The physics of Possibilities

 

The physics of Possibilities – Explore the world of quantum spirituality ----Paul Levy

Paul Levy reveals a world of possibilities that is different from what we are taught. It is a view where mind matters and consciousness is almost everything. Paul reveals how science is not complete without psychology or the understanding of spirituality.

The universe exists because we are aware of it!

Without an observer, the universe wouldn’t exist. After all, who would it exist for? Let alone evolve. In quantum physics world, the act of observation produces a change in the system that is different in kind, not just in degree.  According to the American physicist John Wheeler there is no world out there apart from our observation of it. He adds up to say that the act of observation changes the state of the observed and this is called as ‘Observer effect”

Two slit experiment that changed the beliefs:

Light can be described both as a wave and as a particle. There are two experiments in particular that have revealed the dual nature of light. When we're thinking of light as being made of particles, these particles are called “photons”. Photons have no mass, and each one carries a specific amount of energy.

Thomas young in 1801 proved that light travels in wave form. In 1905 Einstein proved that light has particles. If light is passed through two slits we get a pattern on the screen that shows the intersection of the Crests and troughs that proves that light is a wave. When we pass light through only one slit, there won’t be wave intersections so we expect no pattern of dark and light stripes on the screen. This was enough to prove that Light travels in Wave form as well as particle form.

What happens if we set up a detector on the slits to detect whether the photon passes through one slit or both?

With the detector on, the pattern on the other side of the slit shows that light is a particle. But with no detector it shows wave impressions on the screen. That’s weird!!

Photons act like waves when you aren’t looking at them, but act like particles when you are looking at them. In 1930 people thought of human consciousness in this experiment. We know about the detection and the emission of photons, but what happens in between is a mystery.

When we look the photon manifests as a normal everyday particle. When we don’t look, it manifests wavelike aspect. So not only the photon knows whether both slits are open or not, it also knows whether or not we are watching it, and adjust its behavior accordingly. This suggests that quantum world is truly sentient, as well as holistic; each of its parts are in touch with the whole.

https://youtu.be/nmxwVU88Bd8

Objective reality hangover:

We were previously intoxicated and were therefore seeing the world in distorted and inaccurate way.

Objective Reality is unexamined implicit assumption. It means absolute, not relative, ultimate, complete reality. For eg. The sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach earth. So the sun we see is of 8 mins ago. Subjective reality is perception based.  Heisenberg emphasizes that the idea of the objective world whose smallest particle exist objectively in the same sense as the stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them, is impossible. Wheeler calls objective reality as ‘Hardware located out there” with a “meaning software” who knows where

Wetiko Virus:

In its Native American meaning, Wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people’s minds, leading to selfishness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity.  

The idea of objective world can be linked to memetic thought virus which has managed to commander the facilities of very powerful host – human brain, replicating itself through ideo-sphere. This mind virus whose origin is to be found in human psyche is a semantic disorder that functions by deviating the very process by which we attribute meaning to our experience. The wetiko virus induces a form of psychic blindness in which those afflicted believe they can see. Wetiko, a collective psychosis can be linked to “anti-information’ virus. Not only does it block the reception information, but it also substitutes false information for the real thing. It has power to induce negative hallucination in which instead of us seeing what is not there we cannot see what is there.

John Wheeler says, ”What most of us call Objective reality is actually interpretation of data, the meaning of which is agreed upon by many. This can also be called as “Consensus Reality” or more accurately “Consensus Trance”. For eg. Large number of people agreeing on “Agarbatti” being good, does not make it good for health.

Quantum physics unexplored

To explain the mysteries of quantum physics, the physicist Wheeler uses the example of a process where a person seeing an automobile for the first time. Here automobile is quantum. One opens the door, cranks the windows up and down, flashes the lights on and off, perhaps even turns over the starter, all the while without knowing what it’s really for? Similarly we use quantum in a transistor to control machinery, in a molecule to design an anesthetic, in a superconductor to make magnet. All are great advances that we are using to our advantage, but are we missing the main idea? Could it be that all the time we’ve been missing the central point, the use of quantum phenomenon in the construction of the universe itself? We’ve turned over the starter. We haven’t got the engine going.

Quantum mechanics is like a new idea. A new idea hits our brain. From where?

The new idea can wake us up to what is possible and like a key, can unlock the latent creative spirit that has been thirsting to be set free.  May be quantum is such an idea entering our mind-stream at this very moment. Wheeler says, “Surely someday, we believe, we’ll grasp the central idea of it all so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that we will all say to each other, “Oh, How could it have been otherwise. How could we have been so blind, so long? One of the example of our blindness is in the process of effective learning.

 Learning while Teaching

Wheeler says that the real reason why universities have students is to educate the professors rather than the other way round. After teaching writing is the next best way of learning. In order to be educated by students, you need to ask good questions to them. You try out your questions on the students. If there are questions that the students are interested in then they start to tell you new things and keep you asking more new questions. Pretty soon you’ve learned a great deal.

The everyday world of Quantum Reality

What seems to be independent universe is in actuality a play of appearances, a persistent and persuasive "false imagination, and what seems to be an unexamined and clearly mistaken metaphysical assumption. The image of an objective world appears to and within the mind, arising from the mind itself. But an actually existing objective world independent observing consciousness does not-and quantum physics irrefutably proves cannot-exist in reality. Our situation is similar to seeing a mirage of water in the desert and either thinking (and fooling ourselves) that the apparition of water exists as actual water, or seeing through the illusion to realize that the image of water is in fact a magical display of our perception, not separate from our mind

Another example is a kitten reacting to her reflection in a mirror, believing that she is observing a second kitten separate from herself. The kitten is reacting to her own projection of herself that appears on the surface of the mirror as if her reflection objectively exists and is other than herself. In becoming conditioned by her own energy, she mistakenly thinks that she has nothing to do with creating and energizing that to which she is reacting. Unless her reflection is recognized as her own face, her reactivity can go on ad infinitum.

 In a circular feedback loop, we are influenced by what we influence.

Communicate without triggering the negative vibes:

Taking the insights of quantum physics into the realm of relationship would greatly impact the way we communicate with each other. For example, instead of focusing on the other person and telling them what they are doing, we can simply express what our experience is. Though the difference appears to be subtle, these are radically different ways of expressing ourselves in a relationship. When tell someone what they are doing, we ourselves are under the illusion that what we see them doing is an objective fact, untainted by we subjective filters. For eg. Telling someone, “You won’t be able to open that door”, simply say, “The door does not open. It’s faulty”. Expressing ourselves in this way opens up the possibility for the other person to disagree with us, maybe even result our owning in an argument. On the other hand, if we simply express what perceiving, we are owning our subjective experience and not talking about the other but about ourselves. How can anyone argue (though some people might try) with what our experience is? This shift in how we express ourselves then empowers the other person to do the same, creating a shared space for both people to do  freely, what they are experiencing without personalizing the other press person's perceptions.

Paul shares an experience he had many years ago.  In his words he says, “My longtime girlfriend and I had broken up, but we were still living together. It was early in the morning and I was asleep. She wanted to, ask me a question about something, but was afraid of my answer. As if fulfilling her fear, she literally woke up the part of me that indeed did have a problem with what she was asking. To this day I remember my inner experience in that moment: out of the multiple potential aspects of myself (one of which would not have had a problem with what she was asking), in the way she asked the question she called forth the part of me that would confirm her negative expectation. The part of me that she had awakened reciprocally evoked and rein- forced in her mind that this was indeed who I really was. She, in turn, then reacted to this part of myself, and we were what I call "off to the races," once again re-creating and playing out a problematic aspect of our relationship. Calling forth the part of me that didn't give her the answer she was looking for came with its own corresponding universe that seemed to support the "objective" nature of what was happening, as she now had all the evidence she needed to confirm the truth of her viewpoint. Our whole process was an expression of the quantum nature of the universe in action.

Four valued logic:

Over the course of life we often get traumatized to some degree or the other. In this situation a part of our wholeness of our psyche splits off and we develop a seemingly autonomous life and ‘Quasi-independent will’ of its own. In psychology these split-off parts are called ‘Autonomous complexes’ or ‘Primordial Trauma’ which due to autonomy manifest to our mind as if they were self-existing entities. These autonomous entities are quantum in nature in that they link the subjective and the objective dimension of our experience. Whichever of these viewpoints we hold at a given case, which (from the point of view of two valued logic) excludes the other possibility from having any reality.

In two valued logic: We think of two cases only. A is possible or B is possible.

In four valued logic we think of four cases only. A is possible or B is possible. Both A and B are possible. Neither A nor B is possible.

Sameness:

The reality which exists now can’t be the reality which existed a nanosecond ago. Our sense of continuity between moments is a function of our memory. When object seems to resemble itself from moment to moment, this feeds into our past memory in such a way that we get convinced that it is the same object.

SUMMARY:

There is no objective reality independent of an observer.

We live in a participatory universe. The observer affects what is observed by the mere act of observing.

Quantum entities exist in a multiplicity of simultaneous potential states (called a superposition), hovering in an abstract realm between existence and nonexistence prior to being observed.

The act of observation is the very act which turns the potentiality of the quantum world into the actuality of the seemingly ordinary world. Our act of observation not only changes the present state of the universe, it reaches backwards in time and changes what we can say about the past.

The questions we ask make a difference. The laws of physics are not written in stone, but are mutable.

The universe is a seamless, undivided, and interconnected whole. An expression of this wholeness is that each part of the universe is in communication with every other part in an immediate and unmediated way.

Quantum entities can jump from one place to another without traversing the path in between.

Quantum theory is discovering that mind and matter are not separate but interconnected. Quantum physics is revealing that the boundary between the inner and outer domains, however conventionally useful, does not ultimately exist.

Quantum physics is showing us how we ourselves are moment by moment playing a key role in the creation of our experience.

 Disclaimer :

The summary written by me is just an attempt to preserve the good points stated by .Paul Levy.

In this article I have mixed my experiences, observations, foresights and my perceptions to land on a point.

 Vinay Wagh