ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 9

Matrix - 1

As a Zen practitioner, I discovered an astounding fact that I've been trying to explain to myself ever since. Freeing yourself from your mental problems doesn't work the way Freud and other pillars of psychoanalysis think it does; in fact, it works in the exact opposite way. You break the bonds, and this gives you the understanding of what's been hidden behind them. Not the other way round, as psychoanalysis claims.

Let me remind you that, according to psychoanalysis, you're supposed to bring your fears and complexes from the unconscious into the conscious mind, more precisely, to recall what initially triggered and gave life to these issues, so that you realise what's been hidden behind them. In theory, this should dissolve the associations -- or ties, or bonds, as I prefer to call them -- that have caused the neurotic reactions. (And let me also remind you that complexes are just clusters of emotionally charged associations.) Sounds plausible.

But I found that it works exactly the opposite way: you mentally destroy, for example, your idea of a person you wish to work out what is hidden behind their exterior and why they make you feel uneasy, and this leads to the understanding of their true intentions and why they've evoked this feeling within you. Since our ideas, internal representations of objects are just clusters of associations, or bonds, one can put it this way: severing bonds is the cause of the understanding of what's been behind them. (I prefer to think of states of mind in terms of being either unentangled or entangled in the quantum sense, that is, as free or bound by bonds.)

Mind you, this is not far from what psychoanalysis itself claims: destroy the roadblocks, and your new self will unfold naturally -- it already potentially exists. The only difference is that psychoanalysts don't dare to assume that new knowledge can arise as if out of nowhere. I suspect they simply don't understand why their methods actually work sometimes.*

The Technique

The technique in question is simple at first glance, but I can't recommend it to everyone. You must already be a more or less advanced Zen practitioner; to perform it correctly, you must be impartial, i.e., unentangled. In a nutshell: if you want to know what a person hides behind their exterior, their hidden intentions,** or why they evoke certain feelings within you, you need to imagine this person as a woman (regardless of whether they're a man or a woman), that is, imagine the female part of their personality and then tear this image apart. (I suppose I'll need to write a separate post explaining why I'm not a misogynist, and I'll also explain further why it must always be only your idea of a person that you destroy, not the real person.) By destroying it, you'll realise what's been hidden behind their exterior and even what Nothingness is.

(Actually, to understand reality, sometimes it's enough to simply deny it -- that's why the practice of zazen as complete denial is so important -- but if you already have bonds with the object of your interest, you'll need to break them.)

By 'the female part of the personality' I mean that part which tends to merge (i.e., to become entangled), to gain something; in other words, the pure form of what we usually mean by the ego. I don't know why, but I usually get the best results by imagining it as a woman -- hence the terminology.

At the same time, you yourself must remain impartial, that is, unentangled. Impartiality in this situation is the result of you either trying to remain independent (unentangled), or trying to break the bonds that have already been formed -- you're not proving to yourself that your ego is stronger, but simply studying what this person really is from the point of view that we humbly called the perspective from the centre of the Universe. Also, bear in mind that this technique won't work if applied to your loved ones due to the force of merging that you need to overcome.

This way, you can explore your unconscious further in much the same way as psychoanalysis does. In one of the following posts, I'll describe this technique in more detail: there's a simple rule that can help anyone get rid of their mental problems easily.

Moreover, this isn't the whole story. I then began to suspect that this is how understanding works in general: by destroying established concepts and ideas. We just usually don't notice it.

This is one of the reasons I brought quantum mechanics into this blog: I reckon that what I've found can't be explained without assuming that Possibles are real in the sense that they don't simply exist in our minds. Fundamentally, through Zen practice you realise that the Universe works not as we usually think.

So, what do we destroy every time we have a light bulb moment? Can you say it in one word?

To be continued.

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*I suppose the historical reason for that is Freud's early adherence to determinism, which was a trap for him; indeed, if neuroses are attractors that channel energy and thoughts in a certain way, then you'll achieve nothing by simply following the flow of cause-and-effect interactions. You have to break the very vicious circle to change things.

**Or perhaps the intentions they aren't even aware of themselves: their Shadow, in Jungian terms.

What Can the Possible Turn into?

I found it's curious that the state of mind of a practicing Zen Buddhist is akin to the state of a particle in a quantum superposition. Furthermore, there's also an interesting similarities between quantum effects and how some hierarchies are formed. I'd also recall that for quantum physicists, the idea that sometimes the future can affect the present (that is, that there's the oppositely directed time's arrow) is not at all new.

There were these two posts - Hypothesis: Res Potentia and Res Extensa Linked By Measurement and Is The Possible Ontologically Real?  - by Stuart Kauffman on 13.7 Cosmos & Culture blog in 2012 where he argues that 'perhaps the "possible" is ontologically real and the world consists of two realms, "Possibles" and "Actuals."'
Ontologically real in this case means that the future can affect the present.

'...in the famous double slit experiment yielding the famous interference bands, that any single photon simultaneously possibly did and possibly did not go through the left slit'
Let me remind you that the riddle here is that a single proton seems to 'know' that there's a second slit there; even if we assume that the proton passes through only one slit, it behaves as if it 'knows' that there's the second. Thus, if we accept the Kauffman's point of view that the photon in this case exists in the Possible, then its present state is determined not by its past but its future state.

'Possibles evade the Law of the Excluded Middle. So too does Feynman's claim about the photon possibly going through the left slit and simultaneously possibly not going through the left slit.'
Any impact on the particle, for example, by measurement, leads to the collapse of its wave function, as a result of which the state of uncertainty disappears.

Some believe that there's a problem here: if quantum superposition collapses to a fixed state, what happens to all the other possible states? In other words, at first glance, there's a loss of information then. But it looks like there's a satisfactory answer: the information in this case turns to the structure (to the ties, in Buddhist terminology) so when the wave function collapses, the particle becomes part of a larger system - see here - 'Because superposition becomes a shared property of the system and its environment, we can’t any longer see the superposition just by looking at the little part of that shared state corresponding to the original system.'*

It's interesting that the mind of a practicing Zen Buddhist seems to have the same pattern: there's a state of mind when you're free from your past (which means that you have the freedom to choose), and you can have this state as long as you remain independent.** Here it's appropriate to recall that another name for the Possible is the Potential (and in this case it is also equivalent to independence.) The analogy can be continued: as for a particle in a quantum superposition, for Zen mind the Law of the Excluded Middle doesn't matter; and this state can collapse for the same reason: if you somehow lost independence. Therefore, I believe, quantum effects can explain the work of any mind: it's just because very few can afford to be in quantum superposition, most can never realize how their minds work.

In the same way, it seems, can be explained the principles of the formation of hierarchies: the transition of independence (ie, the Potential) of the members to the structure of the hierarchy*** (the Actual.) Note that the formation of hierarchies in this case means an increase in entropy since the collapse of a wave function = an increase in entropy. I've never heard of any pandits thinking about independence as the Potential; in particular, I've never heard that economists somehow took into account independence while describing human behavior, although mergers and associated with it the loss of independence by the players is a universal pattern of development for almost any economic situation - is it so phantom what they lose? Meanwhile, when it coms to political decisions, it's not uncommon that a choice is made in favor of independence and sovereignty and to the detriment of economic expediency. So at least among elites, the understanding that independence is as real as economic benefit clearly exists. Think also about the fact that any large company at one time definitely overcame the temptation to give up its own project for the sake of short-term benefits.

Think also about this: when it comes to complex systems that exhibit some kind of order, everyone is inclined to look for a hierarchy at their base. But, at least, the mind is not the case: it's based on parity - Freud was a genius when he guessed that at the core the psyche lies conflict, that is, parity - this can be the reason why the self remains so elusive to physiologists: it's as if nowhere and everywhere. 
  
PS There is another idea that I've been wanting to share, and which I probably do in one of the following posts: it's about another similarity between two patterns that, on the one hand, is clearly evident, on the other, not noticed for some reasons.

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*As I understand it, the assumption that unrealized scenarios of the future turn into the structure makes it possible to avoid the need for the multiple universe theory.
 **The choice in this case doesn't take place between all possible states, but between the possibility to maintain one's independence and the possibility to lose it.
***In other words, we can think of human hierarchies as vampires feeding on the potential of their members.