The Dancing Wu Li Masters

by Gary Zukav

  However, when the observed system as represented by the wave function interacts with the observing system (when we make a measurement), it abruptly leaps to a new state. These “Quantum Leap” type transitions are idea-like characteristics. Ideas (like our knowledge about something) can and do change discontinuously. Therefore, whatever the wave function represents, that something also has an idea-like aspect.

  The wave function, strictly speaking, represents an observed system in a quantum mechanical experiment. In more general terms, it describes physical reality at the most fundamental level (the subatomic) that physicists have been able to probe. In fact, according to quantum mechanics, the wave function is a complete description of physical reality at that level. Most physicists believe that a description of the substructure underlying experience more complete than the wave function is not possible.

  “Wait a minute!” says Jim de Wit (where did he come from?). “The description contained in the wave function consists of coordinates (three, six, nine, etc.) and a time. How can that be a complete description of reality? Imagine how I felt when my girlfriend ran off to Mexico with a gypsy. Where does that show up in a wave function?”

  It doesn’t. The “complete description” that quantum theory claims the wave function to be is a description of physical reality (as in physics). No matter what we are feeling, or thinking about, or looking at, the wave function describes as completely as possible where and when we are doing it.

  Since the wave function is thought to be a complete description of physical reality and since that which the wave function describes is idea-like as well as matter-like, then physical reality must be both idea-like and matter-like. In other words, the world cannot be as it appears. Incredible as it sounds, this is the conclusion of the orthodox view of quantum mechanics. The physical world appears to be completely substantive (made of “stuff”). Nonetheless, if it has an idea-like aspect, the physical world is not substantive in the usual sense of the word (one hundred percent matter, zero percent idea). According to Stapp:

  If the attitude of quantum mechanics is correct, in the strong sense that a description of the substructure underlying experience more complete than the one it provides is not possible, then there is no substantive physical world, in the usual sense of this term. The conclusion here is not the weak conclusion that there may not be a substantive physical world but rather that there definitely is not a substantive physical world.6

  This does not mean that the world is completely idea-like. The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics does not go so far as to say what reality is “really like behind the scenes,” but it does say that it is not like it appears. It says that what we perceive to be physical reality is actually our cognitive construction of it. This cognitive construction may appear to be substantive, but the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics leads directly to the conclusion that the physical world itself is not.

  This claim at first appears so preposterous and remote from experience that our inclination is to discard it as the foolish product of cloistered intellectuals. However, there are several good reasons why we should not be so hasty. The first reason is that quantum mechanics is a logically consistent system. It is self-consistent and it also is consistent with all known experiments.

  Second, the experimental evidence itself is incompatible with our ordinary ideas about reality.

  Third, physicists are not the only people who view the world this way. They are only the newest members of a sizable group; most Hindus and Buddhists also hold similar views.

  Therefore, it is evident that even physicists who disclaim metaphysics have difficulty avoiding it. Now we come to those physicists who have jumped feet first into describing “reality.”

  So far our discussions have been based on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. The unavoidable flaw in this interpretation is the Problem of Measurement. Some type of detection by an observing system is required to collapse the wave function of the observed system into a physical reality, otherwise the “observed system” does not physically exist except as an endlessly proliferating number of possibilities generated in accordance with the Schrödinger wave equation.

  The theory proposed by Hugh Everett, John Wheeler, and Neill Graham solves this problem in the simplest way possible.7 It claims that the wave function is a real thing, all of the possibilities that it represents are real, and they all happen. The orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics is that only one of the possibilities contained in the wave function of an observed system actualizes, and the rest vanish. The Everett-Wheeler-Graham theory says that they all actualize, but in different worlds that coexist with ours!

  Let’s go back to the double-slit experiment again. A light source emits a photon. The photon can pass through slit one or through slit two. A detector is placed at slit one and at slit two. Now we add a new experimental procedure. If the photon goes through slit one, I run upstairs. If the photon goes through slit two, I run downstairs. Therefore, one possible occurrence is that the photon goes through slit one, detector one fires, and I run up the stairs. The second possible occurrence is that the photon goes through slit two, detector two fires, and I run down the stairs.

  According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, these two possibilities are mutually exclusive because it is not possible for me to run upstairs and to run downstairs at the same time.

  According to the Everett-Wheeler-Graham theory, at the moment the wave function “collapses,” the universe splits into two worlds. In one of them I run up the stairs and in the other I run down the stairs. There are two distinct editions of me. Each one of them is doing something different, and each one of them is unaware of the other. Nor will their (our) paths ever cross since the two worlds into which the original one split are forever separate branches of reality.

  In other words, according to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, the development of the Schrödinger wave equation generates an endlessly proliferating number of possibilities. According to the Everett-Wheeler-Graham theory, the development of the Schrödinger wave equation generates an endlessly proliferating number of different branches of reality! This theory is called, appropriately, the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

  The theoretical advantage of the Many Worlds Interpretation is that it does not require an “external observer” to “collapse” one of the possibilities contained in a wave function into physical reality. According to the Many Worlds theory, wave functions do not collapse, they just keep splitting as they develop according to the Schrödinger wave equation. When a consciousness happens to be present at such a split, it splits also, one part of it associating with one branch of reality and the other part(s) of it associating with the other branch(es) of reality. However, each branch of reality is experientially inaccessable to the other(s), and a consciousness in any one branch will consider that branch to be the entirety of reality. Therefore, the role of consciousness, which was central to the Copenhagen Interpretation (if consciousness is associated with an act of measurement), is incidental to the Many Worlds theory.

  However, the Many Worlds description of the structure of the relationship between the various branches of physical reality sounds like a quantitative version of a mystical vision of unity. Every state of a subsystem of a composite system is uniquely correlated to the states of the remaining subsystems which constitute the whole of which it is a part. (A “composite system,” in this case, means a combination of both the observed system and the observing system. In other words, every state of the observed system is correlated to a particular state of the observing system).

  Said another way, the Many Worlds theory defines any particular branch of reality which might “actualize” to us as a result of an interaction of an observed system and an observing system as merely one way of decomposing the wave function which represents them both. According to this theory, all of the other states which “could have” resulted from the same interaction d
id happen, but in other branches of reality. Each of these branches of reality are real, and, together, they constitute all the different ways in which we can decompose the universal wave function.

  In this way, the Problem of Measurement is no longer a problem. The problem of measurement, ultimately, was, “Who is looking at the universe?” The Many Worlds theory says that it is not necessary to collapse a wave function to actualize the universe. All of the mutually exclusive possibilities contained within the wave function of an observed system that (according to the Copenhagen Interpretation) do not actualize when the wave function “collapses” actually do actualize, but not in this branch of the universe. In our experiment, for example, one of the possibilities contained in the wave function actualizes in this branch of the universe (I run up the stairs). The other possibility contained in the wave function (I run down the stairs) also actualizes, but in a different branch of reality. In this branch of reality I run up the stairs. In another branch of reality I run down the stairs. Neither “I” knows the other. Both “I”s believe that their branch of the universe is the entirety of reality.

  The Many Worlds theory says that there is one universe and that its wave function represents all of the ways that it can be decomposed into different possible realities. We are all together here in a big box and it is not necessary to look at the box from the outside to actualize it.

  In this regard, the Many Worlds theory is especially interesting because Einstein’s general theory of relativity shows that our universe might be something like a large closed box and, if this is so, it is never possible to get “outside” of it.*

  “Schrödinger’s Cat” sums up the differences between classical physics, the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, and the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. “Schrödinger’s Cat” is a dilemma posed long ago by the famous discoverer of the Schrödinger wave equation:

  A cat is placed inside a box. Inside the box is a device which can release a gas, instantly killing the cat. A random event (the radioactive decay of an atom) determines whether the gas is released or not. There is no way of knowing, outside of looking into the box, what happens inside it. The box is sealed and the experiment is activated. A moment later, the gas either has been released or has not been released. The question is, without looking, what has happened inside the box. (This is reminiscent of Einstein’s unopenable watch.)

  According to classical physics, the cat is either dead or it is not dead. All that we have to do is to open the box and see which is the case. According to quantum mechanics, the situation is not so simple.

  The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics says that the cat is in a kind of limbo represented by a wave function which contains the possibility that the cat is dead and also the possibility that the cat is alive.* When we look in the box, and not before, one of these possibilities actualizes and the other vanishes. This is known as the collapse of the wave function because the hump in the wave function representing the possibility that did not occur, collapses. It is necessary to look into the box before either possibility can occur. Until then, there is only a wave function.

  Of course, this does not make sense. Experience tells us that a cat is what we put into the box and a cat is still what is inside the box, not a wave function. The only question is whether the cat is a live cat or a dead cat. But a cat is there whether we look at it or not. If we take a vacation before we look inside the box, it makes no difference as far as the cat is concerned. Its fate was decided at the beginning of the experiment.

  This commonsense view is also the view of classical physics. According to classical physics, we get to know something by observing it. According to quantum mechanics, it isn’t there until we do observe it! Therefore, the fate of the cat is not determined until we look inside the box.

  The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics agree that the fate of the cat is not determined for us until we look inside the box. What happens after we look inside the box, however, depends upon which interpretation we choose to follow. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, at the instant that we look inside the box, one of the possibilities contained in the wave function representing the cat actualizes and the other possibility vanishes. The cat is either dead or alive.

  According to the Many Worlds Interpretation, at the instant that the atom decays (or doesn’t decay, depending upon which branch of reality we are talking about), the world splits into two branches, each with a different edition of the cat. The wave function representing the cat does not collapse. The cat is both dead and alive. At the instant that we look into the box, our wave function also splits into two branches, one associated with the branch of reality in which the cat is dead and one associated with the branch of reality in which the cat is alive. Neither consciousness is aware of the other.

  In short, classical physics says that there is one world, it is as it appears, and this is it. Quantum physics allows us to entertain the possibility that this is not so. The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics eschews a description of what the world is “really like,” but concludes that whatever it is like, it is not substantive in the usual sense. The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics says that different editions of us live in many worlds simultaneously, an uncountable number of them, and all of them are real. There are even more interpretations of quantum mechanics, but all of them are weird in some way.

  Quantum physics is stranger than science fiction.

  Quantum mechanics is a theory and a procedure dealing with subatomic phenomena. Subatomic phenomena, in general, are inaccessible to all but those with access to elaborate (and expensive) facilities. Even at the most expensive and elaborate facilities, however, we can see only the effects of subatomic phenomena. The subatomic realm is beyond the limits of sensory perception.* It is also beyond the limits of rational understanding. Of course, we have rational theories about it, but “rational” has been stretched to include what formerly was nonsense, or, at best, paradox.

  The world that we live in, the world of freeways, bathtubs, and other people, seems as remote as it can be from wave functions and interference. In short, the metaphysics of quantum mechanics is based upon an unsubstantiated leap from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Can we apply these implications of subatomic research to the world at large?

  No, not if we have to provide a mathematical proof in each instance. But what is a proof? A proof only proves that we are playing by the rules. (We make the rules, anyway.) The rules, in this case, are that what we propose about the nature of physical reality (1) be logically consistent, and (2) that it correspond to experience. There is nothing in the rules that says that what we propose has to be anything like “reality.” Physics is a self-consistent explanation of experience. It is in order to satisfy the self-consistency requirement of physics that proofs become important.

  The New Testament presents a different point of view. Christ, following His resurrection, proved to Thomas (who became the proverbial “Doubting Thomas”) that He really was He, risen from the dead, by showing Thomas His wounds. At the same time, however, Christ bestowed His special favor on those who believed Him without proof.

  Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of western science. In other words, religion has become a matter of the heart and science has become a matter of the mind. This regrettable state of affairs does not reflect the fact that, physiologically, one cannot exist without the other. Everybody needs both. Mind and heart are only different aspects of us.

  Who, then, is right? Should disciples believe without proof? Should scientists insist on it? Is the world without substance? Is it real, but divided and dividing into countless branches?

  The Wu Li Masters know that “science” and “religion” are only dances, and that those who follow them are dancers. The dancers may claim to follow “
truth” or claim to seek “reality,” but the Wu Li Masters know better. They know that the true love of all dancers is dancing.

  Part One

  MY WAY

  1

  The Role of “I”

  In the days before Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, the common belief was that the sun, along with the rest of the universe, revolved around the earth. The earth was the fixed center of everything. At a still earlier time in India, this geocentric position was given to people. That is, each person, psychologically speaking, was recognized as being the center of the universe. Although this sounds like an egotistical point of view, it was not since every person was recognized as a divine manifestation.

  A beautiful Hindu painting shows Lord Krishna dancing in the moonlight on the bank of the Yamuna. He moves in the center of a circle of fair Vraja women. They are all in love with Krishna and they are dancing with him. Krishna is dancing with all of the souls of the world—man is dancing with himself. To dance with god, the creator of all things, is to dance with ourselves. This is a recurrent theme of eastern literature.

  This is also the direction toward which the new physics, quantum mechanics and relativity, seems to point. From the revolutionary concepts of relativity and the logic-defying paradoxes of quantum mechanics an ancient paradigm is emerging. In vague form, we begin to glimpse a conceptual framework in which each of us shares a paternity in the creation of physical reality. Our old self-image as impotent bystander, one who sees but does not affect, is dissolving.

  We are watching perhaps the most engaging act in our history. Amid the powerful purr of particle accelerators, the click of computer printouts, and dancing instrument gauges, the “old science” that has given us so much, including our sense of helplessness before the faceless forces of bigness, is undermining its own foundations.