A Scientific Prototype of Spiritual Knowing

Knowledge is all that is knowable; and might and power, all creation.

            (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan: 185)

Last post described spiritual knowing as radical reflexivity, the concept that the perceiver and object form an inner unity within the perceiving subject.  This post will begin to explore what may be a scientific example of this.  

Quantum theory liberates physics from the tyranny of three-dimensions and the finality of the speed of light.  It is, I believe, a first step toward real spiritual knowing and doing, for it is connected with will and volition, key ingredients in human spiritual development and a spiritual cosmology.

Quantum theory tells us that the observation of an object—at least a sub-atomic object—can instantaneously influence not only the object, but also the behavior of another object at a great distance even if no physical force connects them.  It also says that, within the probability of a mathematical wavefunction, an object can be in two places at the same time.  Its actual existence, however, at a particular place only happens upon an observation—creating a kind of virtual history of the object bringing it to that place. All depends, of course, on what is meant by “place” and “observation”.  If one means by “place” a three-dimensional location, then the object does not exist until an observation “places” it there.  But if “place” can mean outside of three dimensions, then the object exists potentially nearly anywhere. 

If, for example, one has a couple of boxes but only one box has an atom, in which box is the atom?  At this stage of this particular shell game quantum mechanics says that the object (i.e. the atom) has no actual existence until it is observed.  There is no actual atom in a particular box.  The atom exists as a wavefunction: i.e. as a mathematical construction of probability. Let’s call it a virtual atom in the wavefunction.  So, where is it?  It is in both boxes simultaneously until “observed” to be in one box.  But it is only observed to be in that box because the observation put it there. Whaaa? 

The wavefunction divided into both boxes is the complete description of the physical situation before the actual observation which finds the object in the place it was looked for.  Now it is important to note that in saying that the wavefunction divided into both boxes is a complete description of the situation before any actual observation, we are saying that the wavefunction combines in itself what are contradictory situations in the actual world.  That is, in the actual world the atom is either in one box or the other, but in the wavefunction world it is in BOTH boxes.  It is like saying light and dark form a unity before they separate, as on the Biblical first day of creation, which actually starts in total darkness.  Then…

“God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1: 3-5)

(Actually God did not create light and then separated light from dark.  The decision to create light WAS the separation.)

So, in those mathematical terms when an atom could be observed in either of two contradictory situations, or ‘states’, the wavefunction of the total situation is written as the sum of the wavefunctions of those two states separately. It resembles, that is, a symbol, a throwing together of states into mathematical union, making an epistemological unity of different ontological states.  This is because prior to the observation the atom is, as far as we know, simultaneously in states which are mutually exclusive. This is called the “super position state.”  Super position does not mean that the “object” is everywhere, only that it could be anywhere.  It does not have the quality of “position.”  It has as yet no place, no actuality, no reality, in a three-dimensional context.  In the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment, the experimenter can choose to prove either of two contradictory situations—cat is dead or alive.  But until the choice is made and the box peered into, the cat is not either dead or alive but both dead and alive.  Contradictory mutually exclusive states in actuality form a unity of complements in probability.  This is what makes quantum theory a scientific prototype of spiritual knowing, for spirit holds manifest opposites in harmonious, complementary states before manifestation. 

Now all this bumps up against thorny questions of free will and the power of intention.  We will tackle these in depth in the next post. 

For now, we know that in quantum theory contradictions and mutually exclusive states in actuality form a unity in probability.  That unity is of complements, since nature seems to respond to human choice in complementary ways.  That means that either more or less positive knowledge is obtained from any decision or observation.  On one hand, the observation of any property makes a ‘complementary’ quality uncertain.  Once we are certain of one thing, we are uncertain of its complement—both the position and speed of a photon, for example.  But on the other, it is known that once the spin of a photon is known, its entangled “twin” spins oppositely, perhaps to keep some sort of cosmic balance. In a greater context, Baha’u’llah asserts the dual effects of one righteous act: “One righteous act,” He says, “is endowed with a potency that can so elevate the dust as to cause it to pass beyond the heaven of heavens. It can tear every bond asunder, and hath the power to restore the force that hath spent itself and vanished....” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 286)

Complementarity may occur because quantum theory does not describe the world per se, but, rather, what mathematics can say about the world; i.e. what can be perceived and encoded mathematically. Before knowledge, truth and error are the same ( a probability) because the actual truth is unknown.  Verbal language, too, does not actually describe the world itself, but only what verbal structures can say about the world.  Both are purely human constructs, only secondarily referential to the world, but actually and primarily self-referential.  Complementarity arises from dividing the world, and dividing is the inevitable result of using any language.  In creates context, an inside and an outside, where before all was one in its possibility.

Like religions and science itself, languages of all kinds, including number, can absorb their users.  When they do a curious mental reversal occurs.  I mean that one so absorbed tends to conflate the whole world with what his language, his math, his religion or science, tells him about it, because he is not looking for truth but for certainty.  Such a true believer is imprisoned within a context of perception and calls that context alone reality: not just substituting a part for the whole, but going further to call the other parts of the whole unreal, irrelevant or unknowable.  Thus the true difference, world/one part of the world, becomes the false dichotomy, world/not world, where “world” is the former part and “not world” is, in fact, the world.  That is the reversal. 

For quantum mechanics, since the wavefunction is the only thing that its physics describes, it is the only “real” thing—the virtual becomes the actual.  I mean that, in the quantum world the wavefunction gives only the probability of “finding” the object at some actual “place”.  The “object” as a wavefunction “exists” only as a probability anywhere within the wavefunction.  Probability is an actual in that world, the only actual.  But, in the weirdest sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, looking gives the object true actuality.  Here is the key point, from the perspective of quantum perception, observation collapses the probability into a reality, an actual and not just a probable existence.  The observation creates reality, i.e. an objective situation which is then the same for everyone after that.  After the mathematical wavefunction collapses into an actuality, everyone finds the object “there.”  As goofy as this sounds, it is, so far, as close as modern humans have come to understanding and doing “Be and it is.

Quantum mechanics is a brilliant scientific epistemology of possibility, for the wavefunction combines in itself what are contradictory situations in the actual world.  This is a form of spiritual knowing, which always includes opposites, as the Biblical references show.  The problem for me is the explanation and interpretation of what happens with the observation, which for them creates reality.  This strains my credulity and is the kind of contortion that an epistemology without a spiritual dimension must undergo to describe and explain phenomena outside of itself.  Actual “Be and it is” creation requires other qualities.