How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival Read online

  The novelist and playwright Robert Anton Wilson captured some of the flavor of the PCRG happenings in an article published in a Bay Area underground newspaper in 1976. Sarfatti, Sirag, and Nick Herbert had conducted a seminar on “Quantum physics and the transformation of consciousness” at Pajaro Dunes on Monterey Bay. Wilson reported that one participant had nicknamed the seminar a “quantum wonderland,” although Wilson preferred his own labels of “a psychedelic Mensa” and “Zen physics seminar” instead. “This is some kind of epistemological Encounter Group, right?” another had asked. “As Physics/Consciousness organizer Dr. Jack Sarfatti said, sounding remarkably like Esalen or est, ‘The observer is part of the data; maybe the observer even creates the data. There is no universe without you. You are essential,’” Wilson reported. A highlight for Wilson came when Nick Herbert played a recording of the sounds that came out of his metaphase typewriter. “We listened, I can assure you, as raptly as John Lilly ever listened to his dolphins,” Wilson relayed. “The Physics/Consciousness Research Group is into encountering quantum reality totally—intellectually, emotionally, intuitively,” he went on. “It accepts that the universe really is quite different from our traditional Aristotelian logic, Euclidean geometry and Newtonian causality,” and hence that the universe of modern physics might best be described “in the metaphors of Zen, Taoism and Vedanta, or even in the language of parapsychology, ESP and shamanism.” At last, “the climax of the seminar was decentralized and appropriately Taoist,” Wilson concluded, “as we split up into small bull-sessions to mull a bit on The Meaning Of It All.”22

  Some of the group’s seminars met in the Nob Hill headquarters; others were held at local community colleges. They developed lecture series on the philosophy of quantum mechanics, possibilities for communication with extraterrestrials, physical models of the mind and brain, and “Science and religion in an uncertain quantum reality.” Even the more traditional topics acquired a distinctive spin. Sarfatti’s presentations on the development of quantum mechanics started out in a by-then standard way, recounting major developments by Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and others, and marched in short order to Puthoff, Targ, and remote viewing. The group launched a quarterly newsletter to keep subscribers up-to-date on the latest seminar offerings. They also began sending their pamphlets and preprints to a wide and eclectic group: everyone from the movie mogul Francis Ford Coppola and Uri Geller’s associate, Andrija Puharich, to renowned physicists like John Wheeler and Richard Feynman and the editors of Nature and Scientific American.23 All the while, the group’s ties to Werner Erhard and his brand of self-improvement were never far from the surface. Flyers encouraged participants to use “the metaphors arising out of relativity, quantum physics, and the thermodynamics of information”—as detailed in the group’s seminars and pamphlets—as “useful tools for you to create new ways of handling personal and professional relationships.”24

  For a time, Sarfatti enjoyed close interactions with Erhard. When a critic tried to tar the PCRG by association with Erhard, once Erhard’s est workshops had begun to receive some negative publicity, Sarfatti shot back. “Mr. Erhard and I share a warm personal relationship,” he made plain, “that enriches both of our lives independent of ideological and scientific beliefs.”25 In addition to the start-up funds provided by Erhard’s charitable foundation, Sarfatti arranged for “several small grants from the personal account of Werner Erhard” to further the efforts of PCRG members, including a grant of $1500 to Fritjof Capra. A separate check for $2500 came from Erhard’s foundation to support Saul-Paul Sirag’s continuing research into physics and consciousness.26

  Building on Erhard’s generous support, the PCRG expanded its circle of donors. George Koopman, yet another eccentric entrepreneur, became one of the group’s most significant backers. He had served as a military intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War. Some have alleged that when Koopman met members of the PCRG in the mid-1970s he was still working as an undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency, covering what was known colloquially as the “nut desk”—that is, checking up on reports of UFOs and other occult or paranormal phenomena.27 In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, neither the CIA nor the FBI would confirm or deny that Koopman had ever been on their payrolls; the National Security Agency did confirm that Koopman never worked for them. The Defense Intelligence Agency reported finding no records associating Koopman with the PCRG, but remained mum on whether Koopman had ever worked for the agency.28 What is known for certain is that Koopman worked for a time making military training films as a contractor for the government. In fact, during the time he was sponsoring PCRG events, the FBI received a complaint against Koopman’s filmmaking company, alleging that Koopman’s firm had committed fraud against the U.S. government by acting on inside information from a local Air Force office. The tip, at least according to the complaint, had enabled Koopman’s firm to lower its bid and hence squeeze out competition for a particular film project. After vetting the information provided by the FBI, the local assistant U.S. attorney declined to pursue the matter.29

  Koopman’s passion for filmmaking extended well beyond the occasional military training film. He coordinated stunts for the sleeper hit comedy The Blues Brothers (1980), starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, including several car chases and the famous scene in which a police car fell onto the roof of a tall building, having been suspended by an (off-camera) helicopter.30 Koopman liked to make things blast off as well as fall down. His next major venture was to found the American Rocket Company, a private firm specializing in low-cost delivery systems for launching payloads into space. In the midst of all those activities, Koopman became enamored of the Physics/Consciousness Research Group. He financed one of the group’s seminars at a ranch in Sonoma County during the summer of 1976, and participated in Berkeley discussion series as well, all while co-writing a book with psychedelics guru Timothy Leary.31

  With cash flowing in from the likes of Erhard and Koopman, along with more modest donations from several other backers, the PCRG began to flourish. By its second year the organization had an annual operating budget of $35,000 (more than $130,000 in 2010 dollars). A big chunk went to rent, but most was spent on salaries for Sarfatti and Sirag and consulting fees to Nick Herbert, Fritjof Capra, Fred Alan Wolf, and others. The group’s official profit and loss statement for 1976 showed additional loans ranging from $625 to $2500 paid to various group officers and consultants, over and above their salaries and consulting fees.32 At least for a time, the physicists’ gamble paid off: they began to thrive outside the usual funding model.

  These overlapping discussion groups, experimental institutes, and public education forums merged in January 1976 for the first annual workshop on physics and consciousness at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Nestled in the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean roughly 150 miles south of San Francisco, Esalen had served since its founding in 1962 as an incubator of the New Age movement. (Fig. 5.1.) Amid its large wooden buildings, famous hot-spring baths, and dramatic cliffside ocean views, Esalen had hosted informal workshops on everything from gestalt therapy and “transpersonal psychology” to the consciousness-expanding capacities of psychedelic drugs and Eastern mysticism. Critics dismissed the place as “a valhalla for frivolous self-absorptions,” though even they agreed by the 1980s that much of what had seemed novel about Esalen’s offerings had gradually seeped into the American cultural mainstream. One of the institute’s founders, Michael Murphy, had long been fascinated (like Erhard) by the possibilities for “human potential” latent within modern science. Indeed, the cover of Esalen’s first printed catalog, announcing its 1962 seminar series, featured a fancy-looking calculus equation alongside a lotus flower, redolent with mystico-religious symbolism from Buddhist and Hindu traditions.33

  FIGURE 5.1. The Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, hosted a long-running workshop series on Bell’s theorem, nonlocality, and their significance for human consciousness
. (Courtesy Daniel Bianchetta.)

  A chance encounter had set Esalen’s Michael Murphy onto the metaphysical track. Back in 1950, during his sophomore year at Stanford University, Murphy arrived at the wrong classroom, looking for a class on social psychology but landing instead in a course on comparative religion. The mesmerizing professor he stumbled upon opened Murphy’s mind to the wide range of Eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism, and soon the young Murphy was hooked. The religious studies became more than an academic exercise; within months the former Episcopalian altar boy from a wealthy California family had forged a new personal faith, drawing equal inspiration from Indian Vedanta and Darwinian evolution. After a brief stint in the army during the mid-1950s—where he got in the habit of rising before morning reveille to meditate—he set off on a sixteen-month pilgrimage to a remote ashram in India. Ever the cultural hybrid, Murphy kept up his boyhood love of golf during his journey, and even taught his fellow adepts at the Indian commune how to play softball. Soon after he returned to the United States, he opened the Esalen Institute on a patch of coastal land that his family had owned for generations.34

  By the early 1970s, Murphy was in regular contact with Werner Erhard, the two having come to symbolize the emerging California human potential movement. After donating early start-up funds to the PCRG, Erhard was also in contact with Sarfatti, Sirag, and several of the other physicists.35 Murphy, in turn, invited Sarfatti to organize a month-long workshop at Esalen on “Physics and consciousness,” open to invited participants during the weekdays and to the curious (and fee-paying) public on weekends. Murphy and Sarfatti announced the upcoming “Physics month” in the Esalen catalog. The sessions would focus on “some of the conceptual gaps and possibilities in theoretical physics and the relevance of modern physical thought for consciousness transformation on the planet.” “One of the key questions,” they clarified, “will concern the role of consciousness in the interpretation of quantum mechanics.” Murphy, for one, hoped that the unique features of Esalen would stir some creative juices. “Perhaps a new kind of inspired physicist, experienced in the yogic modes of perception, must emerge to comprehend the further reaches of matter, space, and time.” When it came to yogic modes of perception, Esalen was the place.36

  Sarfatti set about lining up speakers. He tried to entice Caltech physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, who had already enjoyed a taste of what Esalen had to offer. (Feynman participated in a 1974 Esalen workshop led by John and Toni Lilly on sensory deprivation, out-of-body experiences, and some of their budding research on communication with dolphins.) “As director of the workshop,” Sarfatti began, “I would very much appreciate your alive presence and hope that you will share your wisdom and genius with us!”37 Feynman demurred. Despite his wide-ranging interests, Feynman had long been skeptical about philosophy. One of his many beloved anecdotes, told and retold late in life, centered on his frustration with a philosophy course through which he had suffered as an undergraduate. Even as he grappled with quantum theory in his own research, moreover, Feynman had consistently downplayed the kinds of philosophical engagement that Sarfatti and crew were seeking to pursue. Feynman had admonished his graduate students (and later the many readers of his influential textbooks) that the thorny matters of how to interpret the quantum formalism were all “in the nature of philosophical questions. They are not necessary for the further development of physics.”38 Thus when he received Sarfatti’s invitation to the Esalen workshop, Feynman shot back a brief and characteristically humorous reply: “Due to the fact my doctor tells me I have labile blood pressure, I think it best that I do not attend because I know I would surely get involved in arguments.”39

  Others were more easily persuaded. Most members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group participated. Sarfatti also convinced David Finkelstein to attend. At the time Finkelstein was chair of the physics department of Yeshiva University in New York City; he would soon become director of Georgia Tech’s School of Physics and editor of the International Journal of Theoretical Physics. Finkelstein had been toiling for a decade on an idiosyncratic approach to quantum gravity, long before that had become a mainstream topic among American physicists. Like so many others, Finkelstein had learned to leave such foundational topics alone during his graduate training at MIT in the early 1950s. That all changed during the mid-1960s when he volunteered two summers as a visiting professor at Tougaloo College, in Mississippi, as part of the Freedom Rides. During that time “I met some of the bravest people I know,” Finkelstein recalled recently. “I felt so ashamed,” he said: here were people laying everything on the line for something they believed in, putting themselves in harm’s way to go knocking, door-to-door, to help register African Americans to vote. “They were doing such brave things. So I dropped everything,” and put all his energies into what he had always wanted to do: develop a proper quantum-mechanical understanding of gravity. He had already derived a now-famous result about black holes. Now he pressed further. Did quantum mechanics demand its own formal logic structure? Could space-time itself be quantized? By the late 1960s, his work had begun to appear in dribs and drabs; few took any notice. Finkelstein decided to beat the bushes. He sought out Feynman in 1975 and was not disappointed. “I had not had such a discussion before and do not expect one since,” he wrote by way of thanks. “I imagined when I was reading the classic physics books that if I worked hard and had luck, some day I might find a place at the feast of reason, and that morning [at Caltech] I did.”40

  More feasts would soon follow. Sarfatti had been one of the few to notice Finkelstein’s papers on “space-time code,” and he invited Finkelstein to the Esalen workshop. By the time the invitation caught up with Finkelstein, he was already back in California for more face time with Feynman. The timing fit perfectly between Finkelstein’s scheduled talks at Caltech and Berkeley. “I meant to spend one day at Esalen,” Finkelstein recalled, “but wound up spending a week.”41

  Sarfatti expanded the speaker list beyond physicists. One prominent participant was Karl Pribram, the famous neurosurgeon and psychiatrist at Stanford University whose early work had clarified the structure and function of the human brain’s limbic system and prefrontal cortex. At the time, Pribram was focusing on the question of consciousness from the vantage of neuroscience rather than quantum physics. Writing just days after the Esalen workshop had wrapped up, Pribram enthused to Werner Erhard about how much he had gotten from the experience. He had been “amazed at how little they [the physicists] knew about brain function,” and was “pleased to find that they were enthralled by what has been accomplished” in the field. At the same time, “I was able to sharpen up many of my ideas on the possible configurations that the ‘real’ world might take. A goodly number of the ideas I have to work with come from physics and the interaction allowed me to express what I thought and to have misconceptions corrected.” Most important to Pribram had been the format of the meeting. “The relaxed and informal atmosphere at Esalen leads to a kind of interchange which has become almost impossible anywhere else and I am grateful for being able to participate.”42

  Relaxed and informal it was. The Esalen workshop shaped up as half academic conference, half carnival. Speakers were slotted into twohour sessions and offered the usual array of audiovisual equipment: overhead projector, 35-millimeter slide projector, blackboard. There the similarities to academe came to an end. Speakers wore crystals “as badge of office”; “large quartz and amethyst crystals were deployed around the room for beauty’s sake and for their possible energy-transducing qualities.” The goal was “to break the old scientific conference mold in which people standing at lecterns deliver formal papers to people sitting in chairs,” Nick Herbert explained when preparing a follow-up workshop. “We wanted to become more mind-expanded, democratic, participatory, and delocalized, in the spirit of the New Physics. No problem at Esalen. There were no chairs to begin with, and the hot tubs, candles, and incense proved to be effective delocalization devices.�
� When things got slow, people could always wander the grounds, get a massage, look out over the cliffs, or let their LSD trips take them where they may.43 (Fig. 5.2.) Of course, some rules did apply. “Class space in the [hot-spring] baths must be reserved” through the central office, Esalen’s conference staff reminded the organizers. Likewise, “If you use breathing methods in your workshops we ask that you inform all group members in advance of the contraindications involved.” Most important: “Esalen policy excludes acting out of aggression in a way that might lead to physical injury. We ask that no group leader use coercion or pressure any person to participate in a way he or she does not choose.” Good thing Feynman skipped after all.44