Alain Rifat, simulismblog.wordpress.com, wrote this for the Higg(in)s group to use while meditating on radioactivity and radioactive nuclear waste. It helps with visualization. It is posted here with permission of the author.

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF MATTER? by Alain Rifat

Physics has been trying to understand its nature for centuries, but it remains
evasive. There is no way to find a model compatible with the image we have of
it through our experience of the world acquired with our senses.

We perceive matter as concrete, solid… But analysis teaches us that it is
essentially made up of emptiness!

The mass of an atom is highly concentrated in a very small nucleus, while its
diameter is defined by tiny, almost massless particles: electrons, which carry
a strong negative electric charge. The peripheral electrons of neighboring
atoms strongly repel each other by their negative electric charge. We have the
impression that matter is hard only because the peripheral electrons of the
atoms of the object and those of our hand strongly repel each other. But in
reality, there is not really hard and concrete matter as we perceive it, but
electric fields that repel each other powerfully. If these fields did not exist, we
would interpenetrate each other like evanescent phantoms! No solidity!

In order to study an hypothetical influence of mind on matter, one would
benefit from metaphors that could create mind images useful in meditation.

A CONCRETE METAPHOR

Science started by imagining an atom as made up of a very dense nucleus
surrounded by electrons that revolve around it. But we very quickly understood
that this image could not be accurate. Atoms are now thought of as consisting
of a dense nucleus and electrons that vibrate in a space whose shape and
boundaries are blurred and different depending on the energy of the atom. It is
impossible to imagine finding an electron in a given place. We can only define
probabilities of the presence of matter particles in a fuzzy space.

The nuclei of atoms contain two different kinds of particles: protons and
neutrons. Their mass is very close, but protons have an electric field as strong
as that of an electron, but in the opposite direction, positive. They stay stuck
together and with the neutrons thanks to very strong energy fields. Most atoms
are stable. But those that are very heavy can be unstable and give rise to
lighter, stable atoms. Thorium, for example, is very heavy and unstable. The
atom can start a decay process that releases unstable derivatives in a
cascade until it turns into stable lead. This decay process is the source of
radioactivity, which can be expressed in the form of small helium gas nuclei
(alpha radiation), electrons (beta radiation) or photons (gamma radiation).

We can imagine the process by imagining a thorium atom with a large nucleus
composed of 232 vibrating particles and 90 electrons forming a cloud around
the nucleus. At a time that is impossible to predict for a given atom, a nucleus
breaks and emits a tiny atom composed of 4 nuclear particles and 2 electrons
(alpha radiation). Events of this type cascade until the thorium atom
disappears and is replaced by a stable lead atom. This cascade caused the
loss of 24 particles from the thorium nucleus and 8 electrons from its
peripheral shell. Nuclear particles and lost electrons are the source of
thorium’s radioactivity.

A PLATONIC METAPHOR

Modern physics discovers that the world we perceive with our senses is not
the fundamental world. It is the result of a fundamental form of reality that we
cannot perceive but which gives rise to the one we perceive with our senses, a
bit like the one Plato imagined in the myth of the cave. The prisoners turn their
backs to the entrance and see only the shadows cast on the wall in front of
them. They believe that this is the only reality when they only see a projection
of the shadows of real objects that are outside the cave. Objects are real and
their shadows are not. But since the prisoners have always perceived only
shadows, this is the only reality for them. The real objects of which they
perceive only the shadows exist in a reality which the prisoners are incapable
of imagining.

Physics describes a fundamental world that is purely mathematical,
computational, composed of mathematical objects represented by formulas
that allow us, in part, to describe their behavior. When these mathematical
and therefore immaterial objects interact with each other, they change their
nature and pass into the concrete reality that we perceive. The real objects
imagined by Plato would be mathematical objects for contemporary physics.
The shadows imagined by Plato would be the objects that we perceive as
concrete and real.

It is as if fundamental reality were purely computational: like a virtual reality
program that calculates the properties and behaviors of objects that we
perceive as real when they are not fundamentally so. It is when the virtual
reality program displays the results of its calculations, for example in the form
of three-dimensional holograms, that we perceive them as the concrete
objects in our reality. The shadows of Plato’s cave would be created by
projecting the result of the calculations of the virtual reality program onto the
screen of our consciousness.

In this perspective, we can imagine an atom of thorium in its fundamental
reality, in the form of a mathematical formula. An interaction of our intention
with this formula would initiate a transformation into another, slightly di erent
formula, which would be the one that describes a stable lead atom in our
reality.

A VIBRATORY METAPHOR

The most comprehensive model that modern physics uses represents the
entire universe as composed only of specific energy fields. An electron
becomes a localized vibration of the specific field of electrons, and which fills
the entire space. A proton would be a localized vibration of the specific field of
protons, and which fills all space, etc. An object composed of a myriad of
particles would be the sum of the vibrations of the particles that compose it:
an energy characterized by a complex wave composed of given frequencies of
vibrations. A wave that physics can represent using mathematical formulas.
The fundamental nature of an object becomes a very condensed form of
energy that physics represents in the form of a mathematical formula that
describes a wave, formed of vibrational frequencies.

In fundamental reality there is no di erence between what in our real world is
part of the world of material objects, and what is part of our psychic world. It is
only by passing from fundamental reality to perceived reality that the
separation between the physical and the psyche is created. In fundamental
reality, everything is mathematical, computerized. There is not yet a di erence
in nature between the physical and the psyche.

Modern physics imagines that the fundamental reality is the same for what we
perceive as material objects in our reality, and what we perceive as
consciousnesses in our reality. This interpretation of reality becomes
understandable in the context of Simulism. Indeed, consciousness and matter
would be described in a virtual reality program in the form of formulas of the
same mathematical nature. It is only when calculating the result of the
interactions that the differentiation between the result that we perceive as
immaterial consciousness and the result that we perceive as a material object
occurs.

In other words, the separation between matter and consciousness would be
made at the moment of the passage from the fundamental mathematical
reality to the reality perceived by our senses (material). There would be no
di erence in nature between a formula that describes a concrete object
(material for us in our reality) and a formula that describes a consciousness
(immaterial for us in our reality). This is how we can imagine an interaction
between matter and thought within the framework of fundamental reality,
before it gives rise to the material reality that we perceive.

The purpose of alchemy or magic, which is to act on matter through thought,
becomes conceivable, but only from the fundamental mathematical reality,
before it is transformed into the material reality perceived by our senses.
We can imagine that our immaterial consciousness remains very close to the
computer form that gives rise to it from fundamental reality. In the context of
Simulism, one could imagine that consciousness can interact with the virtual
reality program because it would be of the same nature as it: computational.
An object that we perceive as material could no longer act on the virtual reality
program since it would no longer be of the same nature. It would be the result
of calculations that would be displayed in the form that we are able to
perceive with our senses, a material form.

In this model, the brain does not create our consciousness like the liver
secretes bile. No. The brain would function as a kind of antenna immersed in
the field of a universal Consciousness, an information field from which it
would filter our individual consciousness, like a radio set tunes to a given
frequency that gives it access to a given program.

Within the framework of this interpretation of reality, we can imagine our
consciousness as a vibration characteristic of our identity, which would
interfere with the characteristic vibrations of thorium to modify them and
transform them into the characteristic vibrations of lead. Our consciousness
would have no need to know precisely what the exact frequencies of these
different vibrations would be. It only needs to concentrate on the intention of
realizing this interference for the universal Consciousness to do the rest.

Our individual consciousness, of an immaterial nature, would have access
through the universal Consciousness, to the virtual reality program, which is
also immaterial and could interfere with it to modify it. The feeling of the
personal Self, conscious of itself, would have access through the unconscious
to the much larger Self, to the soul, and then to the universal Consciousness.

An intention born in the individual consciousness could influence the virtual
reality program through the soul and then the universal Consciousness.
In this model, matter does not exist as such. It becomes a derivative, an object
calculated from a virtual reality program; a limited aspect of a universal
Consciousness which, on its own, would be real but of an information nature.

The search for an action of consciousness on the radioactivity of thorium
could be based on visualizations constructed from one or the other of these
metaphors. It might be interesting to study the magnitude of the possible
results depending on the metaphor chosen.