Wow, a wonderful technique

I'd never been interested in Stoicism, but I recently came across this:

If you're fond of a jug, say, 'This is a jug that I'm fond of,' an then, if it gets broken, you won't be upset. If you kiss your child or your wife, say to yourself that it is a human being that you're kissing; and then, if one of them should die, you won't be upsetting.
                                   Epictetus

And it seems to work even when it comes to kissing yourself. 

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 5

ONE THING I WANT TO WARN YOU ABOUT


I now dwell on our entanglement with environment and what it takes to be unentangled; and for that I start with the most banal kind of it: our entanglement with material things. In fact, very often it's the main obstacle to enlightenment since for many material things are not only the main source of their self-worth but even part of their identity. (In this regard, the walking meditation described in this blog* can really help: when you move the earth with your legs, everything on it comes and goes except you.)

Then the question you have to answer is this: how can you make sure that your possessions will always remain just a tool, not an emotional entity?

To answer this, we have a new perspective: the idea that freedom means being unentangled. It's not an abstraction; it's your practice and way of living; it's freedom from and freedom to at the same time. You may not even realise how unusual this perspective is for the majority (at least these days, people in either the East or the West simply can't afford the luxury of having such a lifestyle). Exploring it, you enter uncharted territory so don't be surprised if you find something that defies common sense and would never occur to a 'normal' person. For example, does wealth always make us free? (Note that once we start to analyse our relationship with wealth, it's not only about things but also people since wealth is a social phenomenon.)


One of the reasons why I bring up this topic is because I want to worn you that if you make decisions based on Zen intuition as I describe it,** you'll wind up in a wonderful but unstable state (the state is really wonderful: I'm almost 60, but I still feel free and happy like a teenager skipping school).


As far as I'm concerned, following this path, I did quite well in an unstable and even chaotic environment -- in Bulgaria in the 1990s -- at least much better than the majority that would stick to their permanent jobs; for them, it was a disaster. There was absolutely no security, but on the flipside, there were a lot of opportunities. I was pretty good at spotting and taking advantage of opportunities but bad at the next stage that many believe busyness is abot: creating a permanent state of codependency with clients (creating bonds, in a world). The former and the later are of completely different nature and require completely different skills. And then when I came to Europe (Bulgaria wasn't in the EU at the time), I found a completely different environment: that they'd traded opportunities for security and didn't realise that the former is always at the expense of the later.


And perhaps one of the most surprising things I've discovered is the fact that if you think of freedom as being unentangled, then wealth makes you free only to a certain point, but then the richer you get, the more you get entangled with others if only because you need to protect your possessions -- it's up to you to prove me wrong -- investing money into realising your ideas can be a solution, of course.

In this view, it's okay to be a hunter and go hunting every day, but for some reason it always tends to end up in some stable state of codependency. Psychologists even say that codependency is a sign of maturity. I'm not sure that 'maturity' is the right term here. (I once read a Zen master describing his teaching experience; he says that enlightenment is hardest for emotional women and psychologists to achieve -- perhaps because they can't imagine what it's like to be unentangled.) Stuart Kauffman, I already mentioned him,*** in his At Home In the Universe: the Search for the Laws of Self- Organisation and Completely claims that complex systems, including living organisms, naturally tend to evolve to thrive right on the edge of chaos -- the ordered state is too rigid, the chaotic, well, too chaotic -- one must add if they're independent players of course.
.

And of course the question arises: can such unentangled individuals unite together to cary out projects, especially long-term ones, to defend themselves, to cooperate in a word? I bet they can, which for many may be quite revolutionary: Freud, for instance, believed that the only force that could unite us into society was Eros; I mean that his division of human instincts into Eros and Thanatos is fundamentally wrong. Because they're indeed two tendencies, but there're: a tendency to merge and a tendency to detach. Once you start thinking in these terms, everything falls into place.

To be continued

_______________

* https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-main-trick-walking-zazen_22.html
** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/search/label/intuition
*** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2024/06/zen-from-perspective-of-quantum.html

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 4

Free Will - 2

So I think of free will as the ability to make choices undetermined by past events; I reckon it's real and in my previous post I explained how it works, but of course there's no way for me to prove that I'm right. The reason I can't prove it is that being in this state of mind when time flows from the future to the past, i.e. seeing the world from the prospective of the centre of the universe,* is a subjective experience by definition since in this state you're on your own.

Now remember Waugh's model:**  there're two different frames of reference/viewpoints: the centre of the universe viewpoint, and the viewpoint of humans from an awkward position in the universe. Relativity is our viewpoint, while Quantum Mechanics is Nature's viewpoint from the centre of the universe. The universe, and time in particular, is perceived differently from each viewpoint, and it's precisely this which allows the reconciliation between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

We can also add that it's precisely this which makes free will possible. So the reason I can't prove that it's sometimes possible to make decisions undetermined by the past -- actually, it's even a more general problem, for example, many feel that Determinism is wrong, but they just can't prove it -- is because General Relativity doesn't emerge from Quantum Mechanics, but they both emerge from something more general instead (it sounds strange that we're considering the emergence of Possibilities which themselves by definition exist in the future). The Crystallizing Block Universe theory*** makes this even clearer: there're two regiments which overlap in the present. 

In other words, there're things in the universe which cannot be provided empirically by definition, and will always be a matter of our own individual subjective experiences and, as a result, believes. I think it's no coincidence that many physics these days are interested in Buddhism and Zen in particular.

____________________________

*The Walking Zen - Zen without a Teacher: ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 1
https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2024/06/zen-from-perspective-of-quantum.html

**RRCAT Physicist claims that physics and cosmology are both in crisis because of writing model of universe
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rrcat-physicist-claims-physics-cosmology-033021388.html

***What is time? An astronomer explains the search to find its origin
https://www.astronomy.com/science/what-is-time-an-astronomer-explains-the-search-to-find-its-origins/

***The Crystallising Universe
https://plus.maths.org/content/crystallising-universe

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 3

 Free Will - 1

As is known, determinism leaves no room for free will since in a completely deterministic world only one outcome is possible. Now some rekcon, including myself, that free will can emerge from the nature of the quantum world. However, trying to explain free will by probabilistic outcomes of wave function collapse may not be a solution if only because these outcomes are always random and we can't control or influence them.
In the long terms, we can't claim that we're responsible for our actions in either case: neither if our decisions are entirely predetermined, nor if they're a matter of random quantum chance.

Instead, let's remember that wave functions exist in the Possible* -- you already know which interpretations of quantum mechanics I like and adhere to**  -- which means that their present state is not determined by the past. Possibles exist in the future and from there affect the present -- that's what I mean by the oppositely directed arrow of time in this blog.*** As I read in one forum, 'We humans live embedded in the constraints of space and time, but wave functions don't'

When you're in a state like a wave function (i.e. unentangled or, in other words, independent), you're free from your past (from your karma) and guided by your intuition (the anticipation of the future)
which tells you what you should do in the long run to maintain this state of mind -- and there's nothing extraordinarily or mystical about it; it's just a natural result of being independent -- that's what I call Zen intuition.****

And the choice you have to make is always a binary one: whether to remain independent and enjoy the benefits of being like a wave function, such as to continue to be able to make a choice, or to merge with something and become part of it.

To make it clear, if, for example, you start to ponder what is best thing to swap your independence for, then it's no longer a matter of free will since you've already made your choice. Free will is relevant to those who're unentangled, and from their perspective, the choice is always between not merging and merging; the only exception to this rule is perhaps if you're entangled but decided to break the ties.


On top of that, there's an opinion among physicists that entanglement may be the cause of existence of the arrow of time. What then does it mean to be unentangled? In any case, in this state, you're absolutely free, independent to such an extent that you're on your own.

__________________________

*A Hypothesis: Res Potentia and Res Extensa Linked By Merriment
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/01/03/132607500/an-hypothesis-res-potentia-and-res-extensa-linked-by-measurement

*Is The Possible Ontologically Real?
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2012/01/09/144899020/is-the-possible-ontologically-real

** The Walking Zen - Zen without a Teacher: ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 1
https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2024/06/zen-from-perspective-of-quantum.html

*** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/search/label/time

**** The Walking Zen - Zen without a Teacher: intuition
https://0zen1.blogspot.com/search/label/intuition

To be continued 

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 2

As mentioned,  there're two perspectives from which you can see the world. From one perspective,  the reference point is somewhere outside you, and you're on the periphery. From the other perspective, the reference point is you, and you're the centre of the universe.

So, what happens when, during zazen, for example, you lose the centre and a thought comes into your mind? You become entangled, in quantum sence, with someone or something. It always drains your energy, and sometimes you may even feel like you've lost something: a manipulator can make you doubt your plans and ambitions and cause the feeling that some part of you has been taken away. But in fact, you've lost nothing but only gained, and all you have to do is cut off these new ties to become independent/unentangled again -- this is a well-known Zen wisdom and now you can see why it works.

What I'm saying is that some part of your potential has turned into these new ties, and these are the same ties which are responsible for 'spooky action at a distance'; the process is quite reversible, and there's no any loss of information in this case. 

To be continued.

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 1

Quantum Mechanics has a reputation for being 'strange' or 'weird', but is it really so? I reckon the reason why some find it 'strange' is because they've got hold of the wrong idea of time.

I want to make it clear that I'm by no means a physicist, but through my Zen practice I've started to suspect that consciousness has quantum nature and that Einstein's idea of time (that the world is predetermined; now's just an illusion, and there's no place for free will) is wrong.

So what makes Quantum Mechanics 'weird'? Several things actually.

Wave-Particle Duality
Particles exhibit both particle-like and wave-like properties.
For example, in the double-slit experiment, we send a single photon through two thin slits in a plate, and the photon behaves not like a single particle but a cloud of probabilities  -- a fuzzy cloud of all possible states in which the photon exists simultaneously -- so this cloud goes through both slits at the same time (by the way, that part of the cloud that hit the partition between the two slits bounces back) and then interferes with itself like a wave (a single photon marks a dot at the detector screen behind the plate, as expected, but if we continue doing this for many photons, we can see an interference pattern built up from individual dots -- just as waves interfere in water, canceling out where a crest meets a trough).

This cloud of all possible states is called the wave function of the photon, or in other terms, the wave function describes the probability distribution of finding the particle in various states. You can say that it's the wave function of the photon is going simultaneously through the slits, and this brings us to the concept of quantum  superposition.

Quantum Superposition
Quantum particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously. A particle in a superposition state doesn't have a specific position, energy, or any other physical property until it's measured. Schrodinger's cat thought experiment illustrates how funny it would be if such a phenomenon existed in our macroscopic world. (Otherwise, if Quantum Mechanics applied to a cat, it would be described as a 'wave function' in a superposition of 'alive' and 'dead'.)

Uncertainty Principal
It's impossible to simultaneously know the  exact position and momentum of a particle; the more precisely you measure one, the less precise the measurement of the other becomes.

Quantum Entanglement
Particles can be entangled, meaning the state of one particle instantly influences the state of another regardless of the distance separating them (Einstein called it 'spooky action at a distance'). Thus, when you measure something about one particle in an entangled pair, you immediately know something about the other particle -- you can deduce the quantum state of its partner particle. (Funny enough, we can find something like this in folklore: she keeps his knife while he is away, and when the knife suddenly rusts, she knows something has happened to him.)

Quantum State Collapse 
When measured (when the particle becomes entangled with the external world, the measurement equipment, for example), the wave function collapses from its superposition of states (sum of states) into a single state. As was mentioned, entangled particles can retain some wave function's properties -- Einstein's spooky action at a distance -- but when a particle undergoes a more complex entanglement with its environment, its wave function collapses to a single possibility. This is why quantum phenomena absent in our macroscopic world: under normal circumstances, a quantum system would undergo rapid entanglement with many successive particles that make up the environment.

What's wrong with Einstein's idea of time?

Quantum mechanics will seem strange to you if you stick to Einstein's idea of time -- Block Universe: the universe is predetermined from the very beginning, and there's no difference between the past, the president and the future; all three of them simultaneously coexist (and it’s just the peculiarities of your consciousness allow you to experience only the present moment).

I'm sure you've heard of the many worlds interpretation; it's really weird, but it's just an attempt to reconcile indeterminacy of quantum mechanics with Einstein's deterministic idea of time -- all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realised in some universe.

But there're other ideas of time

In 2011, there was a discussion on NPR's blog 13.7: Cosmos And Culture, and Stuart Kauffman came up with some interesting ideas*: 'reality consists of two Realms, the Possible and the Actual linked by quantum measurement 'process': The quantum world lies in the Possible, the classical world, in Actual; 'measurement' in his view is becoming.

Thus, Possibles are ontologically real (another way of saying real), and at the same time they don't obey Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle: 'A' or 'Not A' -- and there's nothing in the middle or 'A' and 'Not A' either. So in the double slit experiment 'the photon possibly does pass through the left slit and simultaneously possibly does not pass through the left slit; AND phone does pass through the right slit and simultaneously does not pass through the right slit.'

It's quite apparent that Kauffman rejects Einstein's idea of time -- although without mentioning this  -- for him, the Possible refers to the future, and the Actual, to the past. Kauffman doesn't mention this but perhaps because he's focusing on what interests him most: the way how these two Realms interact with each other -- Actuals give rise to Possibles, which in turn give rise to Actuals and so on.

The Crystallizing Block Universe**

George Ellis and Tony Rothmam came up with interesting new ideas which restore the view that 'now' is special and free will exists. They called it the Crystallising Block Universe: the future of the current moment is a cloud of probabilities and is determined by the laws of Quantum Mechanics; the past of the current moment is fixed and stored as a set of information resembling a hologram, and what we call the present is the boundary between these two regiments, where indeterminacy of the future is crystallising into the certainly of the past.

(Thus, instead of the infinite divergence of the many world interpretation, we have a convergence of all possible states into a single frozen state. Note also that in this case time flows from the future to the past: the Possible turns into the Actual.)

Waugh's model***

Waugh's model implies the existence of two different frames of reference/viewpoints: the centre of the universe viewpoint, and the viewpoint of humans from an awkward position in the universe. Relativity is our viewpoint, while Quantum Mechanics is Nature's viewpoint from the centre of the universe. The universe, and time in particular, is perceived differently from each viewpoint, and it's precisely this which allows the reconciliation between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. From the centre of the universe viewpoint, simultaneity is absolute, and there's indeed absolute universal time (as demanded by Quantum Mechanics) because the time passed since the Big Bang is simply a function of the radius of the universe. From our viewpoint, locality is absolute, and the velocity c is the upper limit and remains constant for every observer.


Now I'll give you an idea of what I'm going to dwell on in the following posts.

It's quite apparent to me that human relationships are of the same nature as quantum entanglement, but to notice this simple fact one must be unentangled. And it's exactly from this perspective, being like a wave function, you start to understand the true meaning of non-attachment, freedom, and, therefore, what the correct Zen practice should be.

Living beings tend to manipulate each other, establish hierarchies -- sexual intercourse, for example, is just a type of manipulation -- and all this happens at a very archaic level. What we call telepathy, at least at emotional level, does exist. Some people are quite aware of this, others, not so -- perhaps because they're too much entangled.

So, what happens when you've finally become unentangled (during zazen, for example, if you're doing it correctly, of course)?

Firstly, you begin to feel that you're the centre (of the universe), that is, now it's not you're moving along the road, but the road is moving relative to you, towards you**** (I can see similarities with Waugh's ideas here).

Ones you reach this state, you can be fully aware of your body and the external world at the same time, and you start to be able to intuitively grasp reality instantly as a whole.

Secondly, you begin to feel that time is flowing from the future to the past***** -- that's how time flows when you're the centre, the reference point. It's the same as the previous point, but now it's about your perception of time: it's not you're moving from the past to the future, but the future is moving towards you. Indeed, we always say that the future turns into the past, not vice versa. I reckon what this really means is the Possible turns into the Actual, which in turn implies that when you're in this state, your future is not entirely determined by the past so you have a choice (I'll dwell on free will in some next posts).

At this point, you begin to anticipate the future -- this is what I call Zen intuition -- but surprisingly, it's all about how you have to act in the long run to maintain this state of mind.

Some may say that all what we see is the past, but it's actually not. In fact, it takes for the brain some time, about 0.1second, to process visual information, so to correct what we perceive, the brain models the future and anticipates what's going to happen. Otherwise, if we, for instance, walked at a speed of 1 meter per second, the error, the lag, would be 0.1 meters.

So, what I've learnt from my Zen practice is that there're two perspectives.

From one perspective, as the majority see the world, you're part of something -- a group, tribe, etc -- it's a realm of hierarchy; you share the same opinion, ideology with others; your present is entirely determined by the past; you explore the world empirically.

From the other perspective, you're the centre; you're alone: the whole universe is just you; you perceive it instantly as a whole, and in this way you understand it; you see and evaluate the world from your own perspective; you're free: your present is not determined by the past so you have a choice.

To be continued.


________________________________

*A Hypothesis: Res Potentia and Res Extensa Linked By Merriment
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/01/03/132607500/an-hypothesis-res-potentia-and-res-extensa-linked-by-measurement

Is The Possible Ontologically Real?
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2012/01/09/144899020/is-the-possible-ontologically-real

**What is time? An astronomer explains the search to find its origin
https://www.astronomy.com/science/what-is-time-an-astronomer-explains-the-search-to-find-its-origins/

**The Crystallising Universe
https://plus.maths.org/content/crystallising-universe

***RRCAT Physicist claims that physics and cosmology are both in crisis because of writing model of universe
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rrcat-physicist-claims-physics-cosmology-033021388.html

**** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-main-trick-walking-zazen_22.html

***** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/search/label/time

To be continued 

I'm about to start blogging again

 I'm going to start blogging again, and firstly I'd like to clarify what I mean by the oppositly directed time arrow -- see tag of the same name. Reading about some interpretations of quantum physics, it struck me that what I experience during my Zen practice can be explained by quantum phenomena. For some reason, due to the particularities of my practice, first of all, I think I've been able to spot some things -- and come up with some new ideas, therefore -- that others haven't. I hope you enjoy it.