Quantum Conundrums

There’s a lot of chatter about The Quantum in spiritual circles (cue the epic background music). There is a reason, though, why this has been picked up in this community. The more you dive into the particles and waves of the quantum world, the more it seems to align with the philosophies of consciousness that originated long ago. Given that this is thrown around so much, I do think it’s good to try and have a baseline understanding of the space and what we know (as far as science is concerned) and what we don’t. It’s crazy complex, but this is my attempt at hitting the highlights. Grab your matcha.

"Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it." - Niels Bohr

One thing I’ve found that most people may not know is that Quantum Physics is no longer just theoretical. When it was mathematically proven, it birthed the field of Quantum Mechanics. That’s not to say there isn’t more to come. There are always more questions to be answered. So many more.

But it all started with the study of light, Newton thought that light was constructed of particles. Einstein started to poke holes in Newton’s conclusions and Louis de Broglie pioneered the theory of particles having wave-like properties. Therefore, light was not composed of a bunch of particles (Newton called them corpuscles) but rather that particles have properties of frequency.

Then the experiments continued, solidifying the field of Quantum mechanics around pillars like virtual particles, wave-particle duality and non-locality. Let’s take the first one. Virtual particles are transient, meaning they kind of look like a normal particle but their existence is bound to the uncertainty principle. We know they exist because they impart forces on other physical phenomenon. I won’t bring you down the road of quantum field theory quite yet. Next, wave-particle duality, this is what was mentioned earlier, that a particle can be in either particle or wave form (the famous double-slit experiment). Our observation may impact what form the particle takes. Lastly, non-locality. Ooof. My favorite. This is what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’. This walks us through the door of entanglement and is hard for us to wrap our heads around because the way we see the world is all based on what we expect to see in space and time with the barrier of the speed of light. Non-locality rolls up into the scenario where two particles can move from a single source across vast distances and the measurement of one instantaneously is imparted on the other. There is a communication happening that seems to be outside of space and time. This is entanglement.

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment." - Bernard d'Espagnat

Non-locality. Entanglement. These concepts start to sound eerily familiar to those that have studied the yogic theories of consciousness and experienced the transcendent. The proof that over space and time a particle can appear or disappear dependent on observation is mind-blowing. The implications are huge, even if there is some argument on whether what happens at the atomic level rolls up into the molecular and organism level. Or if the way we are observing and measuring these experiments is correct.

So, why is the spiritual world so stoked? Because we have new language to describe ancient truths. If observation, or in spiritual terms, awareness…does indeed have a direct impact on the world around us, it means that we have even more creative potential than we may have previously appreciated.

"[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts." - Werner Heisenberg

It means that quite literally where our awareness goes, energy flows. It could mean that consciousness itself is non-local, much like the particles that pop in and out of existence across space and time. Personally, I’ve experienced this to be true, but it will be an interesting day when science can say definitively one way or another.

There are all sorts of theories to explore further and see if these experiments hold up (see collapse theory). But there’s one thing that I see across all scientists that have spent their lives successfully studying these mechanics. They remain in awe of the implications.

Meanwhile in the 3D…

It gets trippier.

The Chinese have constructed a quantum encrypted satellite system. Mouthful, I know. But what I love about this is that it demonstrates how these sometimes counter intuitive concepts have real-world implications. In the simplest terms, this is a system that relies on the power of observation to alert parties to a breach. If it is fine-tuned this could be a whole new way to encrypt information.

The lead scientist on the project has made it no secret that these developments all land under a larger question they are trying to answer. What is the nature of consciousness? It is after-all, the ultimate question.

“Each secret key is one of two strings of entangled photon pairs. The laws of quantum physics dictate that any attempt to spy on such a transmission will unavoidably leave an errorlike footprint that can be easily detected by recipients at either station.”

To close, I don’t believe the spiritual community is mis-using the recent integration of ‘the quantum’ into rhetoric on consciousness, but I do think we can balance it with what we know, and what we don’t. What I always tell students is that the ultimate variable to introduce into your evaluation of existence is personal experience. Practice. Explore. See what you find out for yourself. Then bring it back to the scientists to try and figure out how to measure it. The two worlds can and should work together.