The Intersection of Science and Imagination

Scientific Parallels

Professor Feynman, of Cornell University, one of the outstanding physicists of the day in speculative, theoretical physics, wrote a letter for the publication- The Science Newsletter (October 15th 1949)- concerning the positron, a particle produced in atomic disintegration which is like the electron but positive in its charge.

Almost 20 years later he received the Nobel Prize for his 1949 paper, ‘The Theory of Positrons’.

Feynman stated:

“The positron is a wrong-way electron. It starts from where it hasn’t been, and it speeds to where it was an instant ago. It is bounced so hard its time sense is reversed, and then it returns to where it hasn’t been.

When a little electron is moving speedily in space if it is bounced, it’s deflected, but continues on its course. But if it is bounced so hard, then its time sense is reversed, and it returns to where it hasn’t been.”

“Now,” he said, “on the basis of this, we must now conclude that the entire concept that man held of the universe is false. We always believed that the future developed slowly out of the past. Now, with this concept which we have seen and photographed, we must now conclude that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively.”

Both views are comparable:

Dr. Richard Feynman: “The positron starts from where it hasn’t been, and it moves to where it was a moment before; arriving there, it is bounced so hard, its time sense is reversed, and it moves back to where it hasn’t been.”

Neville Goddard: “I go forward in time to where I have not yet visited physically, and I simply enclose myself in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. I haven’t yet realized it physically, but I go forward in my mind’s eye, in my imagination, into the state, and I talk with my friends from the wish fulfilled as though it were true. Then I open my eyes and I am startled to find that I am sitting in a chair where I was a moment before. And what I have just done is denied by my senses, but strangely enough, the whole vast world reshuffles itself and forms a bridge of incidents, across which I move to the fulfilment of that state where I have been.”

“I went forward and I did what I wanted to do. And then I started from where I had not been physically, and sped back to where I was physically; and then I was bounced – shocked – that it wasn’t true. I was bounced so hard that I then turned around in my time sense and moved back to fulfil where I had been in my imagination.

If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what the world thinks about it, if there is evidence for it? Well, I had the evidence for it, but I could not explain it scientifically. I only knew that it worked.”

Professor Richard Feynman, 1918-1988