QUANTUM PHYSICS, SPIRITUALITY (and a little bit of MUSIC)

The following attempt at bringing quantum mechanics into my book got the guillotine. I'd hoped to help bring science and spirituality together a bit, but it was too heady and cut down the pace. If this kind of thing is of interest, I highly recommend reading The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, Bridging Science and Spirit by Norman Friedman, and The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav for more information as listed above.

Reminder: I like to write lots and the following is UNEDITED.

Please note: This is the only attempt at explaining physics I will bring forth in my writings… I’ll keep it as basic as possible, and quote the experts a lot so I don’t screw it up too badly. I am inspired by this quote from Albert Einstein: “Most of the fundamental ideas of science are eventually simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.” Okay Mr. Smartiest Pants in the Universe, let’s see how simple we can get, and still get the point across.

Waves and particles. Holograms and reality. Lions and tigers oh my. Quantum physics looks at the nature of reality by not looking at it. You can’t. It’s too small. So, instead, a bunch of smart people came up with mathematical formulas to prove how things work at this sub-quantum level. And things get very weird at this level. “When scientists attempt to break matter into smaller and smaller pieces-electrons, protons, and so on- they no longer possess the traits of objects. For example, most of us tend to think of an electron as a tiny sphere or a BB whizzing around, but nothing could be further form the truth. Although an electron can sometimes behave as if it were a compact little particle, physicists have found that it literally possess no dimension. This is difficult for most of us to imagine because everything at our level of existence possess dimension. And yet if you try to measure the width of an electron, you will discover it’s an impossible task. An electron is simply not an object as we know it.” (Holographic U).

Another discovery physicists made was that, “an electron can manifest as either a particle or wave…This chameleon like ability is common to all subatomic particles. It is also common to all things once thought to manifest exclusively as waves. Light, gamma rays, radio waves, X rays-all can change from waves to particles and back again…Perhaps most astonishing of all is that there is compelling evidence that the only time quanta ever manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. For instance, when an electron isn’t being looked at, experimental findings suggest that it is always a wave.” (Holographic U).

So, waves and particles appear to be one and the same at this deeper level or reality because we humans, the observers, have an impact upon the way things manifest into our reality. I think it is similar to the question, “Does a tree falling in the forest make any sound if there isn’t anyone to hear it?” From what I can make of all of this, reality exists because I make it exist. And, when I thought of the dual nature of the wave and particle, I asked myself, “How does this impact my life?” If I am ultimately made up of nothing but waves and particles, or “quanta which scientists believe are the basic stuff from which the entire universe is made” (Holographic U), then how does my interpretation of life follow suit?

In other words, I’m the observer of everything. I therefore must create my own reality, and since things at the sub-quantum level are exhibiting all kinds of wacky characteristics, perhaps when I observe something it is my experience and impressions that become “real” in my mind. But this might not have anything to do with “reality” because ultimately, as the Buddhists say, “The World is Maya, or an Illusion.” To me, that means that things are not always as they seem, and it is only my ego (the part of me that needs to make sense of this physical world), that has to put everything into a category instead of allowing observations to be fluid and ever changing, like the particle and the wave.

What really got my attention were theories from a physicist named David Bohm. Out of all of the gobbledy-gook I’ve come across in quantum physics, Bohm’s attempt to explain nature at the quantum level makes a great deal of sense. He postulated that, “the wave and particle were two aspects of one new kind of entity, which is neither wave nor particle. Bohm suggested the electron is an entity that continually fluctuates from a particle like character to a wavelike character and then back again.” (Bridging Science and Spirit).

Bohm states that our three-dimensional reality contains aspects of a ground that is based on more dimensions that we normally perceive—that our everyday world is a three—dimensional projection of a higher-dimensional reality. He uses the “fish tank” analogy to help us conceptualize multi-dimensional space. Imagine a fish swimming about in a rectangular tank, with video cameras placed on two perpendicular sides of the tank. The filmed images are projected side by side on two video monitors, where we seem to see two fish swimming in a correlated fashion. Actually, there is only one fish. Projecting the three-dimensional reality upon two-dimensions creates the illusion of two fish. Similarly, the idea of a quantum potential (multidimensional information potential) suggests that what we see as separate parts of reality are only aspects of a totally interconnected underlying quantum world. This leads us to the notion of a seamless whole as the fundamental reality. (Bridging Science and Spirit, pg 48).

The name of this book is related to the hologram because every part of a hologram contains all of the parts within it. I Found All The Parts is in part due to TBIF’s album (well, it was a mini-disk with only four songs on it) called Found All The Parts. Essentially, I liked it because in psychotherapy, a person needs to feel whole in order to function optimally in society. If aspects of our psyche are out of balance, we usually appear a bit screwed up to other people who have those aspects in check. In my case, I knew my perception of power between the band, and myself and my fear of rejection around them, was out of whack. I wanted to take my power back, and ditch the fear of rejection. I knew if I could move towards these goals, I’d feel more whole and complete within myself and stop being at the mercy of other peoples’ reactions. I would have Found All (or at least most) of My Parts and then integrated them into my being.

But finding all of the parts really implies that they are already within myself. I can’t be powerful (or any other emotion or character trait) unless it is already part of me; it simply might not be activated or accessed in a given moment, but it always is there like the hologram. Jung’s concept of the Shadow refers to the parts of ourselves that we keep hidden and suppressed because they are usually deemed distasteful by society. (Nice girls don’t get angry and big boys don’t cry kind of thing). No one can truly give me the feeling of being powerful because then I’m dependent upon the other person to activate my sensations of power.

There is a saying in metaphysics that the entire universe is contained within each and every one of us. Every answer to every question is already a part of us. This, along with finding or activating our parts, implies that the parts do not make the whole, but the whole creates the parts. It is a different perspective. White light appears invisible to our eyes, but when you look througth a prism, it’s apparent all colors are contained within it. The whole (white light) creates the parts (or colors). In various religions, it is said that, “All things stem from the One.” This could imply that you and I come from the One, or God, but we are not separate from God if this is our source. We can’t be separate because we are a part or an aspect of All that Is. David Bohm’s theories in quantum physics draw a similar conclusion.

Based upon his observations of particles and waves and all this other non-seen stuff, he began to see everything as a hologram or holomovement. “Classically, the whole is the sum of its parts. Within the quantum potential, the whole organizes the parts. To restate this, the essential feature of the quantum field and the resulting quantum potential is that any event happening anywhere is immediately available everywhere as information. Each portion of space contains the information about all portions of space. The reason the classical world appears to us as separate and distinct objects is because the quantum potential at the macro level is negligible (with some exceptions, such as superconductivity). We are left with a three-dimensional projection from a multidimensional ground. “ (Bridging Science)

A hologram as most of us understand, is an image with three-dimensional qualities, but is simply a projection. The aspect of the hologram that is most fascinating to me, is if a “piece of holographic film containing the image of let’s say a rock star (rock star is my example), is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will be found to contain the entire image of the rock star. Even if the halves are divided again and again, the entire rock star can still be reconstructed from each small portion of the film (although the images will get hazier as the portions get smaller). Unlike photographic film, every small fragment of a piece of holographic film contains all the information recorded in the whole.” (Holographic U). From the one comes the many.

This could explain how the universe is contained within each of us. If we were part of a hologram-like universe, then each person on earth would contain the encoded format of All That Is within us, for we would be a hologram as well. Pretty freaky, isn’t it? Perhaps I should have entitled the book I Am all the Parts, but I prefer the word found, because ultimately, this book is about finding the aspects of myself through rock music that were previously hidden from me. I could only find these parts by going on a journey, delving into my heart, and facing my fears. Eventually, I would see how I could only explain a series of synchronistic incidents by using the model of the hologram. But we’ll get to that later. Physics lesson over. Wasn’t too bad, was it?