Quantum Physics and Spirituality
As children, we are taught to recognize and name objects. Over time, we build a description of the world, and this description ultimately becomes our reality. In the process, we become a member of our tribe or community, complete with its beliefs and stories about that reality. For myself, and I believe for a growing number of us, there comes a time when this description of the world, what we’ve been taught about life and about our presence here on Earth, is no longer satisfying.
Materialism is the name I use to point to an important part of this default explanation. It says that the physical world is what is ultimately real and that we can experience the world directly. It says that the world is permanent in human terms, and that we are the ones who come and go.
Because materialism is the way we’ve all been taught to look at the world, we try to explain our own being and consciousness in those terms. That attempt becomes very cumbersome, like trying to explain how neurons working together can produce consciousness. Again, it’s ultimately unsatisfying.
Spirituality is the name given to the search for what lies behind the physical world, for the possibility of seeing beyond the materialistic view. Spirituality is neither a religion nor a set of beliefs. It is rather a path to a deeper understanding of life that can free us from the sadness we feel when we confront the world in its current state. When we recognize that it’s possible to release materialism as the framework in which we consider everything, we can become aware that what we think of as the external world isn’t external at all.
We can dig deeper in order to make sense of this in our daily lives.
First, consider the standard description of how vision works. Light that enters our eyes is converted to electrical impulses by the rods and cones in our retinas. These impulses are transmitted to our brains by the optic nerve. And our brains then make three-dimensional pictures out of these impulses, much like televisions create pictures out of the signals in the cable. These pictures, and sounds and so on, constitute an interpretation of sensory input. They become a three-dimensional view, our view of the world.
It is perfectly natural to assume that this view is a more-or-less accurate picture of what’s actually “out there.” After all, we rely on these pictures of the physical world we have in our minds for all the strategies we use for getting along in life. In that context, it’s useful to keep in mind that our interpretation of physical sensory data is conditioned by our experience of the past, by our habits of thought, by our beliefs, and by what we were told when we were young. All we have is our interpretation of what we see, and we all mistake that interpretation for what is actually there.
Let’s do a simple but immensely consequential thought experiment.
This thought experiment goes as follows. Suppose that there is no external world to which the pictures in our brains correspond. Suppose that instead of walking around in the world out there, our bodies are part of the description or interpretation our brains create from electrical impulses. In those terms, we are simply manipulating elements of our interpretation when we walk around. That would be like having an avatar in a virtual reality headset that moves around in a virtual world. Is it possible that what you think of as “you” is such an avatar?
In terms of the relationship between our description of the world and the world itself, there are two possibilities. One is that the picture in your brain is a representation of a real external world. In this possibility, the world exists roughly as it appears to you, and when you die the world will remain.
In terms of the second possibility for the relationship between our description of the world and the world itself, there is no external world. Your beliefs (and the thoughts they control) shape the world you perceive, and when you die that world ceases to be for you.
I suggest that there is no way for us, equipped with only our five senses, to determine which of those two possibilities is real. To do so, we would have to step outside of the pictures in our brains and see the world directly. If that were possible, we could then compare our interpretations, our pictures, to the “real” world. But with what apparatus could we “see” the world without using our sense of vision as I described it above?
If you perform this thought experiment honestly, you’ll discover two things. First, you have to question everything you’ve ever been taught about how to get along in life. And second, you’ll find yourself in possession of the power to determine the quality of your own life.
Now, what does quantum mechanics have to do with this thought experiment?
Quantum physics is a very spiritual discipline. It has shown us that the world isn’t what we thought it was.
First, a bit of context. We used to think of material objects as made of atoms, which were thought to be fundamental and indivisible. Later, we learned that they are composed of smaller, indivisible objects called protons, neutrons, and electrons. Later still, we learned that protons and neutrons are composed of still smaller objects called quarks, of which there are two kinds. This left us with three particles that used to be considered the fundamental building blocks of nature: the electron and the two quarks. (These days, this description has expanded to include six quarks and the electron, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff like neutrinos and photons, but that’s a minor point in this discussion.)
To reiterate, mainstream scientific world-views have always assumed that matter is what the universe is made of. This view, materialism, tells us that every observed phenomenon can be explained by more fully understanding the nature of matter. Since consciousness is one of these observed phenomena, it must be appropriate to explain it in the same way. In this physics model, neurons must somehow work together to generate consciousness.
Materialism is a comforting picture, but it’s a superficial way to think about the world. These days, the best theories we have refer to those fundamental particles that make up matter as ripples in conceptual, abstract entities called fields.
Most of us are familiar with two of these fields: the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field. The former binds us to the earth, the earth to the solar system, and so on. The latter sustains vibrations we call light. These fields are usually thought of as fluid-like substances that fill all of space, quivering and vibrating in ways that can be mathematically defined. The fields that vibrate as what we call particles behave in the same way, and they are just as hard to visualize.
However, there are lessons we can draw from understanding that matter is just our visualization of a (very) complex ripple in a fluid-like field.
The first lesson we can draw from this shift from particles to fields is that the world doesn’t exist as an external reality but rather as a way of visualizing something that is itself entirely abstract.
The second and more valuable lesson is that because we are the ones doing the visualizing, we can become conscious of the process by which we do that. We are actually picturing the world in accordance with our beliefs. Since we can adjust our beliefs, we can even alter our visualizations, the ones we call reality, to improve our experience of being alive.
This is deliberate creation, and it is our birthright as human beings. Accepting the lessons of quantum physics allows us to move beyond materialism, beyond the framework in which we consider the world as being senior to ourselves. This is one way to inform our spirituality, the longing we feel to move beyond the dualistic, oppressive world we believe we live in. The shift from believing we are navigating an external world to understanding we are creating our own interpretation of the world frees us to express those deep desires we all have to feel joyful, free, and whole.
