ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 1

What can a Zen practitioner gain from quantum mechanics? Quite a lot, I think, because it can help you get a grasp of how the mind works and therefore better understand what the correct Zen practice should be, which to me is perhaps the most important question Zen needs to answer nowadays since there are at least two different ways of doing Zazen among Zen practitioners; as a result, they achieve two different states of mind, but no one seems to care.

Now you can see why I called this series of posts ZEN. FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS, not vice versa, although my own interpretation of Quantum Mechanics — QM from my perspective—comes first, of course. In a word, I've found a perspective from which, in my view, (almost) everything falls into place and from which it's easy for me to explain what I mean.

I think QM is easy to grasp (if you are not familiar with Einstein's General Relativity).

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 a quantum nature and that Einstein's idea of time (that the world is predetermined; now is 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; i.e., a wave function describes the probability distribution of finding a 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 its quantum state. (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 a particle in quantum state  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, for example  -- 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 are absent in our macroscopic world: under normal circumstances, a quantum system would undergo rapid entanglement with many other particles that make up the environment. 

So 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  -- he seems to share the same view as George Ellis and Tony Rothmam. For him, the Possible refers to the future, and the Actual, to the past. 


The Crystallising Block Universe** 

George Ellis and Tony Rothman came up with interesting new ideas that 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 the indeterminacy of the future is crystallising into the certainty 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 that 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, i.e., 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, that 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, establishing 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 an emotional level, does exist. Some people are quite aware of this; others, not so much—perhaps because they're too much entangled, whereas the phenomenon in question is, I guess, a type of entanglement. 


Tobe continued.

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

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 the writing model of the universe. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rrcat-physicist-claims-physics-cosmology-033021388.html