Integral Life
This conversation sheds clarity on a very confused notion in the area of spirituality today—namely, the “tao of physics” and all its variations, as exemplified by films like “What the Bleep”. So what relationship, if any, does God actually have with quantum physics?
Does quantum physics prove God? This question has to do directly with the relation of modern quantum physics and spirituality. In effect, does modern physics prove God? Does the Tao find proof in quantum realities?
Ken Wilber’s answer: “Categorically not. I don’t know more confusion in the last thirty years than has come from quantum physics….”
Ken goes on to outline the three major confusions that have dominated the popular (mis)understanding of the relationship of physics and mysticism.
#1: Your consciousness does not create electrons. Unlike Newtonian physics, which can predict the location of large objects moving at slow speeds, quantum physics only offers a probability wave in which a given particle, like an electron, should show up. But here’s the funny thing: it is only at the moment that one makes the measurement that the electron actually does “show up.” Certain writers and theorists have thus suggested that human intentionality actually creates reality on a quantum level. The most popular version of this idea can be found in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know?!, in which we “qwaff” reality into existence.
Ken suggests this is both bad physics and bad mysticism. As for the former, in his book, Quantum Questions, Ken compiled the original writings of the 13 most important founders of modern quantum and relativistic physics, to explore their understanding of the relationship of physics and mysticism. Without exception, each one of them believed that modern physics does NOT prove spiritual realities in any fashion. And yet each of them was a mystic, not because of physics, but in spite of it. By pushing to the outer limits of their discipline, a feat which requires true genius, they found themselves face to face with those realities that physics categorically could not explain.
#2: Quantum vacuum potentials are not unmanifest Spirit. The immediate problem with the notion that certain “unmanifest” or “vacuum” quantum realities give rise to the manifest world, and that the quantum vacuum is Spirit, is that it immediately presupposes a radically divided Spirit or Ultimate. There is Spirit “over here,” manifestation “over there,” and it’s only through these quantum vacuum potentials that Spirit actualizes manifestation—with Spirit set apart from manifestation.
“In terms of actual real physics or actual real mysticism, they were incorrect on both counts. And the marriage of bad physics and sloppy mysticism has been a nightmare….” As the great contemplative traditions agree, true nondual Spirit is the suchness, emptiness, or isness of all manifestation, and as such leaves everything exactly where it finds it. Nondual Spirit is no more set apart from manifestation than the wetness of the ocean is set apart from waves. Wetness is the suchness or isness of all waves. By identifying Spirit with quantum potential, you are actually qualifying the Unqualifiable, giving it characteristics—”and right there,” Ken says, “things start to go horribly wrong, and they never recover. These folks are trying to give characteristics to Emptiness. They therefore make it dualistic. And then things get worse from there….”
#3: Just because you understand quantum mechanics doesn’t mean you’re enlightened. Physics is an explicitly 3rd-person approach to reality, whereas meditative, contemplative, or mystical disciplines are explicitly 1st-person approaches to reality. Neither perspective is more real than the other, but each perspective does disclose different truths, and you cannot use the truth disclosed in one domain to “colonize” another. The study of physics, as a 3rd-person discipline, will not get you enlightenment; and meditation, as a 1st-person discipline, will not disclose the location of an asteroid (or an electron). The “content” of enlightenment is the realization of that which is timeless, formless, and eternally unchanging. The content of physics is the understanding of the movement of form within time, i.e. that which is constantly changing. And if you hook Buddha’s enlightenment to a theory of physics that gets disproved tomorrow, does that mean Buddha loses his enlightenment?
Ken goes on to suggest that what might be influencing quantum realities is not Suchness per se, but bio-energy or prana, which may be the source of the crackling, buzzing, electric creativity that so many theorists have tried to explain at the quantum level. Of course, it remains to be seen exactly what further research does and does not support.
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I'm a Jehovah's Witness, and i have a significant knowleadge of this sistem of things (1 John 5:19).
In my research for even further information, i depared to someone say ,multiple times actually, that Quantum Mechanics is a bridge to God.
I was preplexed!
When i was younger i wanted to be a scientist, it was just a thing i used to say, and even though i found out later on that i didn't care all that much about science (most particularly chemestry) i did care a significant amount for Physics. It was just something i enjoyed.
But it was, compared to regular universital physics, very basic stuff. But the interest was there and even though i just didn't gave it enough attention, the feeling still stuck, so the way i think always was very technical when refering to these things.
So, again, returning to the story: It's extremedly weird that i'm searching a subject based on evidence, while still believing in God to then in less than a second you change your entire attitude to something you don't know, but you know it's big and dense, so complicated that an untrained mind wold have a field day just to find "the door to the basics of basic knowleadge of Quantum Mechanics" if you're catching my drift here.
It's something so alien to me, yet i felt the urge to try and study it, even when i fully know i'm not capable of such thing (monetary costs, lack of even basic knowleadge on where to start and so on).
Of course i thought it was a bunch of stupidity, a bunch of baloonie… but i kept an open tab anyway with the search results.
So, after a couple hours and me studying a subject on how to prepare for a hyperinflation crisis (that will happen in 2021, bless you that is reading this, prepare yourselves!), after i ended taking notes, i returned to the open tab.
Here's what 1 hour of searching got me: Wikipedia doesn't say alot, a researcher in Quantum Physics say that Quantum Mechanics MIGHT help, and somehow this video, wich doesn't answear Quantum Mechanics, OBVIOUSLY says that Quantum PHYSICS don't have anything to do with God…
however i wanna know Quantum MECHANICS! Because that's the information i got, and last time i checked Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Physics ARE NOT THE SAME THING!
This is what creates so much confusion, even to the ones who know alot about both subjects!
This is the type of situation that you PROBABLY wold POSSIBLY get an inconclusive answear if you've got Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics engeneers/scientists in a hard and heavy metal table discussing possibilities and gathering up brainpower to understand.
Because if you notice, all you see is "separate" scientists giving their opinions, but you never see a conglomerate of scientists of diferent branches together devising a plan to achieve something.
Technicallity is what a scientist lives for, am i not correct?
We gotta look for the smallest of details and "put the points in the 'i's'" if you know what i mean.
Quantum physics proves Christianity to be true
Quantum physics points out that the essense of cosmos is not matter but the "how".
Science Having the ability and means to identify quantum mechanics, gravity, light etc.. doesn’t explain a thing really. The language of mathematics applies to almost everything in the physical world, that shouldn’t be a big surprise anymore, but for some it seems to be. We haven’t figured out a thing till we can explain how it got here in the first place. We are no closer to that answer than we were any time in documented history. That’s what we know for sure!
How does this relate to the title?
Boooring. Bullshit. I fell asleep to this. If I could fall asleep to it it isn't real. Because right there it ceases to exist. Therefore this is not quantumly true. It just ceased to exist. So I would have to force myself to listen to this again for it to be sort of true, which it won't, so it can't be true, therefore quantum physics does prove spirit energy exist…now I'm gonna go back and force myself to listen to it to see what I missed. SMH…
Thank you, sir, for explaining more about the Quantum Physics. Much appreciated!!!
self-absorbed much… oh yeah, buy my book b/c I have no ego like everyone else
he doesn’t have to be such a dick about how he approached the subject…and sense when have strings been settled upon as the ultimate basis of reality free from the limitations that have been shown exist in the theory itself…What about M-theory and it’s implications, which seem to me as sound as any other ideas being tossed around…I’m rather disappointed in the way Wilbur approached this topic bc as a scientist and philosopher he has the ability to serve as a sensible mediator in this egostistical superiority contest, yet he chose to present the material with such haughtiness and empathetic aloofness akin to stereotypical scientific mindset. It’s fine to point out incongruences, but you certainly aren’t winning any fans through such rhetoric.
Fundamental strings of energy vibrating at different frequencies to create all the various densities of matter. I found this same model, with a description of what caused the vibrations. Guess where. Genesis 1. Let there be light(energy). Then God spoke upon that energy which caused it to vibrate, as speech is vibration. After bringing light into the picture, he spoke all things into existence. I found it quite a compelling parallel. It also dawned on me that "uni" means one, and a spoken phrase can be considered a "verse". And God is supposed to have spoken the uni-verse into existence.
This guy needs to speak to Nassim Harramein.
In a nutshell: this guy is a materialist
Spirit can’t be known as an object. So it’s not knowing about, but unknowing. Heisenberg may have been here, and Schrödinger‘s cat may be alive and dead. Beyond the quantum field is the real you can only feel as eye of the I.
Someone MUST connect Ken with Tom Campbell (My big toe) Do it please💪😀
I believe that there is classical physics, QM physics and a missing physics before we even come close to GOD
What (?) Isn't quantum theory significant to spirituality because of its non-locality aspect (?) Non-locality being a way of understanding the experience of non-duality (?)
regarding 1. in the publishers comments above, i agree that there has been a mistaken notion in new age circles, most particularly in deepak chopra, that consciousness determines existence, which is a misinterpretation of what is going on in the collapse of the wave function. however regarding 2. the quantum vacuum or zero-point energy is the fluctuations of virtual particles given by the uncertainty principle, and these fluctuations interact with the manifest or gross physical universe very briefly, acting as the ever-present witness of material configurations from moment to moment, recording the flow of changes into the fabric of space-time at the planck scale from which the fluctuations came in the first place. this makes the quantum vacuum fluctuations the source of the eye of spirit, the ever-present witness of everything that is happening. thus the manifest realm is not separate from the unmanifest realm in this process, but is part of an unbroken unity or undivided wholeness through continuous feedback or holomovement from the explicate-manifest to the implicate-unmanifest and back again, an unending suchness of the eternal now unfolding and enfolding from moment to moment. in fact we can think of the quantum vacuum fluctuations as something similar to prana, as well as the eye of spirit. they are the active recorders and informers of the manifest realm, but are themselves unmanifest. finally, regarding 3. obviously knowing the mechanics of the universe will not bring enlightened consciousness, but the mere fact that the universe is structured the way it is as a gross physical, subtle quantum, causal dark matter, and nondual dark energy dynamical system is the condition for the possibility of there being life forms in the first place, and consciousness, and ultimately becoming enlightened. so it's not that consciousness causes existence, it's that existence (the kosmos) is a dynamical system that is none other than consciousness itself.
Quantum= Quanta = Particles = Materialism = Failure.
Quantum Mechanics comes out of Einstein dismissing the Aether = Magnetico-Dielectric Counter Space
Consciousness perturbs the Aether through Desire = Pressure Mediation=water going down hill
Dielectric=Inertia + acceleration = voided-terminates as magnetism = Mass = Force and Motion.
In terms of geometry it is the Torus Hyperboloid
Magnetism = Torus – donut shape, the hole in the donut is the Dielectric = Hyperboloid hour glass geometry.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥💯
Thank You, Ken, Corey … an excellent discussion on quantum physics, I consider Ken to be especially qualified to explain this due to his educational background. Love & Peace to All
Nice one. Thank you, Corey and Ken! I was always bothered by the way Quantum Physics has been mis-used in this way.
the question "does quantum physics prove god?" is ridiculous. it comes from a mythic amber mentality pretending to be worldcentric science. on the other hand, the quantum realm does correspond to the subtle realm of entangled objects and synchronistic surprise, magic, and miracle, which are macro-expressions of the weird world of quantum tunneling and wormholes found in dreams, psychedelic experience, and paranormal phenomena. what the subtle quantum realm mediates is the causal realm of the morphic and archetypal forms, the deity realm, through vibrational and harmonic resonance. this is the unmanifest realm of the kosmic storehouse or akashic field, stored as information at or near the planck scale in dark matter. http://www.integralworld.net/corbett48.html
First persons are made of third person parts at once behaving according to Newtonian and quantum physics… what is Wilber doing fragmenting everything?
Is this a current talk?