metaphysics

October 11, 2013

Electron Dreams

Is one really All?

Allow me to explain: Reality (that is consensus reality) behaves like a canvas that shapes and transforms before the beholder.

BuzzzAn End to the Schrodinger Conundrum—the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle assumes that the observer also has powers to predict unconsciously the outcome. You see, the observer cannot inherently possess the qualities of a conductor, as the Uncertainty Principle implies. Because the electron appears as a wave and particle, the observer cannot have any bearing upon the outcome. The real question is the observer sees either wave or particle because both he and the electron are one and the same.

From the electron’s perspective (does this seem so outrageous? Are humans not also electrons; more complex certainly as there are amalgamations of many electrons to form layers of skin, organs, hair, etc. etc., but electrons all), is not the observer also particle and wave? Not metaphorically the same, mind you, but actually.

When you stare at your reflection before breakfast, do you marvel that you appear? Do you question whether you are there or not there? Do you wonder if you are both here and there? Do you try to walk through the looking glass? It is the same with the observer and electron, as the electron becomes reflection of the observer, and the observer reflection of the electron. As such, what measurable difference between observer and electron can there be?

Inside the Riemann SphereGolden Symmetry—when the electron moves as does the observer. Think of the intimacy between observer and electron as analogous to the eye of the beholder, only observer and electron are more like eye and beholder. As if the observer were the eye and electron the beholder, and electron as the eye and observer as the beholder. If this relationship seems symbiotic, no actual host and parasite exist, as the existence of host and parasite assumes there is a distinction between them. With observer and electron, no such distinction exists.

Oneness as Reciprocal Union—the concept of oneness is the same mistake as the uncertainty principle assumes there is distinction between observer and electron. This thought is not in error, but incomplete. There is no distinction between any singular entities (the proverbial ‘We’ whatever that includes) from which to pinpoint an all-encompassing oneness, no origin. To say We Are All One is to observe the electron in wave state. I posit, mustn’t there first be a distinction to have elements that can connect into this action at a distance known as oneness?

Peering in again at the Uncertainty Principle: How is it possible for any one (any beholder or electron) to possess control (that is the ability to determine as observer the eventual appearance of the electron)? I mean, the idea that the observer can inherently possess the ability to control (conduct, as if the observer were separate) the universe to such an extent as to predict the electron and himself is kind of just like hugging yourself.

Homage to BoschLet us follow another thread further. To believe that because the boat has a motor and rudder whoever holds the wheel steers the boat across the ocean is like thinking the observer controls/conducts the appearance of the electron as wave or particle. No matter what the engine horsepower or nuclear powered propulsion used, one hiccup from the ocean depths renders any expense useless.  It is more like the ocean steers the boat. The conundrum of the Uncertainty Principle occurs because humans do not control the motion of electrons, they and the electron move simultaneously, neither conductor, neither observer or observed, neither at the wheel, both floating along in quantum foam.

Einstein spoke of relativity; I can see his point. In the guise of oneness, the only point of reference from which all things can be relative is the reflection, which means relativity may actually be an illusion.

...and so on to Infinity...Ones Within Ones (or A Way Out of the Heisenberg Absurdity) —  See, the beholder and the electron may be symmetrical (do not be so limited in imagination, symmetry does not have to be identical in appearance to be symmetrical. Two concepts can be symmetrical, as such two conceptual masses, an object, can be symmetrical of one another’s motion). This is no contest to thinking; however, let us move laterally to the left and see what we can see. Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system, x-, y-axis. Turn the axis sharply to the left and arrive at a z-axis, a 90-degree turn from the y-axis. If you turn your mind 90 degrees from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle . . . are we still beholder or electron, wave or particle? This idea of borders must first be unlearned.

“People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I’m not… If it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it — that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers… then that’s the way it is. . . . [M]y interest in science is to simply find out about the world and the more I find out the better it is, I like to find out…” ~Richard Feynman

Limits to GrowthOneness and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are incomplete as within the depths of their meaning sits the assumption that there is but one level of observation. That of the observer and electron as separate, so the conundrum is the observer can only see the electron as wave or particle and nothing else. Within the Uncertainty Principle and Oneness exists the real question that there is no distinction between observer and electron, like the electron the observer is both wave and particle as well. As Einstein’s theory of relativity posits, the observer and electron are relative to one another, in motion simultaneously, so observer cannot see beyond wave or particle. The illusion exists because the observer has only a single lens perspective; there are other ones. The flaw of oneness, which assumes We Are All One, rather than We Are All Ones Within Ones . . .  within ones, and so forth in all directions. It is more a matter of peeling away the layers, than a single perception.

Quantum_reflections_003Oneness does not stop at one, no prime mover exists (no which from which there is no whicher. Apologies to my fine fellow, Alan Watts), no origin, no nicely spelt out beginning to the story, motion does not require cause and effect or effect and cause. As the photon emitted from the electron, it simply moves as randomness disguised as cause and effect.

When oneness appears as social diversity (the continual perpetual mind-spinning circular categorization of intangibles, the tree-ing of an otherwise single concept, i.e., departmental hierarchy within a body corporate) bureaucracy abounds, actually epitomizes that there is no real origin. When it is used for the pleasure of finding things out then you have onion-ing. Where each one within one has all other ones, yet, out of nothing also appears as a new one (within one). Analogous to a field of probable action constantly flexing to accommodate new ones, without bias or judgment.

Like an elaborately woven tapestry with fractal designs, the tapestry as first layer oneness (or the observer’s perspective/perception), and all the threads are the ones within. One can look at the tapestry and say We Are All One, and then one can look at a thread and say We Are All One. It is not so much that we forego the trees for the forest or the forest for the trees, as looking closely at a thread. It works in the other direction, too; the tapestry does not end at its borders. Think of the tapestry as our known universe, and the threads as people-ing, earth-ing, sun-ing, solar system-ing, hell, it could even be universe-ing.

Let us not end here (wherever ‘here’ may be; our imaginary 90-degree turn), as further question beckons: What is I?

The Portal*Image Credits (all work used with permission through CC license)–
“Limits to Growth” by anua22a
“Homage to Bosch” by ellenm1
“The Portal” by Neil Carey
“Buzzz” by Gloria
“…and so on to Infinity…” by anua22a
“Inside the Riemann Sphere” by fdecomite
“Quantum_reflections_003” by Caitlin Tobias

This post originally appeared on EXPLORINGtheLATERAL here.

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September 19, 2013

Religion and Science

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ~Albert Einstein

Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and desire are the motive forces behind all human endeavour and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present itself to us. Now what are the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions—fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connexions is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates for itself more or less analogous beings on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. One’s object now is to secure the favour of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed towards a mortal.

I am speaking now of the religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases the leader or ruler whose position depends on other factors, or a privileged class, combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.

The social feelings are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes, the God who, according to the width of the believer’s outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even life as such, the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing, who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.

The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, which is continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in a nation’s life. That primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that they are all intermediate types, with this reservation, that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. Only individuals of exceptional endowments and exceptionally high-minded communities, as a general rule, get in any real sense beyond this level. But there is a third state of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form, and which I will call cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear in earlier stages of development—e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learnt from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer especially, contains a much stronger element of it.

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no Church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with the highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as Atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it. We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events—that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through. Hence science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death.

It is therefore easy to see why the Churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion which pioneer work in theoretical science demands, can grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labour in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics!

Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a sceptical world, have shown the way to those like-minded with themselves, scattered through the earth and the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man strength of this sort. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.

You will hardly and one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe.

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.

By Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Secaucus, New Jersy: The Citadel Press, 1999, pp. 24-29.

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November 29, 2012

Does The Universe Have A Purpose?

“I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” ~Richard Feynman

The Meaning Of Life:

What is it that we think we know? And why do we ask? And why is it important that we have an answer? Humans have an inherent, it seems, ability to question their purpose of being. Which seems a bit odd to me, as what is wrong with Just Being? What difference or relevance does the answer make when just being would remain? I like being, love being alive, I think existence is the bee’s knees, if you will. Yes, I question, but this does not subtract from the beauty that is Life, only adds to it.

Richard Feynman Uncertainty

Does the universe have a purpose?

What if

The Fibonacci in Lateralus

The Big Electron

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.” ~Richard Feynman

*Image Credits–
Artwork is a photomanipulation created by NIKOtheOrb
Tesseract Stock (blue cube) by Sheridan Johns
Self-Portrait taken by NIKO

Let’s Start A Conversation: So, does the universe have a purpose? If it does, what do you think that purpose is? If it doesn’t, what do you think of the idea that it doesn’t? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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October 17, 2012

Uncertainty Principle, NonDuality and Reality

That we are not able to quantify accurately “reality” is a bit farther than the Heisenberg Principle. See, the reason an uncertainty exists (and that includes the uncertainty associated with the probability patterns of “particles”) is because we (that is a conscious consciousness, that is to say an aware awareness, one that is aware that it is awareness and one that is conscious that it is consciousness) is due to that conscious consciousness as part of the probability pattern. I mean, are we not (if there are atoms et al) an amalgamation of atoms? We are fractals, we are like the trees and their roots in the earth. We are like streams and their roots in the rivers. We are synthesis incarnate, so to speak. We cannot be certain because we are part of the problem, hence we are the problem. Although, we can be aware that we are aware we cannot always be sure that that is what we are doing, because we are that which awares. We do not think, we are thinking. That is we are not THE state of to think (as if “to think” were the wheel of a car and the mind/brain the driver), we ARE think (in other words, we are the car, the driver, the wheel, the motion, the revolutions per minute, the vibrations, the frequency, etc.).

Perhaps, this is probably heading off more into the Observer’s Effect, rather than the Uncertainty Principle, but what I am trying to convey is a merging of the two. . . philosophically. Bicameral thinking is archaic, nay, even prehistoric.  Non duality is the way to solving problems. That logic and creativity are not at odds, but synergistic. It’s like the mind brain problem of neuroscience (although, I don’t think this is so much a problem anymore as science has been entering some incredible areas, such as anomalous cognition, consciousness as outside of the brain, multi-dimensional cognition, etc.) whence once was thought mind and brain were divided, it has come to pass that mind and brain are like two sides of the same coin. That consciousness is not the brain, but the brain does have some integral part. The brain thinks, so to speak, the mind knows.

And what of beyond the mind? What is beyond the mind? What of a singularity? The idea that there is a one consciousness, fractalized?

 

*Fractal image, “Fairy Tree” by Nirolo

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