In the Dutch version of my book ‘Quantum Physics & the Mind’ I close the Crash Course chapter with a highly condensed summary of what I discovered in my study of what quantum physics seems to tell us since already more then hundred years: we are the universe. So, time to share it with you here.
- Physicists have discovered – now already a century ago – that all objects in the universe – matter, energy, light – arise from the so-called quantum field.
- This ubiquitous quantum field is a non-material field of vibrations and waves. The best way to imagine it is to evoke in your mind the surface of an endless ocean, not only extended in space, but also in time.
- The crests of the waves of this non-material ocean in space and time indicate that, in that location in space and time, it is most likely that objects can be observed.
- The quantum field is therefore an oceanic field of possibility, of potentiality.
- An observer is required to manifest those objects by observation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a human observer.
- An observation is the appearance of material objects from that immaterial ocean of possibilities as experiences arising in an observing mind.
- By that we actually say that observers make the intangible become material. Better said, they make an intangible potential becoming a conscious material experience.
- Observers must therefore also have an intangible core, which is most likely their consciousness because that is the place where experiences arise.
- In that case, this means that all observers must have consciousness. It is not only man that is an observer in this universe. An observer does not even have to be material herself. In that case they are / have consciousness without a material body. In other words, they can be pure ‘mind’.
- Material observers therefore should also have a non-material conscious component. Any living organism is a material observer of the universe. With that insight we immediately have a very probable definition of life.
- The “spirit”, the “mind”, in a living observing organism is also the observer of the material part of that organism, of its physical body.
- That material part of the organism of an observer, its body, therefore also arises from that intangible quantum field, as an experienced observation of a material body.
- An observer is not passive in his perception of matter but is creative. Everything that the observer already ‘knows’ and expects has an effect on what is observed and therefore also has an effect on the vibrations and waves in the universal quantum field.
- The universe, the cosmic quantum field, the intangible source of everything that can be observed, must therefore also be aware of the observer’s knowledge and expectations. The universe is also an observer.
- Therefore, the universe cannot be different from us, but is in us, in every conscious being. The universe is within us. We are the universe.
All this can be deduced by a meticulous, and as unbiased as possible, study of the double slit experiments, in particular the delayed choice experiments. But a study of delayed choice experiments is not absolutely necessary. Study of ancient wisdom shows that in some form these insights have already long existed. The Neo-Confucianists from around 800 AD in ancient China , even without double slit experiments, already knew this and described the ripples of the ordering principle of the Li in the TAO. It is becoming clear to me that the TAO and the quantum field are the same. Both are principles of potentiality.
From 'The Web of Meaning' by Jeremy Lent:
"The Neo-Confucianists recognized that all patterns of the universe ultimately influence each other, as do multiple ripples on a lake that intersect and create new patterns. The ultimate pattern of all patterns, they realized, containing all the Li ripples in the universe, was the Tao."
In another form we encounter the continuous and continuously ordening quantum field in perpetual motion, the TAO in other words, in some exceptional experiences. Read therefore this poetic magic description of the experience of the TAO by a Near Death (NDE) experiencer (Jen W):
"This is like a rock thrown into a pond, each ripple then becomes a wave that pushes little pebbles up onto the shore, to where a bird might find it, using it to aid their digestion, while they fly over a barren land, dropping small seeds along with that pebble in a field, growing flowers for the bees later in the summer."
Paul J. van Leeuwen graduated in applied physics in Delft TU in 1974. There was little attention to the significance of quantum physics for the view on reality at that time. However, much later in his life he discovered that there is an important and clear connection between quantum physics and consciousness.