Quantum Mysticism and the Founders of Quantum Mechanics

The early Founders of Quantum Mechanics connected Quantum Mechanics to Mysticism in particular things like the Vedanta and the Upanishads from Indian traditions. Why did these brilliant men see the connection between these things? Men like Bohr, Schrodinger and Heisenberg.

Bohr said:

“I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.”

Schrodinger wrote this:

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire Existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins (wise men or priests in the Vedic tradition) express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; Tat Tvam Asi, That Thou Art.”

Schrodinger also wrote:

"Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge……It has nothing to do with individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents- their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further…….when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier"

Einstein had similar ideas when he talked about wholeness and how separation from the whole is an illusion. He went on to say the past, present and future is a persistent illusion when he was writing to a friends family at his death.

Much of this, at least for people like Bohr and Schrodinger was influenced by Quantum Mechanics.

David Bohm was deeply influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti, crediting him as a source for understanding the worldview he proposed in his interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that he put forth in Wholeness and the Implicate Order (his first footnote[14] credited Krishnamurti's book Freedom from the Known[15] - a treatise putting forth a distilled rendition of apophatic mysticism), and had a series of in depth dialogues with him that were published in the book The Ending of Time.[16] In On Creativity, he wrote of Krishnamurti, "I got to know Krishnamurti in the early sixties. I became interested around that time in understanding the whole thing more deeply. I felt that he was suggesting that it is possible for a human being to have some kind of contact with this whole [that Bohm postulated in his work]. I don't think he would want to use the word 'God' because of its limited associations."[17]

en.wikipedia.org...

As you look at these things, these men were right. Quantum Mechanics shows us that the universe can't be explained within the context of materialism. What's being called mysticism is Scientist saying there may be more to reality than just the physical. There's nothing wrong with this. Science doesn't mean you have to explain everything within the context of materialism.

When science looks at the universe, they're not finding naturalness. They're finding fine tuning that doesn't fit a naturalistic view of the universe.

It's like I'm shaking up 40 marbles in my hand and then I drop them to the floor. I can predict that these marbles will have a random scattering across the floor. When I look at the floor, I see TO BE OR NOT TO BE spelled out perfectly with the marbles. This means, something that doesn't fit naturalness occurred between the floor and the marbles in my hand.

This is what we're finding in the universe. Science makes an observation then predicts what we should find that gave rise to this observation in the context of naturalness. Instead they're finding TO BE OR NOT TO BE.

Here's more:

Among contemporary quantum field theories, the important gauge theories are indebted to the work of [Hermann] Weyl and Pauli. Yet many physicists today would be shocked if they learned how Weyl and Pauli understood the concept ‘field’ when they wrote their classic articles. They were both immersed in mysticism, searching for a way to unify mind and physics. Weyl published a lecture where he concluded by favoring the Christian-mathematical mysticism of Nicholas of Cusa. Moreover, Pauli's published article on Kepler presents him as part of the Western mystical tradition ... For those who do not favor the Copenhagen interpretation and prefer the alternative proposed by David Bohm, I would suggest reading Bohm's many published dialogues on the topic of Eastern mysticism ... Eddington and Schrödinger, like many today, joined forces to find a quantum gravity theory. Did their shared mysticism have a role to play in whatever insights they gained or mistakes they made? I do not know, but I think it's important to find out.[19]

—Juan Miguel Marin, "'Mysticism' in Quantum Mechanics: The Forgotten Controversy" in European Journal of Physics 30 (2009), as quoted by Lisa Zyga in "Quantum Mysticism: Gone but Not Forgotten"

Here's a couple of more quotes from Schrodinger:

it is then quite clear that a measurement of x affects not only (as is always said) p[ x’s momentum], but also x itself. You have not found a particle at K’ [ x’s definite position], you have produced one there!...Before the second measurement, it is ubiquitous in the cloud (it is not a particle at all)

The observer is never entirely replaced by instruments; for if he were, he could obviously obtain no knowledge whatsoever.... Many helpful devices can facilitate this work...But they must be read! The observer’s senses have to step in eventually. The most careful record, when not inspected, tells us nothing.

www.academia.edu...

It's important here to note that Schrodinger was arguing against a Western view of science which blindly removes any room for consciousness outside of a blind emergent property of materialism which is simply foolish if you ask me.

Against Jordan here, he claims that the event of registration in a thermometer cannot beconsidered an act of observation. Against Einstein he claims that uncertainty tells us something fundamental about physical reality, namely that the acquisition of knowledge is inseparable from it. His premise is that meaning is what makes a random collection become information; the acquisition of knowledge requires that this information be meaningful to someone. Moreover, only quantum physics and consciousness solve the problem that the theory of relativity ‘leaves untouched[,] the “unidirectional flow of time; [the mind using]statistical theory constructs it from the events’’’ [55, p 152]. Construction here means that it is not a law discovered but one created by consciousness at the fundamental level of reality. Thus we are not subject to this law, ‘a liberation from the tyranny of old Chronos’. His final conclusion to this dialogue climaxes the argument by invoking mystical ideas about the immortality of a fundamental consciousness.

This is very interesting. He's saying that it isn't a physical law that gives us the unidirectional flow of time. It's consciousness that constructs a past, present and future out of events. If you look at Schrodinger's Equation it describes the evolution of the wave function but it doesn't account for things like conscious choice or the observers knowledge of that choice which could be the root of uncertainty.

originally posted by: neoholographic
...It's important here to note that Schrodinger was arguing against a Western view of science which blindly removes any room for consciousness outside of a blind emergent property of materialism which is simply foolish if you ask me...

Why is it foolish (specifically)?

Why can't the universe just be a materialistic place, doing its thing the same way before human thought came along, and will continue doing its thing after humans and human thought are extinct?

...A universe doing its thing before there was any creature who claimed to have conscious thought, and doesn't even need those creatures who are claiming to have conscious thought. Why do you think the universe needs what some call "consciousness"?

The wave-particle duality of electrons or photons does not collapse because we consciously consider that duality -- it collapses only after mechanical measurement, with the mechanical measurement causing the waveform to collapse (with "collapsing waveform" being a purely rhetorical way of describing it, considering it is more complicated than that).

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

First off, you talk about a mechanical measurement, but what exactly is a mechanical measurement? What's a measurement of which path information without conscious knowledge of which path information? What's a measurement of which path information without the choice of an observer to know which path information? This is what Schrodinger is talking about he said:

To Western thought this doctrine ‘has little appeal’, it is unpalatable, it is dubbed fantastic, unscientific. Well, so it is because our science—Greek science—is based on objectivation, whereby it has cut itself off from an adequate understanding of the Subject of Cognizance, of the mind. But I do believe that this is precisely the point where our present way of thinking does need to be amended, perhaps by a bit of blood transfusion from Eastern thought.

When you look at Schrodinger's Equation, it describes the evolution of the wave function but then, measurement "does something" that turns the deterministic evolution of the wave function into probabilities. This can't be accounted for by any physical theories unless you go to parallel universe or some form of the multiverse and then you run into even bigger problems.

Consciousness can be an even more fundamental property of reality ala Penrose and Hameroff and the recent discoveries that support a Quantum Mind that's embedded in space-time geometry.

The point that Schrodinger and others were making is that you can't be so blinded by a worldview that everything has to fit within that worldview even when it doesn't make any sense.

My favourite subject, yay! just commenting so I can find this again when I have time to read and think. Thanks

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Because of entanglement every spot in everything can be connected to another spot in everything. Since we can teleport information with entanglement we have proven that information can change physical even if the physical is light years apart. Another way to look at everything is to see the physical as energy in different stable states of being. The quantum probability field decides where and how the nature of energy will be shaped and what is possible to be created. You the quantum probability field as a wave function when doing the double slit experiment. If humanity become very advanced we will probably measure and keep track the quantum probability field like we track weather today.

This quantum probability field is connected to a concept called synchronicity. An example of Synchronicity is when my mother could think me home for dinner and I would appear even if I had my own ideas for why coming home. Consciousness can create a connection and exchange information just like we teleport information with quantum entanglement. Synchronicity is quantum effect on steroids being noticed by the conscious mind.

The question is not if this exists but how effective it is and how good connection you can get with another being to exchange information. Empaths are another example that have a hard time separating external and internal information that will make them experience other people emotions as there own sometimes not knowing it is not their own emotions.

originally posted by: LittleByLittle
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

...Since we can teleport information with entanglement we have proven that information can change physical even if the physical is light years apart...

There is no known method to communicate information between entangled particles. Maybe we will find a method to do so someday, but your statement seem to be saying that it is a fact that we can do so right now. We can't.

The reason is because (theoretically) you cannot know the state of one end of the entangled particles until it has been measured, AND you cannot control what state the particle will be at the time of measurement. The probabilities of what state it will be (say spin up or spin down) are 50-50.

Therefore, whether I measure/observe my end or not, the measured state of the particle at the other end, light years away, has a 50-50 chance of being one state or the other. But the people at the other end don't even know whether I measured my end or not, so the 50-50 probability hasn't really given them any insights as to what is going on at my end. Sure -- they know the state my end is when they measure their end, that's really no help to them, considering the measurement outcome cannot be controlled.

It's true that the particles seemed to know the change in state instantaneously, but there is no way for the two people at the two entangled ends to tell each other instantaneously what particle states they have observed AND when they made that observation.

Here is a link that includes a good simplified explanation as to why it seems that we can't communicate information through entanglement:

everything2.com...

What is the source of mind matter duality? Mathematics!!

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

First off, you talk about a mechanical measurement, but what exactly is a mechanical measurement?

I'll give my answer:

Interaction with a thermodynamically large system of atoms known as a measuring device which is effectively irreversible because of 2nd law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity, so that what had multiple possibilities going ends up in a known state. Work was expended during its operation.

An eyeball counts.

I believe that all aspects of 'measurement' can be accounted for by integration of initial value equations of motion: it's physics. It so happens that this is in an extremely complicated functional space which is very difficult to intuitively understand. Experimental results clearly reject local realism: and I say abandon locality, not physical sense.

I am open to entertaining alterations to laws of motion based on theory and experimental results.

(Editorial starts now).

All that mysticism was 100% unproductive. It led to nothing.

I think unfortunately this mysticism was sparked by the excessively early adoption of the nonsensical Copenhagen interpretation. If Einstein had been in charge, the community would have held off declaring the problem 'solved' at a fundamental level (as opposed to a practical rule of thumb for experimentalist purposes) and better ideas like decoherence would have been recognized earlier.

a reply to: mbkennel

An eyeball counts.

maybe in more ways than one

Scientists have long speculated that certain animals are making use of magnetic fields to find their way, but biologists are mystified as to how they might do it.

Now some answers might be coming from one of the most perplexing interactions in physics.

Quantum entanglement dictates that if two electrons are created at the same time, the pair will be “entangled” so that whatever happens to one particle affects the other. Otherwise, it would violate fundamental laws of physics.

The two particles remain entangled even when separated by vast distances.

So if one particle is spin-up, the other must be spin-down, but what's mind-boggling is that neither will have a spin until they're measured.

That means that not only will you not know what the spin of the electron is until you measure it, but that the actual act of measuring the spin will make it spin-up or spin -own.

As difficult as entanglement is to believe, as well as understand, it is a well established property of quantum mechanics. And some physicists are suggesting that birds and other animals might be using the effect to see and navigate Earth's magnetic fields.

The process could work via light-triggered interactions on a chemical in bird’s eyes.

Light would excite two electrons on a molecule in the bird’s eye, switching one onto a second molecule, but the two would remain entangled even though they’re separated.

The Earth’s magnetic field would alter the alignment of the electron’s spins and in the process alter the chemical properties of the molecules. Physicists suspect that the reactions would leave varying concentrations of chemicals throughout the eye, possibly creating a picture of our planet’s magnetic field that would allow birds to orient themselves.

link

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

An issue with your position is in relation to Chaos Theory. With respect, to identifying order in what appears as random events. In other words what you could potentially site a evidence of Randomness in Modern Science? At the large scale structures of the Universe (compared to us of course), compete order could exist in a way that would seem very abstract to us indeed but functional in every regard.

I would also cite the thought experiment of the four blind men and the elephant.

Mankind's perspective of reality could very well be some equivalent to one of the blind men.

Any thoughts?

a reply to: LittleByLittle

Good post.

Also, the question has to be asked, what physical mechanism reduces the deterministic wave function to probabilities? This was another key question that led to the founders of QM to connecting consciousness when there wasn't and still isn't any explanation.

This makes no sense in the context of an underlying physical reality. This is the measurement problem.

The measurement problem in quantum mechanics is the problem of how (or whether) wavefunction collapse occurs. The inability to observe this process directly has given rise to different interpretations of quantum mechanics, and poses a key set of questions that each interpretation must answer. The wavefunction in quantum mechanics evolves deterministically according to the Schrödinger equation as a linear superposition of different states, but actual measurements always find the physical system in a definite state. Any future evolution is based on the state the system was discovered to be in when the measurement was made, meaning that the measurement "did something" to the system that is not obviously a consequence of Schrödinger evolution.

To express matters differently (to paraphrase Steven Weinberg[1][2]), the Schrödinger wave equation determines the wavefunction at any later time. If observers and their measuring apparatus are themselves described by a deterministic wave function, why can we not predict precise results for measurements, but only probabilities? As a general question: How can one establish a correspondence between quantum and classical reality?[3]

en.wikipedia.org...

The only thing that's uncertain is the observers knowledge about which measurement occurred. Without a conscious observer, there's no reason why the wave function shouldn't evolve in a deterministic way and also tell us which measurement will occur.

When a measurement occurs, the deterministic wave function is reduced to probabilities. Then the wave function evolves again from the point of measurement. This makes no sense in the context of materialism. If the measurement is independent of the observers knowledge of which path information, why can't we predict the direct results of which measurement will occur?

Again, the only uncertainty is the conscious observers knowledge of which measurement occurred. This is why Schrodinger, whose called the father of Quantum Mechanics said this:

The observer is never entirely replaced by instruments; for if he were, he could obviously obtain no knowledge whatsoever.... Many helpful devices can facilitate this work...But they must be read! The observer’s senses have to step in eventually. The most careful record, when not inspected, tells us nothing.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

You are right and I am miss informed of how far science have reached. When I look further into on your link and on other links I think the scientist are superficially claiming they are doing something more than they are doing to create hype. This is making me quite annoyed.

Still do not change the fact that two parts of space time can be entangled/connected and that quantum probability field decides where and how the nature of energy will be shaped and what is possible to be created.

Double post

a reply to: neoholographic

Great post.

The bliss of classicality is the sense that you can observe the universe and understand it, without effecting it. Because the effects of walking to the telescope to observe a planet's orbit are vanishingly small, its true in cases like that, you don't need to think of things like where you are observing a planet from. But not with the very small. There it becomes an information game. But that information game is really the fundamental underlying truth in all situations - all we really know is our own state in relation to the system. If the system doesn't effect our minds, we can't know about it.

This information view gives the deep sense of interconnection the ties it to those eastern systems in my view.

Yes the ancients new in my opinion a whole lot more that we do in our current modern age civilizations.

Just look at books like Vasistas Yoga, they go into parallel universes and atoms, everything our modern physics is trying to unravel!

a reply to: FormOfTheLord


Good points and the ancients had a lot of insights about the nature of reality that turns out to match current scientific understanding. This is why many of these founders of quantum mechanics gravitated towards a more esoteric or mystical view of these things. Heisenberg said:

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

This is because quantum mechanics tells us that physical reality doesn't have any objective existence. This is what shocked Einstein and others about QM.

QM tells us a particle doesn't exist prior to measurement in any observable way. It's not a particle but a wave function of probable states. The wave function has a complex value spread out over each point in space. You square the amplitude to find the probability of finding an observable of a particle at different probable states when you carry out a measurement.

All of these things tell you, that physical reality as we experience doesn't exist and is a temporary and impermanent state. Reality seems to be entangled quantum states. Say you have a hypothetical wave function with a trillion quantum states and a million of these quantum states become entangled. These entangled states could be our universe. So everything we experience in our universe would be a temporary illusion of entanglement and we would be blinded to the true nature of the whole.

This is why Einstein asked, was the moon there if we didn't look at it. The truth is, the moon doesn't exist at all outside of our perception of it in our temporary entangled state.

It goes to Brahman and Atman. In this case, Brahman would be the wave function and would contain all things or all probable states and Atman would be an expression of Brahman in one of these probable states. You see this in many religions and philosophies from the Vedanta to Christianity. In the Bible Jesus says I and my Father are one and the same. It also says the spirit of God is within you. So whether you're talking about God, Collective Consciousness or Plato's Cave, the same theme seems to hold from the Ancients. There's a bigger reality that exists beyond the local or temporary "reality" we experience and the objective seems to be to break free of the prison of this illusion.

a reply to: neoholographic

What I see here is an escape into mysticism when confronted with a difficult problem. This happened before, it will happen again.

Think of Newton claiming planetary systems would be kept stable by divine interventions (n-body problem). Some think he could have figured it out if he tried, instead of going the mystic route.

a reply to: moebius

Nope, what you're seeing is a blind adherence to materialism. These Scientist just accepted what QM was saying. This isn't something fly by night, this is a Science that has given us our modern world.

This is why the word particle can be misleading. We're not talking about particles of sand or particles of salt. We're talking about a particle that doesn't exist until measured. Prior to measurement you just have probabilities in superposition that exhibit entanglement, non locality and tunneling.

So the skeptical knee jerk reaction is these guys are idiots that just run to mysticism when facing difficult questions. The people who are blindly putting their heads in the sand are the followers of the cult of materialism who say everything must have an answer that fits into a materialistic box. This is just putting the cart before the horse in order to placate a belief, it's not science.

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: moebius

Nope, what you're seeing is a blind adherence to materialism.

Nope, highly empirically motivated adherence to sucessful materialism, and observation of unproductive non-materialism.

These Scientist just accepted what QM was saying. This isn't something fly by night, this is a Science that has given us our modern world.

No, quantum mechanics does NOT say any of that BS. Quantum mechanics is a physical theory of natural phenomena.

This is why the word particle can be misleading. We're not talking about particles of sand or particles of salt. We're talking about a particle that doesn't exist until measured. Prior to measurement you just have probabilities in superposition that exhibit entanglement, non locality and tunneling.

You always had a wave function which was in a mixed state in some basis and after interaction with observational equipment, you have a pure state in another basis. In other words, quantum mechanics 101.
And yes, the word 'particle' in this case is an eigenstate of a creation operator. "Did not exist" before is putting way too much ontological and linguistic nonsense into the notion that it was in one type of state before and a different type of state afterwards and all the evolution happened according to the laws of Heisenberg, i.e. normal initial value problem of physics.

The problem is exclusively with humans and their language and understanding, not any limitation in quantum mechanics or materialism.

So the skeptical knee jerk reaction is these guys are idiots that just run to mysticism when facing difficult questions.

They were also unaware of later developments in theory and experiment.

The people who are blindly putting their heads in the sand are the followers of the cult of materialism who say everything must have an answer that fits into a materialistic box.

I'm part of the cult which gives actionable results predictably, and not just more circular fuzzy nonsense.

This is just putting the cart before the horse in order to placate a belief, it's not science.

Every decade since Principia Mathematica brings more materialist success to chase out mystical woo.

Accepting QM means accepting materialist explanation of what seems to be mystery, not the other way around!