by Wolfgang G. Berger [1]

published in: The Journal of Natural Science, Washington, D.C.

The most prominent starlet in Japanese showbusiness is Kyoko Date. Seventeen years young, sexy, with perfect body proportions she is in the best of health, charming and modest, extremely efficient and endlessly patient. Although she is to be seen and heard everywhere in videoclips, on radio and on television she remains free from airs and graces and unencumbered by scandals. An American newsmagazine described her as "the woman of our dreams". Her beauty and charm can be admired on CD ROM and in the Internet. Her first musical production "Love Communication" was a hit right from the start. Numerous commercials, a TV show, a live concert and feature films with this "ideal girl" are all in preparation.

Kyoko has lots of advantages over the rest of us normal earth inhabitants: she loves nibbling chocolate but never gets caries or puts on weight with it, she can take a whole load of stress but never gets irritated, and - she doesn't age. Her face is made up of 40000 pixels. Fifteen market researchers, artists and computer scientists of the Horipro Company have worked under Yoshitaka Hori, the man in charge, behind the tinted glass faÁade of an elegant skyscraper in Tokyo's district Meguro and have brought the girl to life in a computer. So what Boeing engineers have successfully put on show with the prototype 777, i.e. construction planning totally conceived in a computer and without any model, was now capable of being transferred to the human field.

[Abbildung Kyoko Date]

In the film "Twister" The Industrial Light & Magic Company created a virtual whirlwind that swirls up dust and water, wrecks houses, sweeps cows and tankers through the air and puts the spectator slap-bang into the center of destruction. Is Kyoko, is the simulated airplane construction, is the virtual whirlwind not a reality? What difference is there between Kyoko's reality and the photo of a lively young seventeen-year-old girl, conventional aircraft construction, and filming a real whirlwind on our earth?

Why then in our daily work do we follow the Biblical curse and labor "in the sweat of our brows" in our "real" reality? In virtual reality it would be so much easier for us. Do we suffer maybe from a loss of reality because we have not yet freed ourselves from physical reality? What can a woman of flesh and blood who can never ever be perfect anyway offer in comparison with an impeccable female formed after men's dreams, cloned to perfection, the virtual ideal - "Digital Kid!" Horrible, this expulsion from paradise. Or do we suffer from a loss of reality when we dare to free ourselves, transcend our physical limits, and step into a virtual world?

The reality of the Middle Ages included witches, all kinds of ghosts, giants and dwarves, elves and gnomes, spirits and angels as well as Heaven and Hell in the "world beyond". The world "beyond" was considered to be a reality beyond the immediately perceptible in the here and now. Isaac Newton's physics reduced reality to matter and thereby replaced not only faith by scientific knowledge; his physics created the mental foundation for the replacement of the authority of the Church by the authority of the economy.

Where only matter counts as real, institutions dealing with a non-physical world beyond cannot be of true relevance anymore. Where only matter is "real" it is not the one who pleases God who receives the highest reward. The reward in the world beyond is worthless, because it is not real. Where only matter is considered to be real, that part of our culture concerned with planning, manufacturing and distribution of material goods must be given the highest ranking. The highest reward is given to the employer who puts the desired material and therefore valuable goods best at our disposal.

"Good" is defined in Economics as "productive". Better means more productive and best means most productive, with the highest productivity. This highest productivity means a certain result is reached with the lowest possible input or a certain investment brings forth the largest possible result. This was our reality of the last two centuries. It bestowed upon us industrialization with all its blessings and curses. It changed mankind and our planet Earth at a speed and to an extent that was formerly inconceivable and therefore unrealistic.

Thanks to industrialization a large part of mankind enjoys a standard of living that was inconceivable just a hundred years earlier - i.e. could not be conceived and therefore not become a concept in reality. There are many indications that now, at the turn of the Millennium, we are again at a turning-point that - like a few centuries ago - was first highlighted by philosophy and then by sciences, before it became manifest in the physical reality.

Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] assumes that present, past and future are a unity which being thought in the "now" and being defined in the "now" - are created by it - by this thinking. Martin Heidegger [2] says, that "the world civilization - which is only just beginning - will some time overcome its technical and scientific character as the only definition for progress in the world", and that there exists "a field in thinking that goes beyond the differentiation between rational and irrational". If reality is defined by thinking - and that means also created by thinking - as ontological philosophy indicates - it follows that there exists a reality "beyond" rationality, i.e. beyond all that the human mind is able to conceive. Here again this tricky "world beyond".

Modern physics teaches that matter does not consist of elementary particles but of the movement of the elementary particles. The atom's diameter measures around a millionth of a millimeter. If we enlarge the nucleus of an atom to the size of a cherry stone, then the size of the electrons circling on the orbit around it corresponds to a grain of sand. The distance in which this grain of sand orbits the cherry stone at high speed corresponds to the length of a soccer field. So what the past centuries, which are now coming to their end, defined as physical reality turns out to consist of almost completely NOTHING.

Take the billions of neutrinos, elementary particles not "linked" to an atomic nucleus, which race through the earth's globe, including our human bodies every second without even noticing its or their existence. So small is the probability that within this gigantic emptiness they will hit another elementary particle.

If we enlarged our elementary grain of sand to the size of a human body, the complementary soccer field would assume about the size of the earth's surface. If we walked around there all our life the probability of meeting a possibly existing second human being, would be very small. In this case our wanderings on the earth surface are not real according to our conventional thinking. The soccer field around the elementary grain of sand does not exist as a physical field at all, but only as a forcefield, in which the centrifugal force of the grain of sand and the centripetal force of the cherry stone are exactly balanced. And so we could never in fact wander round our earthsize soccer field, instead we would have to jet around in a miniature spaceship alone in orbit and perhaps eternally in everlasting nothingness.

Through our movement the illusion of a planetary globe would arise for a cosmic observer similarly to the illusion of a solid disc created by the wing of a propeller rotating at medium speed for a human eye. If we accelerate the rotary speed of this propeller, the solid disc disappears and our eyes can no longer see that there is something there. However, if we stick our finger into this invisible disc, it will be cut off. A level of reality invisible to our eye is absolutely capable of cutting off our finger.

The knowledge that reality does not necessarily have to be visible is not new. We must go one step further: there is a reality that is not measurable for us, for our technology, for our physics and - let us stick to our example - it can still cut off our finger. We see the effect, but cannot recognize the cause, because it comes from a different reality to ours.

One of the most significant physicists of the 20th century, Stephen W. Hawking [3], says, that our physical universe coexists in the same space with another universe of "dark matter". This "dark matter" has a frequency range that can neither be observed nor recorded from the frequency range of our existence. In the terminology of ontological philosophy this matter is beyond our reality. It is so-called "dark" because it is not accessible to us. Theoretical physics, however, has proved that it must exist. Is it therefore reality? Yes, it is in the computations of theoretical physics. No, it is not according to the definitions of our matter.

Hugh Everett who together with Stephen Hawking wrote a pioneering article in theoretical physics on "The Wave Function of the Universe", not only mentions two, but several worlds which are equally real and probably inaccessible for each other. They exist simultaneously without taking notice of each other.

We can recognize this construction principle in biology, where different species of animals and plants share the same habitat, partly living on each other, partly side by side and partly together. In biology species are distinguished from each other following a criterion of genetics: living things, between which a genetic combination is not possible - which in the terminology of the Old Testament are not able to "know" each other - belong to different species. Transferring this analogy to physics: worlds that are unable to "know" each other belong to different realities.

Our reality is not only described but also defined by our thinking. Our thinking consequently limits our reality as well. Different thinking therefore creates a different reality. This - ontological - philosophy is compatible with the many realities in the same space and at the same time - realities that are "dark" to each other i.e. unknown, which means that it is also compatible with angels and devils who - at the same time and in the same space - exist along with us in a different and for us inaccessible reality, because of their difference in thinking.

From an ontological point of view we are like the six blind men from Indostan [4] of whom each one touches a different part of an elephant - the belly, a tusk, the trunk, a leg, an ear, the tail. Therefore to each of the six an entirely different elephant appears: a wall, a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan and a snail. The complete reality of the elephant cannot be grasped by any of the six, because they cannot see it. Physics leads us to the conclusion that we are all blind and that it is not possible for any of us to grasp the whole reality, because we are humans and therefore blind to other realities.
 

Innerhalb Within our given perceptible world we are still able to think out our reality, to stipulate the definitions by making decisions. Let us try to breathe life into this abstract concept: the theory of the "self-fulfilling prophecy" comes from Robert K. Merton [5]. Merton shows with a historic example that a bank with a proved creditworthiness and liquidity was driven to bankruptcy by the rumor of insolvency. George Soros, a philosopher and financial mogul reports how his own sales of British currency observed by the markets forced a devaluation of the pound, although Great Britain's Central Bank and the British Government tried to avoid it at almost any price.

Pedagogical research proved that the teacher's judgement does not depend on the students' performance, but that it is the other way round: the students' performance depends on the teacher's judgement. Research in management indicated that it is not the judgement of the employers that depends on the result of the employees' work but on the contrary that the employees' work depends on the employer's judgement. The plot of the ancient Greek tragedies deal mainly with one topic: the tragic hero, who tries to avoid his fate at all costs, is eventually entangled by it. And Job, the prophet [7] tells us: "What I feared has come upon me. What I worried about, has hit me".

In Business Reframing [8] it is shown that there is a general law of resonance that builds the basis of these phenomena, a law whose consequences are astonishing: it is not the causes that produce effects, but the effects that seek the causes they need in order to be manifested, form the causes and attract them. This reversed causality is the secret of a creative power that invalidates the limits of time and space.

Our existence is effect with a certain wave function, with a certain vibratory pattern that reacts to similar vibratory patterns like a tuning fork. Vibrations that do not correspond to its eigenfrequency are not perceptible and this means they do not exist for it. The universe visible and measurable to us is modulated on a certain "wave function", we can also say: included in this wave function or tied to it. Man's existence is tied to narrow limits; the thinking of his mind, however, is not.

One who thinks differently, communicates in a different way. He sends out different waves and receives different signals. By this he becomes a different human being. Thoughts are a "wave function", too. They produce vibrations in the neurons of our brain [9]. When the thoughts are powerful, the neuronal fields originating in our brain thereby expand far beyond our body limits. By my thoughts I decide which "neuronal fields" I build up or which ones I tune into, to which outer influences I open my mind up or close it to. By my thoughts I determine the reality I perceive. In other words: I decide what is real to me by my thinking.

When religion talks of "heaven" that is above, then it is not the blue atmosphere surrounding the earth which is meant, and therefore it is above as well as below. Religion does not mean a "heavenly" galaxy somewhere in the expanse of the universe but a higher frequency overlying the lower vibrations. And when religion talks about "hell" as below it does not mean by this the glowing center of our planet, but a lower vibration that can exist in the same space. We associate "high" with bright and "low" with dark. Both, the light of heaven and the darkness of hell are here. Where we are depends on the field we build around us. It is up to us to think, to be, to vibrate in a way that where we are is "above".

The physical forms are only a camouflage and our five senses are specialized in the perception of this camouflage and they do not see the reality behind it. "Do you believe indeed that such humans have ever seen anything different of themselves or of each other apart from the shadow of the fire cast by the fire onto the opposite wall in a cave?", Plato asks in his cave allegory, and thus explains our materialistic illusion. Our material reality is the shadow of a higher spiritual reality. And this projects the shadow depending on the direction it is radiating, and corresponding to the intensity with which it is shining. We can imagine this higher and more encompassing reality as an electromagnetic or thermic reality in which every thought becomes immediately visible. The intensity of communication depends on the strength of a feeling. Telepathic forces act and they manifest - cause - what one feels. Our thinking is the wave function that our physical reality is modulated on. Merely physical causes do not exist. Only effects exist on the physical level. The vibration level at which causes have an effect is a "different" reality, one we can neither see nor measure, not even prove by the methods we regard as "scientific".

This "other" world has very concrete effects in our reality, quite similar to the propeller wing that is invisible due to its rotary speed, but that nevertheless can cut off a finger. Since we deny the existence of the propeller from another reality, we speak in cases of unexplainable events of good or bad luck according to signs we interpret - or neutrally as coincidence. Since the introduction of the theory of probabilities by Blaise Pascal, also incidents that have "happened" to us - coincidences - can be quantified. The term probable indicates that it only deals with what appears to be true, an error. Truth lies behind a frontier that cannot be transcended by our intellect. If only an apparent truth - an error - is what we regard as probable, then the existence of improbability points to what is the truth.

Every event that was improbable is the manifestation of causes from another reality into ours. And whether we like it or not, it is no good looking outside and making the bad weather responsible, or the bad government, the bad laws, the bad employees, colleagues or bosses, the bad education by our parents or the many - other - bad people, whether we like it or not, we have to look inside ourselves - in Latin it is called "intueri" - and ask our intuition by what thinking we attracted the undesired event - by what kind of thinking we created the unknown reality which now has an effect on our shadow reality in this world.

Confucius [10] described these mechanisms two thousand five hundreds years ago:

"When in former times the leaders wished prosperity for their subjects, they tried to guide their undertakings wisely. In order to guide their undertakings wisely they strived first to bring order into their families. When striving to bring order into their families they had to be prepared primarily to become good people. In endeavoring to become good people, they tried to purify their hearts. To get pure hearts they endeavored to have only honest thoughts. When striving after honest thoughts they worked at broadening their knowledge. And through enlarging their knowledge they found out about the motives of men's deeds".

After they had discovered the motives behind people's deeds their knowledge increased. Because of their great knowledge they had only honest thoughts. Their honest thoughts purified their hearts. As soon as their hearts became pure, they became good people. As good people they succeeded in bringing order into their families. With ordered families they could guide their undertakings wisely. And after they wisely arranged their undertakings they experienced affluence and prosperity for themselves and their subjects.

Confucius' "motives" for people's deeds lie in another reality from which they have effects on our physical reality. This other reality is characterized by its vibratory pattern - just as our physical reality, too. Every reality is characterized only by its vibratory pattern (Everett's and Hawking's wave function). This also means that each reality is just as real as another one. There is nothing that can justify the assumption of a higher degree of reality when looking at our physical reality versus Confucius' "motive reality".

This "motive reality" is shaped by our thinking. Our thinking is therefore responsible for everything that befalls us, we accidentally experience or that happens to us in this world. There exists nothing accidental in the sense of the probability theory. Albert Einstein put this in pictorial terms: "God does not throw dice".

The process of industrialization is the result of many individual and nevertheless interwoven thought patterns of scientists, pioneers and businessmen. Many of us enjoy their blessings. Many others, however, have suffered from its curses. Gerhard Hauptmann took the theme of this suffering in his naturalistic drama "The Weavers" to create an impressive poetic work. Many others - in recent times unemployed persons in the industrialized countries as well - do still suffer from it. The "makers" behind industrialization have accepted that it produces victims. These were just the collective price that had to be paid for the realization of their vision. The way of thinking of the "makers" produced more powerful neuronal fields than the ones of their victims and - as usual - the more powerful fields materialized.

Culprits are always stronger than victims. But when we introduce the model of causes from a world beyond for effects in this world, then both thought processes are equal causal factors of what happens. Culprits as well as victims equally "vibrate" in the large neuronal field "mankind", in which their different roles from a higher point of view are mutually determined, neutralized and cut short. It is like a family tragedy that is none of an outsider's business as long as they are not involved personally.

The concept of such a "closed model mankind" has been valid for a long time, also presumably at the beginning of industrialization. Today it does not apply any more, because culprits and victims are no longer just human beings - so to say they no longer belong to the same family which should solve the problem internally. The whole of mankind claims dominance over another neuronal field: the one of Nature, the one of planet Earth. Her subtle and sensitive ecological and climatic balance is being destroyed by interventions that serve a momentary standard of living.

Collective consciousness is a possible transcription for collective neuronal fields. The collective consciousness of humanity is presently obsessed by the striving for economic growth at any price. A planet, too, has a consciousness. As far as we know this does not originate from thinking, but also from wave functions in another reality inaccessible to us, from which its behavior depends. The planet Earth does in fact consciously react to disturbances of her balance caused by her human guests.

We can also define quality of thinking as integrity of thinking. Integrity of thinking is conscious of all possible consequences of its own thoughts, and is consequently honest and harmless in every conceivable way. Harmless thoughts never cause harm to anyone. That is why they can be open and openly made public, too. No one must hide such thoughts. In the reality of thinking there are no invisible thoughts anyway, just like in our physical world there are no invisible houses, roads or cars.

Thoughts harming others show a wave affinity: their vibrations are similar and attract one another. Accordingly, whoever harms others in his thoughts, harms himself in the unknown thinking reality. And since our physical reality is governed by the reality of thinking beyond, the evil we think eventually catches up on the evil thinker.

If mankind as a whole in its striving for reckless economic growth harms its host planet, then the damage must catch up on mankind on a very concrete physical level. It is a waste of research funds to look for physical causes and to set up a "repair service" on a physical level.

Integrity in thinking requires respect for the entire creation,

which is holy, and also for the physical creation

which is only a mirror of a higher reality.

Whoever has this insight is bound to act in everyday life with integrity, for instance as a manager or a politician leading their business or state according to the known criteria to sustain ecological balance:

Consumption of nature must be included in the total costs. When the costs for the restoration of nature are included in the prices and as a cost factor are passed on, then the markets force ecological responsibility. This criterion also implies that a non-renewable consumption of nature must be prohibited, just as a waste of human life is prohibited and is treated as a serious crime in all civilized countries on earth.

Technical risks may only be incurred when they are insured (and not just insurable, as it is often assumed). Non-insurable risks may not be incurred at all, because all the world's capital is not enough to cover the damage possibly caused. And risks not insured may not be incurred, because the world's capital refuses to be legally responsible for them. If the risk to be incurred seems to be too high for the capital, should then the have-nots of the world be taken hostage paying with their lives instead?

Thinking and acting with integrity create, more or less, automatically quality of living, because the processes of this physical world are governed by a reality beyond in a way acceptable to all. Integrity knows no victims, because all the consequences of one's own thinking and actions are taken into account. A person of integrity cannot become a victim him- or herself. Quality of thinking cannot lead us to give up the meaningful achievements of our civilization, nor to return physically to a pre-industrial standard. Quality of thinking creates quality of living by acting in a considerate, courteous and harmonious way. Creating quality of living by quality of thinking means a big evolutionary step for mankind. This new kind of thinking - like every new way of thinking - will set new guidelines for the actions of mankind. And as usual when people have new guidelines in life, this will change the world together with them. The causal chains linked to the past cease to count. Previous experiences are worthless. New thinkers create new structures, they are creators of a new world. This is the only possible future for mankind. If this is not created by a new way of thinking, it cannot be manifested in reality. And then mankind can have no future.

Friedrich Hayeks' [11] core thesis, according to which economy needs a strictly ordered political and legal framework in order to be able to produce efficiently a standard of living, must be complemented today by a core thesis of Business Reframing: the economy needs a strict ethical and ecological framework to be able to produce efficiently a quality of living. For this we all must evolve from little magicians, as such we contribute to the prosperity of industrial society and "rotate" from the solution of one detailed problem to another one, to great magicians who feel responsible for the whole - as "planetary entrepreneurs".

The little magician is hungry and waves his magic wand to produce his favorite meal. But the fruits have gone dry, because the river itself has dried up. Thereupon the great magician, whom even the weather obeys, goes on a long and arduous journey to the source, where the good fruits grow and takes them to the little magician. The latter looks bewildered at his Master: "Why didn't you simply conjure up some rain?" "I used to do that", the greater magician answers, "but the consequences were dreadful".

In a workshop two TV-sets are turned on, facing each other. The presenter of the evening news in one of them is totally distracted by the enchanting Kyoko on the other TV-set, and interrupts his program:

"Come into my arms", he whispers, "forever". "How should I", she answers. "It is not possible on my frequency. It wouldn't be good for you, either. You would no longer recognize your world as mirror of yourself and learn from it. And then you would have to do without me. Forever".

(c) Copyright 1997-2005, Wolfgang G. Berger. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of THE BUSINESS REFRAMING INSTITUT GmbH, Germany.

[1] Wittgenstein, L. (1984): Werke - Gesamtausgabe in acht Bänden. - Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M.

[2] Heidegger, M. (1988): Zur Sache des Denkens. - Niemeyer, Tübingen.

[3] Hawking, S. W. (1990): A Brief History of Time. - Bantam Press, London.

[4] Saxe, J. G.: The Blind Men and the Elephant (Gedicht in 9 Strophen).

[5] Merton, R. K. (1964): Social Theory and Social Structure. - Free Press, New York.

[6] Soros, G. (1996): Le dèfit de l'argent. - Plon, Paris.

[7] Altes Testament: Das Buch Hiob 3/25.

[8] Berger, W. (1996): Business Reframing - Das Ende der Moden im Management. - Gabler, Wiesbaden.

[9] Varela, F. J. / Thompson, E. / Rosch, E. (1993): The Embodied Mind - Cognitive Science and Human Experience. - The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[10] Konfuzius: El Libro de La Gran Ciencia.

[11] Hayek, F. A. (1976): Law, Legislation and Liberty. - The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.