"...but one thing I would fight for to the end, both in word or deed if I were able - that if we believed we should try to find out what is not known, we should be better and braver and less idle than if we believed that what we do not know it is impossible to find out and that we need not even try."
I didn't start out asking big questions. For several years I mined data fields that had nothing to do with quantum physics or the observer problem; in fact, I couldn't have told you the first thing about either of them. I wanted to know about the anomalies of my experience.
The first place to look for answers was my experience. Did these correlations replicate? What parameters could be altered, and what, if any, were the corresponding effects? What experiments might be designed to determine if cause-effect relationships were in play? What limits existed to these effects?
The next place to look was at the experiences of others. Who else had these types of experiences? What were they called? How were they studied? What was documented and known about them? How did it match to what I experience? Thus began my affinity with parapsychological research.
After that came the search for the mechanisms behind the effects. Parapsychologists were focusing on the effects themselves and on the correlations (personality types, etc.) that went with them. But what lay behind those effects? Ultimately this leads to the study of consciousness, the brain, and the mind. And it was only here that I really began to study the concepts of quantum physics. Even then, the concepts of navigating parallel universes/the multiverse/5-dimensions represented a progression of ideas as more and more pieces fell into place.
The next step with a new idea was, of course, replication. Could I teach someone else to produce these effects using these methods? Only after satisfying myself that the answer to this question was 'yes' did I decide this was something to talk about.
