{"id":352,"date":"2011-02-12T18:15:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T17:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/?p=352"},"modified":"2011-02-12T21:46:48","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T20:46:48","slug":"quantum-emptiness-the-quantum-illusion-like-nature-of-reality-by-graham-smethurst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/quantum-emptiness-the-quantum-illusion-like-nature-of-reality-by-graham-smethurst\/","title":{"rendered":"Quantum Emptiness -The Quantum Illusion-like Nature of Reality by Graham Smetham"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Graham Smetham<\/a> B.A. studied Mathematics at Essex University, England and Philosophy of Religion at Sussex University. During his time at Sussex he taught a subsidiary course for scientists on the interconnections between Western science and Eastern philosophical perspectives and it was through the investigations undertaken during the preparations for this course that he began to have the insights which later developed into wide ranging and detailed explorations contained in his book Quantum Buddhism: Dancing in Emptiness<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>In an interview for the first edition of \u2018Many Roads\u2019 the astrophysicist Laurent Nottale quotes the Dalai Lama, who, in his book The Universe in a Single Atom<\/em>, wrote that:<\/p>\n

My confidence \u2026 lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"In his book the Dalai Lama has sketched the beginnings of an exploration of the interconnections and parallels between modern Western science and Buddhist metaphysical philosophy.\u00a0 The Dalai Lama, true to his nature, is extremely humble about Buddhism\u2019s achievement in this area: \u00a0\u201cOur explanations and theories are rudimentary when compared with those of modern science \u2026 and will have to be modified in the light of new scientific insights.\u201d\u00a0 However, in this brief article, based upon the ten year research project which led to my recent book Quantum Buddhism: Dancing in Emptiness–Reality Revealed at the Interface of Quantum Physics and Buddhist Philosophy<\/em><\/strong>, I shall endeavour to show that Buddhist philosophy, based upon direct insight and the rigorous dialectical analysis exemplified by the Madhyamaka (Middle Way conceptual analysis), achieved an extraordinary understanding of the ultimate nature of the phenomenal world, an understanding which only became apparent within the West with the advent of quantum theory at the beginning of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

In his interview Nottale focuses primarily upon the central Buddhist notion of \u2018emptiness\u2019 (shunyata<\/em>) as indicating the relativity of all phenomena:<\/p>\n

None has its proper existence, but only an existence in relation to another object acting as a reference point.\u00a0 They are couple properties which cannot be attributed to either of the members of the couple taken separately.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words the actual \u2018physical\u2019 properties of any apparently independent \u2018material\u2019 object are not purely determined by the nature of the object itself but also depend upon its relationship and interconnection with other objects.\u00a0 However, there is another, perhaps more fundamental, aspect to the Buddhist insight into the emptiness of phenomena which is that all phenomena are inextricably and intimately connected to, and even created by, the minds of observers.<\/p>\n

This insight provides the fundamental perspective for the Yogachara-Vijnanavada<\/em> (Consciousness-Only) and Chittamatra<\/em> (Mind-Only) Buddhist metaphysical perspectives:<\/p>\n

..all these various appearances,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do not exist as sensory objects which are other than consciousness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Their arising is like the experience of self knowledge.<\/p>\n

All appearances, from indivisible particles to vast forms, are mind.[i]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Common sense, of course, would indicate that such a notion, that what appears<\/em> to be an independent \u2018material\u2019 reality is actually of the nature of mind or consciousness, must be misguided, and in the \u2018classical\u2019, or pre-quantum, era of Western science such a notion would have appeared outlandish.\u00a0 However, with the advent of the quantum revolution the notion that the ultimate nature of the physical world is mind-substance, or Mindnature, has become increasingly inescapable.<\/p>\n

This was the conclusion of many of the \u2018founding fathers\u2019 of quantum mechanics. Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, the discoverer of the fundamental quantum equation, for instance, came to the conclusion that:<\/p>\n

Mind has erected the objective outside world \u2026 out of its own stuff.[ii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Max Planck, the physicist who inadvertently initiated the quantum revolution, came to a similar conclusion:<\/p>\n

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.[iii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More recently, in an article in the New Scientist (23rd<\/sup> June 2007) Michael Brooks, commenting on quantum entanglement experiments carried out by teams led by Markus Aspelmeyer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna, tells us that the conclusion reached by the physicists involved is that:<\/p>\n

\u2026 we now have to face the possibility that there is nothing inherently real about the properties of an object that we measure. In other words measuring those properties is what brings them into existence. [iv]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This conclusion agrees with the fundamental insight of the Madhyamaka, or the Buddhist Middle Way analysis, that all phenomena lack \u2018inherent existence\u2019 or, to use Buddhist technical terminology, all phenomenon lack svabhava<\/em> (\u2018own-nature\u2019 or \u2018inherent existence\u2019). \u00a0Thus Vedral, in his recent book Decoding Reality<\/em>, has concluded that:<\/p>\n

Quantum physics is indeed very much in agreement with Buddhistic emptiness.[v]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emptiness, or shunyata, <\/em>is, in one aspect, the Buddhist concept of a fundamental non-substantial \u2018empty\u2019 ground of potentiality which gives rise to the multitudinous productions within dualistic experience through the operation of an internal primordial activity of cognition. Within Dzogchen (the \u2018Great Completeness\u2019 teachings) for instance the ultimate nature of reality is characterised as being a fundamental ground comprised of \u2018emptiness and cognition inseparable\u2019, or \u2018empty cognizance\u2019.[vi]<\/a> And this is the kind of vision of the process of reality which Vedral considers is necessitated by the evidence of quantum theory:<\/p>\n

The Universe starts empty but potentially with a huge amount of information. The first key event is the first act of symmetry breaking\u2026[vii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The results of quantum experiments indicates quite clearly that quantum reality consists of a field of non-substantial (using the term \u2018substantial\u2019 here to indicate materiality) potentiality which is triggered into experiential manifestation through the operation of the cognitive activity of consciousness.\u00a0 This perspective is indicated in the most recent quantum proposal that quantum reality is \u2018epiontic\u2019, as quantum physicist Wojciech H. Zurek has indicated:<\/p>\n

\u2026quantum states, by their very nature share an epistemological and ontological role – are simultaneously a description of the state, and the \u2018dream stuff is made of.\u2019\u00a0 One might say that they are epiontic<\/em>.\u00a0 These two aspects may seem contradictory, but at least in the quantum setting, there is a union of these two functions.[viii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This cogent insight makes clear that, at the quantum level, being and knowing, perception and reality, epistemology and ontology, are inextricably entangled.\u00a0 The \u2018epiontic\u2019 nature of the fundamental quantum ground, therefore, indicates that in some manner perception creates the ontological fabric of reality. The \u2018first act of symmetry breaking\u2019, then, is an act of primordial consciousness. As the physicist Henry Stapp, who has discussed such issues with some of the early quantum physicist, has indicated:<\/p>\n

\u2026this evolving quantum state would represent the \u2018potentialities\u2019 and \u2018probabilities for actual events.\u00a0 \u2026 the \u2018primal stuff\u2019 represented by the evolving quantum state would be idealike rather than matterlike, apart from its conformity to mathematical rules.[ix]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The greatly admired physicist John Wheeler wrote that:<\/p>\n

The universe does not \u2018exist, out there,\u2019 independent of all acts of observation.\u00a0 Instead, it is in some strange sense a participatory universe.[x]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wheeler suggests that quantum theory requires a participatory universe, which means that somehow phenomena which appear to be external and independent of the minds of sentient beings cannot be so.\u00a0 The Astronomer Royal Professor Martin Rees agrees with him:<\/p>\n

In the beginning there were only probabilities.\u00a0 The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it.\u00a0 \u2026 The universe exists because we are aware of it.[xi]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As does cosmologist Professor Andrei Linde:<\/p>\n

Thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time.\u00a0 This example demonstrates an unusually important role played by the concept of an observer in quantum cosmology.\u00a0 John Wheeler underscored the complexity of the situation, replacing the word observer by the word participant, and introducing such terms as a \u2018self-observing universe.[xii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As does Steven Hawking in his most recent book (written together with Leonard Mlodinow) The Grand Design<\/em>; in fact according to Hawking (following Wheeler) observations have a creative impact even backwards in time:<\/p>\n

\u2026the universe doesn\u2019t have just a single history, but every possible history, each with its own probability; and our observations of its current state affect its past and determine the different histories of the universe\u2026[xiii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quantum theory, then, suggests that the universe might actually be vast cosmic dream created by all of its inhabitants. This might, at first sight, seem far-fetched, but it is not, which is why Zurek refers to quantum \u2018stuff\u2019 as \u2018the dream stuff is made of.\u2019[xiv]<\/a><\/p>\n

Quantum physics clearly shows that we are involved, or are participators, in the existence of the universe. Indeed Wheeler also wrote that:<\/p>\n

\u2026no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.[xv]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he did not mean by this that some already existing entity is not experienced as a phenomenon until observed, he meant that the observation has a creative role in the existence of the apparent entity revealed by the phenomenon. \u00a0Speaking in April 2003 to the American Physical Society, he made the following remarkable; perhaps one might say \u2018mystical\u2019, sequence of remarks:<\/p>\n

The Question is what is the Question?<\/p>\n

Is it all a Magic Show?<\/p>\n

Is Reality an Illusion?<\/p>\n

What is the framework of the Machine?<\/p>\n

Darwin\u2019s Puzzle: Natural Selection?<\/p>\n

Where does Space-Time come from?<\/p>\n

Is there any answer except that it comes from consciousness?<\/p>\n

What is Out There?<\/p>\n

T\u2019is Ourselves?<\/p>\n

Or, is IT all just a Magic Show?[xvi]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To Wheeler\u2019s question as to the possibility that reality might be an illusory \u2018Magic Show\u2019 Buddhist philosophy answers in the affirmative:<\/p>\n

Phenomena as they appear and resound<\/p>\n

Are neither established or real in these ways,<\/p>\n

Since they keep changing in all possible and various manners<\/p>\n

Just like appearances in magical illusions.[xvii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact Buddhist philosophers have known about the dream-like nature of the universe for at least two thousand years:<\/p>\n

\u2026when we see houses and fields in dreams, we think of them as being external objects that are not created by the mind, even though they are nothing other than projections of our mind. All that we see when we are awake is also nothing other than a creation of the mind.[xviii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the Buddhist metaphysical perspective of the Chittamatra, or Mind-Only, philosophy actually gives an indication of the kind of quantum-perceptual mechanism that might be operating at the quantum level in order to create the extraordinary universal dream of the material world and its inhabitants:<\/p>\n

The entire world was created through latent karmic imprints.\u00a0 When these imprints developed and increased, they formed the earth, the stones, and the seas.\u00a0 Everything was created through the development or propagation of these latent karmic potentials.[xix]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Buddhist worldview all actions performed by all unenlightened beings, including seemingly neutral perceptions, cause repercussions. Karma-vipaka, action and resultant effect, action and feedback, is the universal process of cause and effect which operates on all levels of reality, including the appearance of a material world. This means that there is a dimension of the operation of karma which is involved in the manifestation of what we perceive as an external \u2018material\u2019 reality:<\/p>\n

\u2026since beginningless time we have been perceiving sights, sounds, smells, tastes and bodily sensations and these perceptions have been creating imprints or latencies in the ground consciousness. Habituation of having experienced a certain visual form will create a latency for that very form.\u00a0 Eventually, that latency will manifest from the ground consciousness as a visual form again, but it will be perceived as external to ourselves.[xx]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A view which corresponds remarkably well with Wheeler\u2019s assertion that:<\/p>\n

Directly opposite to the concept of universe as machine built on law is the vision of a world self-synthesized. <\/em>On this view, the notes struck out on a piano by the observer participants of all times and all places, bits though they are in and by themselves, constitute the great wide\u00a0 world of space and time and things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words all the phenomena of the apparently \u2018material\u2019 world are produced by the perceptual activities of the sentient beings inhabiting the universe.\u00a0 And this, furthermore, means that none of the phenomena of the seemingly \u2018external\u2019 world are actually independent of mind.<\/p>\n

The physicist and philosopher Bernard d\u2019Espagnat uses the example of a rainbow to describe the way that the \u2018classical\u2019 world of apparent materiality emerges out of the quantum realm:<\/p>\n

\u2026a rainbow, obviously, may not be considered an object-per-se.\u00a0 For, indeed, if we move it moves.\u00a0 Two differently located persons do not see it having its bases at the same places.\u00a0 It is therefore manifest that it depends, in part, on us.\u00a0 \u2026 But still, even though the rainbow depends on us, it does not depend exclusively on us.\u00a0 For it to appear it is necessary that the sun should shine and that raindrops should be there. Now similar features also characterize quantum mechanically described objects, that is, after all \u2026 any object whatsoever.\u00a0 For they<\/em> also are not \u2018objects-per-se.\u2019 The attributes, or \u2018dynamical properties,\u2019 we see them to possess depend in fact on our \u2018look\u2019 at them\u2026[xxi]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words all<\/em> the entities and objects of the \u2018classical\u2019 world emerge from the potentiality of the quantum realm in a similar fashion to the way that rainbow appear.\u00a0 They are brought into experienced reality through an interaction of a deep level of consciousness and a quantum realm of potentiality.<\/p>\n

The rainbow analogy is also employed within Buddhist exegesis:<\/p>\n

By virtue of its all-penetrating freedom this Awareness that has no centre or circumference, no inside or outside, is innocent of all partiality and knows no blocks or barriers. This all-penetrating intrinsic Awareness is a vast expanse of space. All experience of samsara and nirvana arises in it like rainbows in the sky. In all its diverse manifestation it is but a play of mind.[xxii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In particular the rainbow analogy corresponds with the Mind-Only metaphysical analysis and can be used to illustrate the \u2018three natures\u2019 presentation of the way in which the \u2018classical\u2019 \u2018conventional\u2019 realm emerges from the ground of \u2018emptiness\u2019 through conceptual \u2018imputation. The Mind-Only viewpoint explains the process of reality in terms of three \u2018natures\u2019:<\/p>\n