fred alan wolf is a quantum physicist known for his work on consciousness and spirituality. he is also my first cousin twice removed (my grandfather’s cousin).
i didn’t grow up spending much time around fred so to me he seems less like my cousin and more like a wizard that for some gracious reason i’ve been able to be in contact with. he is almost ninety one but he acts ageless and he looks it too, he has barely any wrinkles on his face. he has bright blue eyes that are very big, as if they did not stop growing even once he became an adult.
i traveled to san francisco last week to visit him and was able to record him talking. i wouldn’t say this is an interview and i wouldn’t say it’s a conversation either. i am sitting on the floor in front of him, he is on a recliner chair, and i am asking him open-ended questions from a list i wrote. always i have follow-up questions, but only occassionally do i ask them. i’m most interested in where his mind goes without too any prompts. below are direct transcriptions from the recording pieced together. some of his responses have been edited for length.
every answer fred gives leaves me with at least five more questions. given the sort of inquiry that he’s dedicated his life to, i think he’d be pretty satisfied with that...
what is love?
to me, love is a very natural aspect of recognizing, through surrender, that other and you are the same. so love is a recognition. it's kind of a memory that comes in that we've had probably from nurture, emerging from the womb, we had a sense of love [...]
it seems to me that love is a natural expression of recognition, of being part of something, or maybe being bigger than what your own self can generate.
people that live alone, it's not that they lack love, but they don't have a means for expressing it, and i think that can be hard on people. it is always good to have somebody in your life that is your partner, somebody you can trust and be with.
where do ideas come from?
ideas a lot of times come because people see something that they don't understand or that they question. they want to know why or how. so i think maybe the fundamental nut or seed out of which an idea pops is possibly an insecurity, maybe a feeling of not knowing something and wanting to know, because one feels that they would be better if they knew.
i heard someone describe the human brain as a radio tower. sort of to explain how ideas come to us. what do you think of that?
radios receive information signals [..] so the question is, is the brain a reciever?
if one thinks of a receiver in terms of how radio or television sets or even your internet works, then there's [also] a sender. [and] it could be that the sender and the receiver are in the brain themselves, and the brain is acting as both sender and receiver [...]
but brain is really mind, and mind doesn't have any boundaries. so without boundaries, there can't be a sender and a receiver. you can't separate one from the other because there's no boundary. it's a oneness.
so maybe instead think of [an idea] as a bubble within in the oneness [...] that an idea is something bubbling to the surface.
what is a mystery?
in physics, that's constantly coming up. we're always posing mysteries for ourselves [...] the first question i ever asked is what is light? i mean, light is all around. what is it? i know that you can get rid of light. there's something called dark: without light. but then, what is light?
so what is it?
nobody really quite has an answer for it.
really??
we know how it behaves, we can write down equations for its behavior [...] something that moves at the speed of light does not experience time. it goes from here to there, and we would see it as moving in time, but as for it, it is instantly here and there at the same time. weird! light has this very weird property of being everywhere without going anywhere.
[...]
when you were studying physics, were you always interested in spirituality and mysticism?
no i can't say that was the case... when i began to study questions like what is light, there were certain answers that came up that didn't satisfy me. the so called "mechanical worldview," that you could explain everything by just putting together the right nuts and bolts [...] it didn't answer my questions.
even newton, who invented mechanics, wasn't saying that was all there was, he was a mystic as well. but scientists tend to get very negative about anything mystical or spiritual. now, not as much. now people are beginning to look at things and realize that the methods by which they go to find answers leads to paradox.
once you get into paradox land, you can't get out unless you give up your way of looking. so if you're looking for nuts and bolts, and you end up in paradoxes, you have to give up the idea that there are nuts and bolts. maybe those are ways of thinking, but not necessarily answers.
[...]
do you believe in god?
that is a funny kind of question for me to answer. god is everything. so for me, there's consciousness everywhere. so you might say, "god is the consciousness everywhere." and consciousness isn't confined to one world, one space, one time, it's everywhere.
so in that sense, god exists. it is not a question of belief. i believe in quantum physics because i can use it as a tool. but i can't use god as a tool, so i can't believe in god the same way.
there's just a fundamental feeling or sense of spiritual value, or whatever you want to call it, that there is god.
god exists. but what god is, i don't know. i mean, there are enough hints... excuse me, i've got the hiccups [...] there are enough hints about the existence of god from whatever spiritual experiences i've had, they tell me there's something beyond the obvious.
[...]
what do you think of manifestation?
what do you mean?
people think of manifestation as a certain way they maybe can get what they want.
give me an example of manifestation.
some people want to manifest a car, a partner, you know, a boyfriend or girlfriend.
ah okay. well, i think what happens is that once one becomes acquainted with one's desire, then there's an automatic search mechanism going on that looks to fulfill that desire.
this is not quite the same thing, but when my son was killed, my son michael, for many months afterwards, he came to me in lucid dreams. and sometimes i'd be in a strange town and i'd look and i'd see a face in the crowd and i'd say "that's michael." other people looked like him, and i was manifesting his presence even though he had already passed.
so manifestation can occur in ways that are not necessarily things you yourself have decided you desire, but they may occur to you because there's still a lingering feeling inside that you wanted something, but you never even voiced it.
when i quit my job as a professor at san diego state, i was really down in luck. i was on the verge of bankruptcy. i was really really despondent. and i was out sitting on a park bench somewhere, just feeling terrible. and a bird, this strange bird, came up and pecked at my shoe. and at that moment, i just snapped out of it, because several months before that, i had witnessed one of the holy lamas who had come to san fransisco to visit werner erhard, [and] there was something about what the lama had done on the stage that the pecking on my shoe brought to memory, and suddenly i became out of myself, and i said, "i surrender. i surrender. use me. i'm yours to be used." i didn't say, "i want to do this i want to do that." i said, "i surrender, i give up, whatever comes in, i will do that, i'll do it." as if to say to god, use me as a tool.
then what happened?
[laughs] i got used!
things began to manifest. so this is manifestation through non-manifestation. through surrendering. allowing it to come rather than forcing it.
the people that force things to come, i tend to find they are never happy. for some reason, even though they get what they want, they're miserable.
the prime example is president trump. this is a very miserable guy. he gets everything he wants, but he's still miserable [...]
how can you tell he's miserable?
just by how he talks, what he says, how he walks. his movements, his facial expressions, the fact that he's always in the need to insult people, make fun of people. he just constantly has this urge to make fun of people. for some reason, that's a big part of his psyche. and he has a constant tendency to dominate over everybody [...] it always strikes me as odd that people can have these quirks of personality where they just don't seem to be able to let go.
what do you believe about evil?
you know, let's look at ourselves as animals. when a lion goes after another animal and eats it, is that evil? he's certainly killing the animal, but is that evil? if we do similar to that, are we evil? or is it part of the way that life was put on this planet, that a part of life is that we devour things to live. to eat, we have to kill. that seems to be part of the nature of life. life at every level, there's one thing going after another. i don't see that as evil, i see that as life.
but the animal that dies, that surrenders and dies, in a certain sense, it's just going back to spirit again. so for the lion, it's "alright, i've devoured, my belly's full, but i have to go hunting in a few days. i'm never satisfied." so who's the better? you think the lion is the king, but maybe he is actually not the king. and maybe the animal who got killed is really the king, because it got free. so that's a different way of looking at what's evil, what's good.
what is a vivid memory you have from your childhood?
i used to crawl on the floor underneath the living room tables and i would take crayons and i would draw under the surface of the table. why i was doing that, i don't know, but i remember doing that. my mother got very mad at me for doing that but i had some kind of artistic something in me, it made me want to put something down on a canvas. maybe i was imitating something i never knew, the way [michelangelo] laid on his back and painted the ceiling. maybe i was doing that without knowing him.
i also have memories of your great grandfather, you never met him, but my uncle mel, i called him uncle mel, i got along with him, i liked him a lot. he introduced me to classical music [...] i was only like nine, ten, and i developed a love for classical music. right now, it's the only music i really like.
i really don't listen to much else unless it's really interesting. talking heads, i like that kind of stuff. because he's asking interesting questions, about "is this my house? is this my wife?" it's wonderful how he slips into this metaphysical mystical thinking.
i like david byrne. i like some of the beatles when they were in their mystical state [...] and who else? another group that sings interesting music. the ones that sang about money.
oh, pink floyd?
pink floyd, yeah, i like pink floyd.
i like pink floyd too.
i quoted them in my book, taking the quantum leap.*
[...]
what is your favorite color?
i've always liked blue. blue is always my favorite color. [fred and i, at this point, both notice he is wearing an entirely blue outfit] i can't explain why [...] i have no particular reason why...
you have blue eyes,
i have blue eyes, and maybe that's why. i don't know [...] i like air, air looks like the sky, blue... the ocean... so maybe because of the vastness of the blue color in my mind. i don't know.
[...]
do you have any advice? maybe especially to young people?
i'm not too sure what exactly are the problems of young people today, other than maybe confusion. a lot of confusion about what's right and what's wrong, what should one do, what shouldn't one do? and there's a tendency among young people to possibly go along with a prevailing thought of some sort, and my advice would be not to do that.
look at everything. all the information that comes in, look at it, understand it, but don't necessarily adopt it as your way of being [...] do not sit with answers that have been given to you by other people. search for yourself [...] if you see an answer and you say "oh, that's it," you're probably wrong [...] it could very well be that you're just following a system of belief.
one thing that is good about science and scientists in general is that they have this innate ability to not do that.
for example, there was a guy named kurt godel, he was around the same time as einstein [...] and there was a guy named [bertrand] russell, who was a philosopher and mathematician, who had basically claimed that we know everything, that arithmetic is a closed system. every question that can be posed can be answered within the limits of arithmetic. godel comes in and says "no." [laughs] he figured out that there were questions that you could pose that could not be answered within the system of mathematics, that there were things that were unanswerable. he had to go beyond the system.
in quantum physics, we're finding a similar thing [...] there are things we can ask, that we can't really answer unless we go outside of the system in which the question is being posed [...] that fascinated me. that's a mystery that attempting to solve it gives you an insight but [also] another mystery. that's what i like.
i like being in a mystery, not in the know. to me, that's the fun part of being alive, is to not know, but be in the not know, and enjoy the experience of not knowing, but keep going! that's great.
when are you the happiest?
i'm always happy! i'm a happy person. i'm just, i'm happy. i'm happy when i get up, happy when i go to the bathroom, happy when i eat my meal, happy when i say hi to my wife.* i'm happy all the time. i'm never depressed.
other than the time when i was very young and that bird pecked on my shoe. i don't think i've been depressed since then.
what is depression to you? what do you make of it?
feeling that you can't cope with life. whatever life is giving you, you can't handle it, you are simply incapable of dealing with it. that can be depressing.
when i think about your grandfather,* he didn't seem to go out unhappy. he seemed to go out happy. i think [your grandfather] was very smart. he was no dummy. he realized that there were things that he was no longer going to be able to preserve, and felt that his time ended. he had that kind of realization. i hope i have the same realization when i have reached that kind of ending of things [...]
i don't really fear death but i wonder about it. everybody will find the answer [to what happens after], but only once. and that's it. that's it, unless they come back!
thank you for taking this time with me.
you're welcome.
notes:
* Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists is fred's book that won the 1983 national book award for science. fred has many many other wonderful books, some of my favorites are:
The Dreaming Universe : A Mind-Expanding Journey Into the Realm Where Psyche and Physics Meet
Dr. Quantum in the Grandfather Paradox
The Spiritual Universe: One Physicists Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter, and Self
Mind into Matter: A New Alchemy of Science and Spirit
* fred lives with his wife sonia in an apartment in san francisco where they have been living for around thirty years. i don't have a recording of the story of how they met, but it's a beautiful story, so i am writing it from my memory here:
before they met, sonia had started one of his books, looked at his picture on the sleeve, and said to herself, i'm going to marry him. the "about the author" portion on the sleeve said that fred was married, but sonia was still unfazed, instinctively she felt that he got divorced since the book was published (she was right). sonia and fred met weeks later on a plane to a shamanic conference (this was the only detail they gave me on this). they got married just a few months after meeting. sonia told me she was only going to marry a man if he was intellectually stimulating to her, otherwise she was happier being alone. she wishes fred had more handy-man skills so that he could have done things like refinish the floors. but that's her only complaint. they are in love.
* fred is referring to my grandfather, his cousin, who suffered two consecutive strokes that changed his quality of life significantly, and decided to go to switzerland for assisted suicide this past summer (2025). i wrote about this more here.