Physics and Mystics

How observing yourself is an impossible task—unpacking the bias

After centuries of two opposing (wrong) philosophies, it seems change is just too hard on pride—they will accept anything but this.

Robert Oppenheimer is reported to have said, “If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.”—and ignore him they did. But why? Because Bohm’s theory of quantum potential threw a wrench in the hierarchy of accepted science, unifying physics with what mystics have known for millennia—its all one process. There are no separate events in nature, which means the universe is one organism. This is god—and nothing known or seen or felt is not—which actually means, there is nothing that is not connected, its all one—it’s a process—and you too, are it.

This is not the deity god of traditional misinterpretation—it is the fact that there are no partitions between any event, place, or material—that there are no things, only demarcations on an imaginary line through calculus. Where does one event begin or another end? Only in our attempts to interpret non-existent laws into symbols. Where math and the word becomes the reality instead of the symbol of it. Where Hebrew thought infiltrates science to its core to believe there must be actual laws of nature. But there are none—merely observable regularities through something regular—where clocks and rulers attempt to demarcate a connected process through a specific point of view—then put it into words.

If the Christian is right, then Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, and atheists, are wrong. When so many groups disagree, the majority must be mistaken. And if the majority is misguided on just this one topic, then almost everyone must be mistaken on some issues of great importance.

This is a hard lesson to learn, because it is paradoxical to accept one’s own folly. You cannot at the same time believe something and recognize that you are a chump to believe it. A sucker born every minute, but somehow that sucker is never oneself.

“Building on the interpretation of the quantum theory introduced by Bohm in 1952, David Bohm and Basil Hiley in 1975 presented how the concept of a quantum potential leads to the notion of an “unbroken wholeness of the entire universe” Science will continue to struggle along with this notion that it can observe itself, but you’d have just as much luck observing whats behind your eyes when you’re looking out. It’s the only logical conclusion. Observing a process changes it simply because you—are observing you, and that changes the experiment and it can’t be pinned down. The only way to properly observe the true nature of anything in its static form, is to do it without looking at it—and it can’t be done. But we can at least demarcate the highlights we choose to like, based on the proper stimulus that agrees with our anchoring bias.

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Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

41 thoughts on “Physics and Mystics”

  1. It always seems that there is an audience for the idea that our perceptions are an illusion. Actually our perceptions are … our perceptions. The Greek philosophers got us off track right away (in philosophical matters, of course) by their fixation on absolutes and perfection, two states that clearly do not exist. But this substratum of human belief keeps us dancing to the “Is that all there is …” song.

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    1. So Steve, demarcate a separate event for me and settle it once and for all. Some things, like a falling leaf, have a little impact, but it is connected. I did not postulate perception is an illusion, but like observing your self, observing the universe or anything in it is elusive.

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    1. What do you mean by where? There is no here without there nor there without here. Maybe the problem is the common definition of god? From that point of view everything is it. And you could no more separate yourself from it, declare your ego or any sort of any kind

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  2. Hey this is a deep post! All the latest “spiritual leaders” incorporate the latest discoveries in science, physics, and in particular, what we know of “quantum mechanics” into the hippest philosophies. I tend to believe it is all one, we’re just an energy field, everything is energy…E=Mc2, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and that we can come close to the true nature of reality but will rarely experience it…except for those rare individuals who have become truly “enlightened.” Anyway, science is leading way…and an atom is mostly empty space, so what does that make us? Deep thoughts, Jim….well expressed.

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    1. Science is leading the way—with trepidation. Both camps (religion and science) are both working under newtonian mythology and classical physics, even though they will deny it. One “made” of clay then shoved by a supreme commander you’d better obey, and the other a random fluke of energy, hot gasses and time. You are simply a result of time and luck. How would a new mythology of oneness and connectivity change the world?

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      1. How could such a “new mythology” change the world. It wouldn’t in my mind, because everything is already connected, whether you can see it or not.
        The real task is recognizing the disconnections, if you can ever find one. You see, you would have to define a disconnection in order to see one, and that is realistically impossible.

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        1. Rawgod, a new mythology would change everything. Right now the outcomes of the way the world is, is blended with god made clay or random chance. Both mythologies deprecate the incredibility of all life.
          One you are a result, the other, here on probation. We raise our kids as only candidates for humanity, and if they conform to the way it is, which they know from adolescence is a distasteful way to be brought up in the world, only then are they welcomed to the human race.

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          1. I think you are missing my point Jim. The mythology of connection is already here, even if still invisible. You cannot change a damn thing just by naming it something else.Whatever one might want it to be, reality is here and now, and always has been!

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            1. You certainly can change the way people interpret the world, with words. By turning an event into words (symbols) limits the experience by the available language. It does no good to have something present no one is aware of, and on the other hand, the dereliction to assign creation to Yhwy, certainly leads people to miss the bigger picture.

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  3. I think the latest ideas in science like in quantum mechanics leak out into the public as people with an audience jump on it and attempt to explain the true nature of reality. Something like that. Go to Utube search for MorgueOfficial.

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  4. I have no serious “argument” against your presentation here, Jim but a lot of questions. First, why argue the obvious? The nature of creation (all that is) makes it impossible for any event to not, somehow, somewhen, somewhere, be “connected” to everything else. This is common sense! A leaf falls. It scratches along as it falls through other leaves and branches, making marks, making sounds. It hits the ground in a minuscule earthquake. It becomes food for other “events”, etc. George says an atom is mostly empty space… well, yeah, so? What is “empty” space? We don’t know, we just call it that because it’s convenient. It’s still energy and there’s you “connection” is it not? Energy expressing in myriads of formats and faces? What is dark matter? What is the speed of dark? Well, it is calculated that dark matter moves at 80% the speed of light. Is that relevant? Food for thought anyway. Another point, that there are no “things” because everything is interconnected. Connection of one “item” to another does not mean that item doesn’t exist. When you plug in the electric kettle and it is connected to the electrical grid, it does not cease to exist. In fact it comes to life to give you that hot water you need. When you unplug it, it doesn’t cease to exist either or change form: it’s still a kettle. You can call that connection “god” but I prefer “life” or “energy” as being less compromised terms. Speaking of life, time to get serious here, duty calls… have a great day – I think you’re in the same time zone as I am… Hey, what’s the speed of time?

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    1. Why argue the obvious? I don’t know why physicists are so wont to go there. Because there is no supreme commander and ruler of it all. And the philosophy that somebody shoved it has had dire implications on humanity.

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      1. Quote: There is no supreme commander, etc…. Perfectly stated! Based on all we can study from those who established the idea of a supreme commander and the inanities, stupidities and insanities that has, and continues to lead to, we can assuredly deduct that no such thing can possibly exist. So we’re left with all-that-is which we’re an integral part of, including our perceptions, hopes, beliefs, imaginings, none of which should ever be a problem unless forced shoved at others.

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      2. So in the end, past our abilities as pseudo-human to comprehend the why’s and wherefore’s, two things/non-things remain: the all-that-is connecting every “thing” and every individual within that collective. Then it becomes a matter of choice. The more evolved one becomes, the more aware of one’s individuality, and not the other way around. “I” is a very short word but may well be the most important in every known language because no matter what is being discussed, “I” is always implicit. You cannot respond to this without publishing your individuality. Because of that any authoritarian/totalitarian super being’s attempts to rule, should such a thing be attempted, is automatically defeated. Nature, i.e., life, exists for the individual, not the collective, not the group, not the mob: it exists for me. Every evolutionary result comes from what I do with that knowledge and power even if I can’t see it.

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        1. If everyone recognizes “I”, in the sense of muscular strain and what external influences or culture they identify closely with, is not really “I”, Rarely can anyone look inward behind the eyes and even express more than a few cursory likes or preferences, job, family, etc. What is “I” when you strip all that away?

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    2. “Why argue the obvious?” Love that. It is because I am “A Champion of the Obvious.”
      That whole speed of light and dark will probably keep me awake tonight. 🙂

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  5. great post! quite a few physicists have ‘mystical’ leanings, including Wolfgang Pauli, who worked with Jung on synchronicity.

    but, mainstream physicists don’t want to consider consciousness seriously because it goes against the grain of the unspoken assumption that consciousness is a computational function of the brain. they also believe that in the future computers will become conscious. Penrose and Hameroff (we discussed them here) don’t agree with that. their hypothesis is that consciousness is harvested from space-time, via yet to be elucidated processes of quantum gravity.

    i love this quote from Autobiography of a Yogi (one of best known spiritual books, Steve Jobs used to give free copies to people he met, and read it regularly. smart man!).
    “The stream of knowledge, Sir James Jeans writes in The Mysterious Universe , is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.” Twentieth-century science is thus sounding more like a page from the hoary Vedas”. (p 237)

    the ancient Rishi (or sages) knew that the essence of creation is light. (not physical light, but vibration of light energy). when through perfect meditation, the yogi’s consciousness is merged with cosmic (god) consciousness, there is no difference between light rays composing water and light rays composing land. then he is free form matter-consciousness and free from the three dimension of space and the fourth dimension of time. this is how yogis do the crazy, ‘miraculous’ things they can do (be in two places at once, make their body huge or very small, etc).

    in dream-sleep, when man escapes the false egoistic limitations of daily life, he enters Free and Unconditioned consciousness (which contains the creative power) and has a recurrent demonstration of the omnipotence of his mind. in dreams we have the freedom to create as we wish.

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    1. ps both buddhism and hinduism are in a way, sciences of consciousnesses, as they both look at the source of mind. but they use the label ‘mind’ slightly differently. for hindus, mind is the thinking apparatus.
      for buddhists, mind is everything, including the ‘intuitive intelligence’ or ‘higher mind’.

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    2. Hopefully relevant: Years ago I was made to “realize” that the number 11 was somehow special. One big special is November 11, Armistice day. I saw a list once that demonstrated how often the number 11 shows up. OK, the point is that so very often I look at the digital clock and it’s 7:11. Then it’s 9:11, then it’s… oh no! 11:11. Somehow what I have learned about the “specialness” of the number 11 makes my head tur, or look up when there’s an 11 showing up. Is that my mind saying, Hey you want it special, let me make it special for you. It’s a small thing, probably has no effect on anyone else’s life but if “I” can do that in my mind, what else can I do? Does believing “make it so” and if it does, how far does that “make is so” extend beyond my personal energy field – without using any sort of force that is, not even the force of messaging with words?

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      1. in numerology no 11 is related to karma or life destiny/purpose. it’s also a symbol of spiritual awakening.
        consciousness always manifests in the exterior world, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously. there is a system of belief that says everything in our life is created by our mind. the main force behind any creative act is intent, and how subtle the mind is- the closer to source (to pure consciousness) to more powerful the thought to become reality. otherwise, we would see a lot of dead bosses around, heheh!

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        1. Numbers are arbitrary, man made symbols to measure intervals.
          Life would have to be created “with” (in conjunction) the mind as these things must arise mutually. The Kogi of Columbia say that existence is breathed into life by the consciousness of men. But you cannot have one without the other. They separated the steps. The go together.

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          1. modern math can have abstract self-consistent systems that have no bearing on reality, but classical math is not an invention of mind. i would say it reflects a ‘higher reality’ embedded in the fabric of the universe. in Plato’s theory of forms, numbers are archetypes or universal truths. take for example fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio are found everywhere, from smallest sea shells to shape of galaxies. pi also shows up in all oscillatory motions. in music, harmonious sounds are fixed ratios of sound frequency. in geometry also, the basic numbers appear.

            so, rather then being invented, it’s more like the universe is revealing it’s secrets through mathematics. remember “as above, so below”? when you truly understand this, you’ll see correspondences everywhere. nothing is separate.

            i leave you with this spellbinding video of planetary dance. enjoy!

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  6. Observing a process changes it{1} simply because you—are observing you, and that changes the experiment and it can’t be pinned down. The only way to properly observe the true nature of anything in its static form {2}, is to do it without looking at it—and it can’t be done.”

    Hang on…

    {1} you’re using a Heisenberg principle (The Observer effect) and sticking it into Bohm’s theory of quantum potential… theories that are contrary! You can’t have it both ways, Jim.
    {2} According to Bohm, anything in its static form is not true! So to assume a “true nature” is what is being sought means you can know…. staying inside Bohm’s explanation.

    As for your claim that we can only use “proper stimulus that agrees with our anchoring bias” to “demarcate highlights,” I really have no clue what you mean, other than flipping the light switch and my anchoring bias stimulates electricity to flow and demarcate the room going from dark to light. But is it really my bias, and is there really no means to demarcate the bulb’s activation… especially when I am observing the illuminating effect?

    Seriously?

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    1. you’re using a Heisenberg principle (The Observer effect) and sticking it into Bohm’s theory of quantum potential… theories that are contrary! You can’t have it both ways, Jim.
      As you stated, part of the paper you didn’t understand, so first off, if nothing can be had both ways, the why of general relativity and quantum mechanics should baffle you too? Can we have it both ways, only in accepted circles?
      In general relativity, events are continuous and deterministic, meaning that every cause matches up to a specific, local effect. In quantum mechanics, events produced by the interaction of subatomic particles happen in jumps, with probabilistic rather than definite outcomes. Your light switch analogy is pretty weak. For that to work you would have to select a few highlights that the bulb illuminated and explain/recognize the parts you are familiar with. That is the true nature of most learning, attachment to what we already believe. Btw, the term “quantum potential” originated with heisenburg. Neither he nor his golden age physics colleagues could refute Bohm, so they ignored him. Physics is a proud sport.

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      1. This is getting to read like preacher talk, Jim, or “god-talk.” Is a carrot, human, because I grew it, I’m holding it and chewing on it? I think our intelligence can tell us within reason, what is of human construct, and what is not. Did humans make the sun? A few steps further: the universe? A square fence post isn’t a growing tree because a human cannot make a tree and has to use cut trees to make posts to hold up a fence. I’m confused.

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        1. You sound confused. If it’s all one organism, you are simply an aperture from a particular viewpoint. Like chicken pox on the whole body (I know, not very romantic) but how do you separate the house from the nails or the wiring, or even the lunch, if we’re all different style tics on the same hound? Of course a carrot is not a human, but it is connected to you.
          Lets try something closer to home. If you decide to go to the store, a future event is now the cause of you getting into the van. But to trace out why you’re going to the store, one could trace that unbroken line of events from the day you were born and even before, essentially implicating every other being on earth as the reason you would up shopping. We’ve been trained to think differently, that poor little me is against the world, but even the suffering of others affects the well being of the whole, no matter where they are. Need i go on? Demarcate any event and show how it is a solo happening without prior connection or future consequence, and I’ll leave it alone.

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          1. No need to “leave it alone” since what you state is a blatant truism. But does the rest of your argument follow? I don’t think so. I can’t think of a proper analogy at the moment (it’s getting late!) but the kind of basic connection you seem to be speaking of has, in the end, nothing to do with the connected “events” – the individual waves on the ocean if you will. One ocean’s waves are hitting or sliding over a million different shores with a million different results. A gentle swell here and surfers and bathers are having a great time. I tsunami over there, it’s a totally different story. Rising waters pushed by wins sweeping over a coral island again bring different results. The connection via the ocean means NOTHING to the events is what I’m saying. It’s the same theory as living in the now: it’s a meaningless concept unless one absolutely remembers nothing that could be called “past” and has no inkling of any possibility that could be called “future” Now think as an individual: how does this connection change who you are and how you manage your current life? – see what I mean? My term for the ultimate “connection” of anything to all-that-is I call spirit. From spirit, which I am aware of without any felt need to try explain it (because I couldn’t if I tried!) comes what I term “life” and that is in every “thing” that manifests. Depending on how they are counted, a homo sapiens’ body is made up of 15 trillion cells. 15 trillion individuals in a crazy world of give and take making up one individual body and 7.5 billion of those make up one individual species. All connected but as you can see that connection is less and less relevant within the interactions, or so it seems. Even Yahweh, the ultimate connection holding the 12 tribes of Israel together as an entity, a nation, failed. Today the big push is for one “new” world order, to establish a form of “Brave New World” combined with “1984” style of global totalitarianism. The globalists (the connected!) will probably succeed for a time though they will never reach their pinnacle. Their power pyramid will collapse, crash and burn as they always do because all such constructs require absolute power and absolutes cannot exist in a finite order of things. I hope this makes sense to you… I’m dead beat…!

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            1. So, to use your own logic, if your connection is “spirit”, so what if thats what you are already? Its just the way it is and what are you going to do about that? How can simply knowing what you are change anything?
              The illustration leads to this. Everything is you. If there cannot be knowing without a knower, or if there was no knower there could not be anything known. They go together like poles on a magnet and arise mutually, and you cant have one without the other. It is ultimately the realization that you are it. All of it in a timeless drama to relieve the boredom of solitary, infinite living that doesnt know its god, any more than a fish knows its in water. Nothing knows what it is, because everything is it.

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            2. You make total sense while not making any, Jim!!! Imagine, if you will, life as a coin. It has, of necessity, two sides. One is smooth, blank. The other is engraved with myriads signs and symbols. One coin, two sides. Spirit and creation (the made reality). Would it make sense for those signs and symbols to claim they are on the smooth side and their side does not exist? Or that their side is an illusion? Let me put it another way: the glue isn’t the plywood. Spirit “holds” it together (that’s my point of view, I’m not claiming this for anyone else) but I live, currently by choice, in a part of a reality that is “glued” together. In that, I know who and what I am, but more, I know to a degree, where I come from, where I’ve been, what I’ve done and, also to a degree, where I am going and what I am becoming in the process. That is what I’m “defending” against the Lotus Eaters, the destroyers of individuality. I have nothing against spirit, or whatever it is called, just like I have nothing against the wind, the ocean, or the elephant in the room, but I am not those things. I can enjoy the wind, or fear it; I can swim in the ocean (I have lived in it in the days of the “mermaids) and I know I can drown in it; and the elephant is always in the room, but I am not those aspects of creation/life. I am me. I was always me and I will be increasingly me because I could not exist in any other format. I repeat: I am an individual, self aware, self empowered, choosing my direction through this and endless other lives to come. I have, in the past(s) allowed myself to be hooked into systems and powers that were stronger and seemed to possess greater intelligence than me, hence should be obeyed and emulated. No more. Those days are over. I will never go back to being controlled and forced to be what I know I am not. To accept being an individual means to accept there is no one else like me anywhere in the cosmos. That is what it means to me to walk between worlds. When I push myself to really think about it, I see no reason why I cannot exist entirely independently, even of spirit. Why limit myself to a connection it may well be I should have outgrown eons ago? That’s an exciting thought, that is!

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  7. It’s intuitively obvious that everything is [ultimately] connected, and that does lead a wandering mind to some flavour of pantheism. Of all the theisms, this one is the least dangerous, least toxic, so I see no harm in it. The question for pantheists is: which way is consciousness developing, forwards or backwards?

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      1. In my head 🙂

        Backward = The universe itself being conscious at the start and we little nodes ‘joining’ it.

        Forward = No conscious at the beginning, but becoming conscious. (most akin to our experience of things)

        Does that make sense?

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        1. I would choose backward then. You cannot have one without the other. It goes with the universe and everything arises mutually. You cant have backs without fronts nor black without white. Existence is polarity. That why the chicken and the egg came into being simultaneously.
          Can we imagine a figure without a background, or visa versa? Can there be thought without a thinker, or knowing without a knower? There would be nothing to be known or no one to know it. Take your pick. Haha

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