Quantum Consciousness

Written By Sean Yeterian

On the lake of our sub consciousness our vessels drift seamlessly on subtle currents. Each breath taken in, fresh and new, swaps places with the old as old falls deftly to water’s surface, then slowly sinks into the depths below. We are aware of our surroundings above this lake’s flowing surface, and we often like to peek into the depths to search for reminders of the past. When we catch and pull a memory closer into view we witness clarity start to take its form. Definition replaces our forgetful nature and we sing, “Wow! Those were the ‘good old days.’” But most often, as it is with artifacts of the past, recollections remain submerged beneath the fluid’s crest offering only reminders of their form – and not the form itself. Memories and meditation, dreams and hypnotic trances, all serve as effective fishing line and hook to snag these archives from the deep abyss. Sentimental trinkets, old melodies, photographs, and Partridge Family reruns provide proven bait that can resurrect times long forgotten.

In this lake, a sort of liquid prison, a lifetime of information bytes and bits swim casually in mindless manner. It holds all that we have ever known. It contains more wisdom within in its sleepy state than the collective awareness of a hundred shaman.

But wait. The popular wisdom of this world proclaims that we float only on a “lake”. This “lake” is owned and operated by a single individual, unknown and unknowable in its whole by any other person. But I believe there is a different truth. I believe that we are riding the crest of a wave of potentiality that moves across an "ocean" not owned by any, but owned by all. This ocean is as deep as it is wide, and is as wide as the universe itself. The entirety of universal knowledge looks up at us from a hidden darkness far beneath and undiscovered as we waft along so blissful in our ignorance. As we pass above perhaps it wonders if our waves will carry us farther away from truths poetic declaration. It isn’t, nor ever has been an absence of access that has kept awareness in the dark. We can have all that infinite wisdom offers. We simply need the line and hook with proper bait to net this cherished prize.

I don’t write all of this with some warm and fuzzy desire to bring clarity and light into my life (although that would be very nice indeed). The placebo effect that beliefs can inspire surely bring a power to our realities. But that power exists in our will and conviction, not necessarily in the truth. Instead I assert these concepts because the “science” indicates that this is the truth of nature. The math, the laboratory experiments, and the principles of New Age research has given us all cause to give pause as we consider the fabric of our reality, illusive as it is. Full understanding is not possible. But to comprehend the implications of the “facts” may not be as difficult as it appears at first glance.

There is a shrewdness in the way Newtonian thinking and behavior keeps its hold on us. Ironically, without Isaac Newton as our guide through this reality we would not have discovered the very principles that make his findings wrong: Quantum Physics.

Forgive me, presumption is not a hand I want to play. Please understand that Isaac Newton wasn’t truly wrong. But reconciling his laws of “Physics” with the “Physics” we’ve been shown in the last 9 decades is never going to happen. At least not while we define both disciplines as equal, though very different partners. Whenever I get lost in the divide between the two I simply provide a different title that brings a different meaning to the lessons Newton taught us - lessons that have served humanity quite well for 4 centuries. I call his list of epiphanies – “Newton’s Laws of “Observation””. For it is ONLY when observation occurs that Newton’s laws are allowed to work.

Newtonian principles guide the neural pathways of the human race to analyze each and every part of the machines that operate in our environments. Akin to looking at a single pixel of a photograph, we try to absorb as much information about that single pixel so as to understand its function and its value. It isn’t until we step back that we see the truth of why the pixel shines. Had it not been for this Newtonian behavior when assessing our world would we have ever procreated the mindset that brought the counterintuitive mathematics of quantum physics to the forefront? It seems unlikely.

In the early 1900’s it was good to be a Physicist. All that was needed by the brightest young brains of the time was a tweak here, a tweak there, a sprinkling of relativity, and some minor warping of the universe. But the mechanics of classical physics remained supreme. This meant that all of animate and inanimate matter had predictable substance. Even Einstein’s E=Mc2 couldn’t loosen the grip on Classical Physics.

But as reluctant as Mr. Einstein was to accept the quantum world, it was a paper he wrote in March of 1905 that shot this new age discipline into orbit. In this paper he argued that light was not the wave previously believed, but a series of particle packets. The brainiacs of the time flocked to this new concept like piranhas to flesh. Scientific laboratories hummed with experiment after experiment after experiment to prove or disprove Einstein’s new proposals. They found him to be right, and they named the newly found particles “photons”.

One such experiment, the famous “double slit experiment”, provided the scientific community fodder for debate that continues to this day. I’ll be brief here, but in this experiment when photons are fired through a platform that has two slits in it then the receiving screen shows results that can only occur when two waves interfere with one another. Called an “interference pattern”, it was (and still is) inconceivable how a particle can act as a wave. One theory is that the photonic particle goes into a “superposition”. That means that the single particle becomes in multiple places at the same time.

But that’s not the weirdest part. The moment that detectors are placed to observe which slit the photons are travelling through the interference pattern STOPS! Instead classical physics with regard to the behavior of a particle once again rules the kingdom of reality. Remove the detector from its observational perch and the photons revert to wave-like behavior. It is as though the photons are “aware” that they are being watched. But what gets me the most is the fact that during the time that the photons are conducting their super-positional dance, the detector screen “allows” us to know what is happening. But isn’t the detector screen in and of itself a form of observation? As one quantum theorist put it, “It is as though we’ve been granted permission to witness parts of this phenomenon, but not others.” In other words, we may observe the results of the event but not the event itself.

In the last two paragraphs I used the words “aware”, “allow”, and “permission” to describe the behavior of a photon. Hello?? Really?? Am I going nuts here?? If you tell me that something is “aware” then I expect some level of consciousness. If you say that I’ve been “allowed”, or granted “permission”, then I will attribute it to an authoritative source – like a supervisor, a parent, or my wife. But when you tell me that a photon is doing all of this, c’mon man. What are you really saying?

And then to really piss me off it turns out that it’s not only photons that exhibit this behavior. Atoms, electrons, molecules and many other quantum particles also like to play this game. What the…?? Aware? We’re ALLOWED to witness this? Sounds like an intelligent source to me. So why can’t science call it what it appears to be, if only conceptually? Evidence of another form of consciousness, awareness, and intelligence. But whose intelligence? What do they want? Do we need to take them to our leaders?

For my part here, I won’t try to encourage or dissuade you from answers that many may believe that they have – but the “higher power” angle seems to have some merit.

The idea of super positions also is confounding. One attempt to explain this phenomenon is through the use of the term “probability wave”. That is to say that all potentials of this single particle exist simultaneously. Then, once observed, a single reality is permitted and freezes the single particle for our view while all the other potentials disappear forever, eaten by a hungry universe. But the fact that they’ve been shown to exist at all begs more questions than it gives answers.

As mind blowing as all of this is, there is much more to the double slit experiment than I will write about today. But I couldn’t resist one more bit of information gleaned from recent research. Studies indicate that the final outcome of any potentiality isn’t only through the act of observation - it is also dependent on the state of the “observer”! Mood, disposition, and health can affect the outcome of certain laboratory studies. This is a strong indicator that at minimum the quantum universe has access to us, our psyches and our physical shells. So in the logical corners of my mind it stands to reason that we also have access to the quantum universe.

This discovery was made during recent studies involving “quantum entanglement”. Briefly, quantum entanglement occurs when a pair particles become entangled (no, really?). Once entangled they share an intimate relationship that overcomes the laws of space-time. This relationship between the two particles demands that when the behavior of one of the pair, let’s say a photon, is modified, then the other will immediately adjust its behavior as well. In other words, if photon A has been influenced to spin clockwise, then without any time lag what-so-ever photon B begins to spin counter-clockwise. The extraordinary thing is that this will occur regardless of the distance the two particles are separated. Even removing the two so that they are on opposite sides of the universe will not change or slow down their behavior.

Einstein called this behavior “spooky action at a distance”. He also spent three decades attempting to debunk the discoveries (some of them his own) that the double slit and quantum entanglement experiments appeared to indicate. “God does not play dice with the universe!” he was once quoted as saying.

Stephen Hawking - British cosmologist and theoretical physicist extraordinaire – responded to Einstein’s dice statement in 1996 explaining that “…God does play dice, but he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.”

The scientific and philosophical questions that these two quantum facts have raised are too numerous to count. The double slit experiment is considered by many to be at the heart of quantum mechanics. It is believed that if we ever understand how a single particle might be at more than one place at the same time (super position) then the remaining questions of quantum strangeness will line up for their final dress rehearsal and answers will fall like hail on a tin roof - so loud and earth shattering even the neighbors will want to know what the hell is going on.

I’ve only mentioned two aspects of this relatively new science. There are many, many more examples of strange phenomenon that can challenge our perspective on reality. One physic interviewee on a program issued by “Nova” about quantum mechanics said that “once you know quantum physics you will never again look at the world or the universe the same.”

I doubt that I have ever looked at my universe more differently than in recent years. The currents of knowledge have never been more alive than they are now, in this new world. Access is truly at our fingertips.

Yet as I indicated in my opening paragraphs, access might be much greater than we ever imagined. The internet, libraries, and television media might always bring beams of informative light into our shared reality. But whenever I doubt my capability to do or to know something I remind myself that I already know the information or know how something is done. I have always known. Our education in life most often serves as reminders and refresher training on the things the energies of our souls have practiced time and time again. That is one possible reason that some things come easier than others. But all things come in time.

Pondering the implications of super positions and entanglement, I often fall helplessly down the rabbit hole of wonder and imagination. Lucid, though in a trancelike state, I streak through the skies of creativity within my mind as I attempt to gain an elevated perspective of what truths may wait below. Like a Hawk hunting his prey, once I glimpse a morsel that might satisfy my hunger I swiftly swoop to seize it with my metaphoric talons – talons that get sharper with every hunt. Picking apart this carcass of epiphany I may find some satisfaction in its nourishment. I might instead realize that there are better hunts ahead. It appears I have a lot of hunting yet to do.