Continuum Exhibit Panels 1-21

The Continuum Exhibit Redux: An interdisciplinary and multi-
culture exploration of consciousness, human capacity, and the
continuity and interconnectedness of life.

What is consciousness or mind,
and what is reality?

This exhibit is a remake and update of the original Continuum Exhibit, first on display in 1978
at the California Museum of Science and Industry (now the California Science Center) in Los
Angeles, where it broke attendance records with over two million visits in less than a year. It
came to Minnesota in 1979 for a 10 year tour through host sites including top of the IDS Center,
Pillsbury Center and Calhoun Square, in Minneapolis.

Exhibit Redux Themes:
• Consciousness or mind is more than ‘what the brain does’

and is not reducible to brain chemicals and neurons
• Consciousness can exist separate from the brain and

interconnects all of life
• Reality is more than can be publicly observed, physically

measured, and repeatedly tested (the Cartesian scientific
method)
• Societies and their institutions based on inadequate
assumptions about consciousness and reality will lead to
the divisiveness, mental/emotional disorders, and systems
failures we see today

“Directly and indirectly social values depend on whether consciousness is
believed to be mortal or immortal, reincarnate or cosmic, localized and brain-
bound or essentially universal.”

Roger W Sperry, PhD – 1981 Nobel neuroscientist

Note: “Man” is part of the colloquial language used at the time of many quotes. Women created the
original and the redux, and took or meant no offense.

For thousands of years –
From Egypt to Einstein –
human minds have tried
to understand the living universe
and the relationship
of human conciousness to it.

The Egyptians

had a deep respect for their science and realized that knowledge of natural forces
gave power. The secrets of science and of life and death were whispered to the
priest-kings and a few chosen initiates.

Horus

guarded the doors to the inner temples and is often seen with his finger to his lips
in a gesture of secrecy.

Ancient Greek philosopher-scientists warned that

our 5 senses deceive us

and that the physical, material, 3 dimensional

world is an illusion.

Do our 5 senses
deceive us?

Albert Einstein:
"A human being is a part of the whole, called
by us "Universe.” He experiences himself, his
thoughts and feelings, as something separated
from the rest – a kind of optical illusion of
consciousness. This delusion is a prison restricting
us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. We must widen our circle of
compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature in its beauty."

Did you know our eyes can
see only a teeny fraction of the
light spectrum? Just a sliver.

Ancient Vedic texts spoke of Maya,
the illusion of the physical world.

What does all that mean?

TTooBuutu…ccI’mhhmaMdMeeoef..atoII’’mmms a nssdooatlolmiidds a,raae 9rr9.9ee%n nsp’a’tcte !II??

But…I’m made of atoms and atoms are 99.9% space!

I look and feel solid…

but is that an illusion? I’m virtually all space!

I Alnod oI’mk seapanrOadrt efnfoertoe?mlysoou, lriigdh…t?

but is that an illusion? I’m virtually all space!
And I’m separate from you, right?
Or not?

We perceive separation,
but that’s an illusion too!

We are fundamentally interconnected, yet our limited
5 physical senses perceive a different reality.

MUCH RESEARCH SHOWS THAT, THOUGH SOME COMPENSATION CAN OCCUR
AND THERE MAY BE SOME BASIC CROSS-BRAIN ENGAGEMENT,
BRAIN HEMISPHERES HAVE COMPLEMENTARY FUNCTIONS

Left Right

Separate parts Interconnectedness
Logic Imagination
Analysis Intuition
Sequential Non-linear
Verbal skills Imagery
Space-time perception
Outward focus Transcendent perception
Facts Introspection
STEM Context
Logistics
Probabilities The arts and humanities
Rational Dreams

Possibilties
Paradoxical/Non-rational

Education and our sensory conditioning are very left brain,
focused on the physical, material dimensions of life.
They’re very important, but what if we’ve been

missing half of what adds up to fully human?

And what if – as so many physicists say – there are more than just these
3 dimensions (height, width and depth) plus time?

Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, a Harvard brain scientist, had a stroke that shut
down her left brain hemisphere for 8 years. Unhindered, her right
hemisphere allowed her to sense and experience the fundamental
interconnectedness of the universe:

For eight years I did not exist as a solid; I existed as a fluid entity in a fluid environment.
When I lost that perception of “solid” and that defined boundary of my body, I became
at one with all that is. This was a marvelous experience – to be that enormous in
the absence of the distraction of language that has to label everything in my world.
Our academic system is designed to reward extreme left-hemisphere gifts and
behavior. If you look at our level of aggression in society, it tells us what is going on in
the left hemisphere. It gets stressed out; it is on a timetable, so it’s always urgent and
always late and behind. To the left hemisphere, everything is either right or wrong;
It is all about hierarchy, so I know where I sit on that ladder and fit into my little box.

The left hemisphere is verbal, focuses on separate parts and pieces, and
analyzes and labels them. Very important, but… is there a fundamental

interconnectedness we can learn to perceive?
Are human beings – and all of life – wired for unity that’s deeper
than and transcends the physical appearance of being separate?

Malidoma Somé PhD Dagara Elder (West Africa):

“What we see in everyday reality is not nature lying to us, but nature encoding
reality in ways we can come to terms with under ordinary circumstances. We could
not live our lives on the ecstatic level...the daily business of life would never get
done. There does, however, come a time when one must learn to move between
the two ways of “seeing” reality in order to become a whole person.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the
same and to all of the same. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
In the meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the
universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal
ONE... t  he act of seeing and the things seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject
and object, are one.”

Jonas Salk MD (developed polio vaccine):

“…the most highly evolved form of existence is seen in the human consciousness.
It is expressed in its highest form in those who are the most developed with
respect to their relationship with all else in the cosmos near and far. Those most
highly evolved would also have the greatest capacity for adapting to changing
circumstances. They would be the ones with the greatest capacity to resolve
difficulties... to find ways to survive even under intolerable circumstances... our
minds are linked and interrelated.”

Black Elk Oglala Sioux:

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls
of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe
and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells
the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere and is within each of us.”

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE CELLULAR STRUCTURES OF LIFE AND OUR BODIES

Biologist Mae Wan Ho, PhD, documented coordinated acts between biological molecules that rule out
any explanation in terms of classical processes:
“The extracellular and intracellular matrices together constitute an excitable continuum... permeating
the entire organism, enabling it to function as a coherent whole. The existence of this liquid crystalline
continuum has been directly demonstrated in all live organisms… It constitutes a “body consciousness”
that precedes the nervous system in evolution.”

Do cells have consciousness?

Is there an information principle at work
in our bodies that directs and coordinates
physical processes?

“I am going to suggest that neuropeptides and their receptors form
an information network... we’ve got these information molecules. They’re telling the mind, which
is not in the brain, where to pay attention. They direct energy.”

Candace Pert, PhD – former Chief, Brain Biochemistry at NIH
Pioneered the field of psychoneuroimmunology



Research indicates we are wired for interconnectedness.

We are wired to seek caring and meaningful connection,
to be a meaningful part of something bigger.

aT work:

COMPANIES WITH AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE HAVE HIGHER EARNINGS PER
SHARE. BUSINESSES WITH A CRITICAL MASS OF ENGAGED EMPLOYEES OUT-
PERFORM THEIR COMPETITION.

GALLUP.COM/WORKPLACE

“Our data has proven, year after year, that the emotional side of engagement is
actually four times more powerful than the rational side… One specific finding is
that when employees move from being disengaged to being highly engaged, their
productivity improves 20 percentage points in performance levels.”

Jean Martin – executive director of the Corporate Leadership Council

caring connection = compassion.

Good for the immune system that fights off infection and disease!

• In the 80s, Harvard psychologist David McClelland
conducted a study with 132 students which found that

watching a Mother Teresa documentary significantly
increased production of the antibody S-IgA.
• 94% of addicts who help other recovering addicts
reported a significant decrease in depression. (Project
Match, 2004)
• Volunteering at least once a week increases longevity and
happiness. (Longitudinal Study of Aging)

Are we wired to care about
others and other forms of life
because at a fundamental level

we are all interconnected?

Thoughts and feelings
of giving and receiving love
strengthen our immune system.

Even responsibility for caring
for a simple potted plant

can reduce death rates by 50%
in a nursing home. (Langer)

If interconnectedness is our natural state,
is the appearance of separation something the Greek
philosopher-scientists meant when they warned that the material

world is an illusion and our 5 senses deceive us?

Feeling another’s pain and wanting
to do right by others is something
“hard-wired” into the brains of
typical children who appear to be
naturally inclined to feel empathy.
Observing someone purposefully
harming another will likely trigger
the sense of wrongdoing, reports

Jean Decety, PhD - social
neuroscience professor,
University of Chicago.

Could compassion be innate in
non-human mammals too?
An intriguing experiment:
Neurobiology research at the
University of Chicago (Mason and
Ben-Ami Bartal) found that, for no
reward, a rat would struggle until
able to unlock a door trapping
another rat inside a clear canister.
Furthermore, the rat would release
the other before eating (and
sharing) his favorite chocolate.

Peggy Mason, PhD:

“Helping is our evolutionary inheritance. Our study suggests that
we don’t have to cognitively decide to help an individual in distress;
rather, we just have to express our animal selves.”

Humpback whales surrounded
a boat to protect the people
aboard from killer whales.

A shelter rescue dog stood over a mound of ants until his
new human recovered an almost-dead hummingbird
underneath. The bird was nursed back to health and
didn’t want to leave its new family.

Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who
had a sanctuary in Africa, saved and rehabilitated
a herd of abused and violent elephants. When he

died, the elephants somehow knew
and organized themselves to walk
12 miles to his home and for two
days stayed there in mourning, then
returned to the refuge.

Connecting to and caring for others – who may be very different from you – is an
emotional gift from our animal/mammal relatives. We share an emotional brain
(also called animal/mammalian brain or limbic system) and could learn from them.

Compassion

does not mean no consequences or accountability

Did you know that the right hemisphere is more linked to the emotional brain
than is the left hemisphere? The right is more focused on the inner world – like dreams,

emotion, and intuition (which has rich emotional dimension).

Does society’s emphasis on individual physical parts,
instead of big pictures that are more than sums of
parts, undermine healthy development?

“. . . human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction.
If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find – the whirr of a roulette
wheel or the prick of a syringe… So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”

Johann Hari – The Real Cause of Addiction
In the 1970s in Vancouver, the experiments of Professor of Psychology, Bruce Alexander, found that

• A rat in a cage by itself will choose and overdose on water laced with cocaine or heroin, but if
 happily in a setting with friends will choose the drug-free water.

• While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had
 a happy environment did.

• For the rats who did fall into a state of addiction (after 57 days): once reconnected to their
 community they returned to a normal life.

What’s the difference between thoughts and emotions?

Thoughts influence emotion and emotions influence thoughts – but they are not the same.
Emotions come from the animal/mammalian brain or limbic system, which preceded the emergence

of the neo-cortex or “thinking” brain. Healthy emotions are a foundation for healthy thinking,
a healthy body, and addiction-free/positive behaviors.

Changing states of consciousness and mindset,
including emotions, changes your brain
chemistry and wiring.

NEUROPLASTICITY

“The adult brain can continue to form
novel neural connections and grow
new neurons in response to learning
or training even into old age.”
Matthew Howard, PhD
and Eric Garland, PhD

“Current concepts of the mind-brain relationship involve a direct break with the long established
materialist and behaviorist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for many decades. Instead of
renouncing or ignoring consciousness, the new interpretation gives full recognition to the primacy of
inner conscious awareness as a causal reality.” (Causal not casual) Roger Sperry, Nobel neuroscientist

Eric Kandel, Nobel MD found that subjective experience can change gene expression.

We share the emotional brain, limbic system, or  “ANIMAL
BRAIn”  WITH MAMMALS AND OTHER VERTEBRATES INCLUDING
BIRDS AND REPTILES. It developed before the higher human
“thinking brain” or neo cortex. If the animal/emotional brain is not well
developed, it distorts other functions of the brain.
Emotions affect brain chemistry and physiology and influence your
thoughts and your behavior. They can get buried and be hard to reach
(even if their effect on your mood and thinking is constant).

Animal Therapy is effective. The animal brain is
the emotional brain. Animals (including birds!) can
reach humans directly, emotionally, heart to heart.

That connection provides comfort and infuses hope,
strengthening our foundation for the process of change

and many forms of healing.

Emotions are a powerful force.
Emotional health is a key to mental and behavioral
health and meaning is a key to all of them.

Humans can choose their meanings, but too often just accept others’ meanings.

YOUR MEANINGS MATTER MORE THAN YOU MIGHT know.

Placebo is the mystery of how meaning, mindset, perception, consciousness, and
subjective states affect one’s physical response to a fake medicine like a sugar pill, or a
pretend procedure.

Does a certain pill or procedure mean you will get better – even if it’s fake?

Since the 1950s placebo has shown a significant
impact on pain, recovery rates, nausea, even surgery.

New England Journal of Medicine (2014) reported that surgeons in Finland discovered
placebo surgery patients had the same improvement as those with the actual knee
surgery. Harvard and Baylor confirmed the findings.

Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel biochemist (with Gall), discovered a
protective “cap” on chromosomes, called telomeres. Each time our cells
divide and DNA is copied, they get shortened. Telomeres protect but also
wear down, affecting cells’ ability to divide. Feeling prolonged stress
can shorten one’s telomeres and advance aging by up to ten years.

Ellen Langer, PhD: Mindset can reverse aging.
Langer demonstrated that mindset can reverse the signs of aging. Elderly
men, put in an environment retrofitted to their decades-younger days,
left with greater dexterity, range of motion, flexibility, sat taller, and even
spontaneously played football while awaiting departure.

A 2010 study filmed by the BBC found
the same results. One participant who
came in a wheel chair left with a cane.

The frontal lobe, the most recent and
highest development of the brain, has been
called the seat of executive function where
decision-making happens to help you get
things done…

... like When to stop to fill up the tank or
recharge the battery. Who to hire and who
to fire, or what to think and do next if you
are fired.

what if the frontal lobe is about more than practical decision-making?
What if it’s about deciding or choosing meanings?

• What does it mean if you get fired? The worst thing ever? A blessing in disguise?
• How much power do you give to the physical descriptions of circumstances?
• Do the meanings you choose (or unconsciously accept) affect

 how circumstances show up and turn out?

“What is man that the universe
should be mindful of him? … is not man an

unimportant bit of dust on an unimportant

region somewhere in the vastness of space? No!
The philosopher of old was right!

Meaning is important, even central.”

Princeton physics professor John Archibald Wheeler

“As with energy and matter, mind and matter may be equivalent even though they
appear completely different. And just as energy and matter are related through
a third entity, the speed of light, mind and matter also may be related through a
third entity, meaning.” Larry Dossey, MD

If we have a deep drive and a brain center for meaning, but have a scientific paradigm
that says it’s a vast, cold, meaningless and indifferent universe, then hopelessness and

despair are bound to affect the psyche.

“Science is complex and chilling… The vistas it presents
are scary – a universe ruled by chance and impersonal
rules, empty and uncaring…” Isaac Asimov, PhD

“Man at last knows he is alone in the unfeeling immensity
of the universe, out of which he has emerged
only by chance.” Stephen Jay Gould, PhD

The Onion (a satirical (humor)  newspaper): “The universe, long
known as a bleak and unforgiving place where essentially nothing
matters, is in fact even crueler and more heartless than previously
thought, “… shockingly, our most recent findings indicate that the
brutality, coldness, and meaninglessness are far, far more extreme
than we ever realized” said Dr. Susan Doname, head of the research
team that conducted the comprehensive five-year study.”

ETAS Theory – Evolutionary Threat Assessment Systems: beliefs
about the world are an indicator of our mental wellbeing. Beliefs of
the threatening nature of the world increases psychiatric symptoms.

Quantum physics describes a universe far more magical
and responsive… more like a mirror than a machine.

Einstein was asked, “What’s the most important question?”
To which he replied, “Is the universe friendly?”

What if how you look at the universe (and everything in it),
affects how the universe works, or doesn’t work, for you?

We are wired to seek meaning and we have the capacity to consciously choose our
meanings regardless of physical circumstances. A gift of the right hemisphere is to transcend

the limiting illusion of the physical senses and imagine a vast spread of possibilities.

Kyle Maynard – congenital amputee
who became a state wrestling champion

against full-limb competitors.
Author, “No Excuses”

What did Kyle’s disability mean to him?
For Kyle it meant he could inspire
millions of people, daily.

There are limitless possible meanings and
outcomes from which to choose.

“Impossible is an opinion. Impossible is not a fact.”
Muhammad Ali

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Einstein

“I imagine at least 6 impossible things before breakfast.”
The Queen (Alice in Wonderland)