The Mirror Universe: Why Reality Reflects All Your Signals

Dinis GuardaAuthor

Tue Dec 09 2025

What happens when fear, doubt, and avoidance participate in creating reality? Discover the quantum physics of negative information, cognitive coherence, and Jungian shadow work in Part 3 of Dinis's groundbreaking framework.

Understanding Positive and Negative Information in Quantum Participation

Part 3 of Dinis's mini-book "Quantum Consciousness Reality"

Neil Turok interview: The physicist proposing a mirror-image universe | New Scientist

Wheeler's participatory universe reveals that consciousness shapes reality through identity, information, and action. But here's the challenging truth that most people miss: the universe mirrors all information, not just the positive.

Fear is information. Doubt is information. Avoidance is information. Each of these signals participates in collapsing quantum possibilities just as surely as clarity, courage, and commitment.

This is not the comfortable message of pop psychology. This is the rigorous consequence of quantum mechanics applied to human consciousness: if you participate in creating reality, then all forms of consciousness, including the ones you wish you didn't have, are creative acts.

As the Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote:

We can see in darkness as in light, for we behold with the mind.

What you behold, you help bring into being.

The Impartiality of Quantum Mirroring

Why the Universe Doesn't Judge Your Signals

In quantum mechanics, a system in superposition contains all possible outcomes with different probability amplitudes. When we measure, when we observe, attend, focus, we don't create outcomes from nothing. We select from what was already potential.

But the nature of our measurement determines what becomes actual.

Fear, in this framework, is not merely unpleasant, it's a form of focused attention, a measurement operation that collapses wavefunctions toward feared outcomes. You're not imagining things. Your fear literally changes what becomes probable.

Psychological research validates this. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's work on cognitive biases, particularly negativity bias and the availability heuristic, demonstrates that fearful attention warps probability assessment. We perceive threats as more likely and more accessible in memory.

But Wheeler's physics suggests this is not merely cognitive distortion, it's participatory reality-creation.

When fear directs attention, it selects measurement questions aligned with threat: "Is there danger? Will this fail? What could go wrong?" These questions, asked repeatedly with emotional intensity, collapse probability wavefunctions in threat-confirming directions.

As the psychologist Rollo May observed:

Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension necessary to preserve human existence.

But unacknowledged anxiety doesn't relieve, it creates. It participates in manifesting the very threats it perceives.

The Greek Tragedy of Self-Fulfilling Fear

Hamartia – How Good Leaders Face Their Tragic Flaw and Rebound After A Misstep - Thinkers50

The ancient Greek concept of hamartia, often translated as “tragic flaw”, captures this beautifully. In Greek tragedy, the hero's downfall arises not from external evil but from an internal flaw that shapes perception and action in self-defeating ways.

Consider Oedipus: fleeing the prophecy he fears, he takes the very actions that fulfill it. His fear, and the actions it prompts, participate in creating the reality he sought to avoid.

Sophocles understood what Wheeler's physics would later prove: our attempts to escape feared outcomes, when driven by unconscious fear rather than conscious choice, often collapse wavefunctions directly toward what we're fleeing.

As Sophocles wrote in Oedipus Rex:

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth!

The truth Wheeler reveals is dreadful precisely because it places responsibility for participation squarely within consciousness itself. We cannot blame the universe for mirroring back what we transmit.

The Structural Reality Check

This is not to blame individuals for negative experiences. Structural, systemic, and genuinely external factors profoundly shape reality. Poverty, oppression, trauma, illness, these are not manifestations of individual consciousness failing to "vibrate higher."

Wheeler's participatory principle operates within constraints. You participate in shaping reality, but you do not control it unilaterally. You are one node in a vast network of participating consciousnesses, all collapsing wavefunctions, all shaping probability fields.

But within the domain of participatory influence, within the scope of what your consciousness can shape, the signals you send matter profoundly.

Fear generates more fear-confirming data. Doubt creates conditions that validate doubt. Avoidance manifests as absence.

The question is not whether external factors exist, but whether you will add your unconscious fears to them or your conscious participation against them.

Coherence Versus Decoherence in Consciousness

Can quantum mechanics explain consciousness? - Big Think

The Quantum Physics of Mental Clarity

Quantum coherence, the maintenance of definite phase relationships between different quantum states, enables quantum phenomena including superposition, interference, and entanglement. But coherence is fragile. Interaction with the environment causes decoherence, the loss of quantum properties and the emergence of classical behavior.

In Wheeler's participatory framework, the quality of information we transmit determines whether consciousness maintains coherence or degrades into decoherence.

Clarity, consistency, and aligned intention maintain coherence, enabling the interference effects that can actualize low-probability, high-value outcomes.

Confusion, contradiction, and misalignment create decoherence, collapsing into incoherent mixed states that yield chaotic, unpredictable results.

The physicist Erwin Schrödinger recognized this when he wrote:

Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.

If consciousness is fundamental, then its coherence or incoherence becomes the primary variable in how reality actualizes.

The Psychology of Cognitive Dissonance

The psychological research validates this quantum framework. Leon Festinger's work on cognitive dissonance (1957) demonstrates that holding contradictory beliefs creates psychological discomfort that degrades decision-making quality.

When you believe "I want success" while simultaneously holding "I don't deserve success," you're not sending two signals, you're sending noise. The universe receives incoherent information and mirrors back incoherent results.

Neurologically, research by Marcus Raichle on the default mode network shows that unfocused mind-wandering activates different brain regions than focused attention, suggesting different modes of conscious operation.

As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes:

The mind exists for the body, is engaged in telling the story of the body's multifarious events, and uses that story to optimize the life of the organism.

But if the story is incoherent, if the signals contradict, the optimization fails. The organism receives mixed instructions and manifests mixed results.

Quantum Brain Theories: Consciousness as Coherent State

If consciousness genuinely exhibits quantum properties, as some researchers propose, then coherence versus decoherence may be more than metaphor.

The quantum brain theories proposed by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, while controversial, suggest that microtubules in neurons may sustain quantum coherence long enough for quantum effects to influence neural processing. Penrose argues that consciousness arises from quantum computations in these microtubules, making coherence essential to conscious experience itself.

Whether or not this specific mechanism is correct, the functional reality remains: coherent, aligned mental states yield different outcomes than incoherent, fragmented states.

As the physicist Amit Goswami states:

Consciousness is the ground of being, and quantum physics is showing us that consciousness creates reality by collapsing the wave function.

If consciousness collapses the wave function, then the coherence of that consciousness determines which possibilities actualize.

Ancient Technologies for Maintaining Coherence

Why We Need Meditation and Mindfulness Now More than Ever - GREGG VANOUREK

The spiritual traditions have long taught practices for maintaining mental coherence—not as superstition but as technology:

Meditation cultivates sustained attention, preventing the decoherence that comes from scattered awareness.

Prayer aligns intention, creating coherence between desire and action.

Ritual creates consistency, establishing frequency patterns that reshape probability fields.

Ethical codes maintain behavioral alignment, ensuring actions don't contradict stated values.

These are technologies for maintaining the coherence of consciousness, for preventing the decoherence that degrades our participatory influence.

As the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.

Coherence exists only in the present. The past is memory, the future is projection, only now can consciousness maintain the aligned attention that preserves quantum coherence.

The Shadow and the Light: Jung's Integration

Shadow Work: What It is and How to Do It > The Essential Guide!

What You Deny Still Transmits Signals

Carl Jung's concept of the shadow, the rejected, repressed aspects of the psyche, provides psychological depth to Wheeler's insight about negative information.

Jung recognized that what we deny or avoid does not disappear but becomes unconscious, where it exerts hidden influence on behavior and perception.

In Wheeler's framework, this means that repressed fear, denied doubt, avoided grief—all continue to send signals, to make measurements, to collapse wavefunctions, but now unconsciously.

The universe continues to mirror this information, but we are unaware of the transmission. The result is the uncanny experience of repeatedly encountering the very patterns we thought we'd escaped.

As Jung wrote:

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

This is not poetry, it's quantum mechanics. Unconscious signals still participate in collapsing wavefunctions. But unconsciously, we cannot modulate, direct, or transmute these signals.

Integration as Participatory Practice

Jungian integration, making the unconscious conscious, is thus not merely therapeutic but participatory. When we consciously acknowledge our fears, doubts, and shadows, we gain agency over the signals being transmitted.

The shadow doesn't need to be eliminated. It needs to be integrated—brought into consciousness where it can be witnessed, understood, and transmuted from unconscious noise into conscious signal.

Jung understood this deeply:

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.

Disagreeable, yes. But necessary for conscious participation.

The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived Nazi concentration camps, recognized this same principle:

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

But changing ourselves requires first seeing ourselves, including the shadow aspects we'd prefer to deny.

The Alchemical Transformation

What Does Alchemy Have to Do With Psychology? -

Jung studied alchemy extensively because he recognized it as a symbolic system for psychological transformation. The alchemical principle of solve et coagula, dissolve and coagulate, describes the process of breaking down rigid psychological structures (dissolving the ego's defenses) and reconstituting them in more integrated form.

In Wheeler's participatory framework, this becomes the process of:

Dissolving unconscious transmission by bringing shadow material into awareness
Coagulating conscious participation by integrating that material into coherent signal

The alchemist's goal of turning lead into gold symbolizes turning unconscious, base reactivity into conscious, refined participation.

As the alchemical text The Emerald Tablet states: "As above, so below; as within, so without."

This is the hermetic principle of correspondence and it's identical to Wheeler's participatory principle. The inner state (consciousness) and the outer state (reality) correspond because they're engaged in continuous measurement interaction.

The Practical Implications: Working With All Your Signals

Step 1: Acknowledge What's Actually There

You cannot transmute what you refuse to acknowledge. The first step is radical honesty about what signals you're actually sending, not what you wish you were sending.

Are you afraid? Acknowledge it. Are you doubting? Notice it. Are you avoiding? See it clearly.

This is not wallowing in negativity. This is bringing unconscious transmission into conscious awareness where it can be worked with.

Step 2: Understand the Signal's Function

Fear isn't evil, it's information about perceived threat. Doubt isn't weakness, it's information about uncertainty. Avoidance isn't failure, it's information about overwhelm.

When you understand what the signal is communicating, you can address the underlying need instead of fighting the signal itself.

As the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote:

You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Step 3: Transmute Noise Into Signal

Once conscious, you can transmute incoherent noise into coherent signal. This doesn't mean eliminating fear, it means transforming unconscious fear that scatters attention into conscious caution that focuses it.

It means transforming paralyzing doubt into healthy discernment.

It means transforming avoidance into strategic withdrawal and regrouping.

The energy remains, but its coherence changes and coherence is everything in quantum participation.

Step 4: Maintain Coherence Through Practice

Integration isn't a one-time event but a continuous practice. The shadow will always contain material seeking integration. Coherence will always face threats from decoherence.

This is why spiritual traditions emphasize daily practice, not as religious obligation but as coherence maintenance. Meditation, journaling, prayer, ritual, therapy, these are all technologies for maintaining conscious participation instead of unconscious transmission.

The Mirror's Message

Scientists Say Our Universe Might Be a Hall of Mirrors

The universe mirrors all information because the universe operates through information. Wheeler's "it from bit" principle is not selective, every bit of information participates in actualizing reality.

This is challenging because it means we cannot hide from our own participation. The fear we deny, the doubt we repress, the shadow we avoid, all continue transmitting, all continue collapsing wavefunctions, all continue shaping the reality we inhabit.

But this is also liberating because it means we have far more participatory power than we realized. When we bring unconscious transmission into conscious awareness, when we transmute noise into coherent signal, when we integrate shadow into light, we dramatically expand our capacity to shape which quantum possibilities actualize.

The mirror is impartial. It reflects what is transmitted. The question is whether you'll transmit unconsciously or consciously, reactively or deliberately, as fragmented noise or coherent signal.

Moving Forward With All Your Signals

Jung, Wheeler, and the ancient wisdom traditions converge on a single insight: wholeness requires integration, not elimination. You don't become a more powerful participant by denying your shadow, you become more powerful by integrating it.

The universe doesn't judge your signals as positive or negative. It simply mirrors them. The judgment comes from consciousness itself, and the judgment often prevents the very integration that would transmute noise into signal.

Stay tuned for Part 4: "The Philosophical Synthesis, Ancient Wisdom and Quantum Reality," where we explore how Vedanta, Buddhism, Hermeticism, Taoism, and other traditions intuited what Wheeler's physics proved: that consciousness and cosmos are not two but one, engaged in participatory dialogue since the first moment awareness emerged from quantum possibility.

The mirror is clear. The question is what you'll choose to reflect.

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." — Carl Jung

"We can see in darkness as in light, for we behold with the mind." — Lucretius

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Dinis Guarda

Author

Dinis Guarda is an author, entrepreneur, founder CEO of ztudium, Businessabc, citiesabc.com and Wisdomia.ai. Dinis is an AI leader, researcher and creator who has been building proprietary solutions based on technologies like digital twins, 3D, spatial computing, AR/VR/MR. Dinis is also an author of multiple books, including "4IR AI Blockchain Fintech IoT Reinventing a Nation" and others. Dinis has been collaborating with the likes of UN / UNITAR, UNESCO, European Space Agency, IBM, Siemens, Mastercard, and governments like USAID, and Malaysia Government to mention a few. He has been a guest lecturer at business schools such as Copenhagen Business School. Dinis is ranked as one of the most influential people and thought leaders in Thinkers360 / Rise Global’s The Artificial Intelligence Power 100, Top 10 Thought leaders in AI, smart cities, metaverse, blockchain, fintech.