen, and when they won’t. It’s how your dog knows to be waiting for you when you walk in the door, and how ”the strangest coincidences" occur in your life. It’s how being near a healthy, positive person can cause an ill person to get well . . . or vice versa. It’s how you suddenly think of your friend the minute the phone rings, and it’s her.

Oh, we’re on to something very big, indeed.

So what does this mean to the “two realms” theory? It’s gone the way of the dinosaur. Today, we’ve begun talking about the Zero-Point Field. and multi-dimensional space. And for this little thought experiment, the most important thing . . . a new way of looking at your own mind.