I just watched this video again. What starts as a classic explanation of quantum theory type things like entanglement and superposition moves in a very interesting direction.
The basic theory, of course, is that any entity (say…an electron) becomes entangled with another after contact and that new entangled entity is both a wave and a particle at the same time. It exists as a wave until it is measured whereupon it collapses into entangled particles.
In this video it is proposed that the wave function never collapses but, instead, is split into many other independent wave functions due to interaction with the environment…creating many worlds.
I’d like to take this a bit further and say that in the spirit of the emptiness of self due to dependent arising, where no true momentary measurement is ever possible, this theory holds true.
Perhaps we exist in a state where all things are fully entangled and there are infinite possible “Realities”.
While researching this Many Worlds Theory a little deeper I came across an article about Hugh Everett III who first postulated it back in the 60’s. He was way ahead of his time.
This kind of research has become very important to me because over the last few years my perspective on reality has been broadened by things I have witnessed in both the dream state and the waking state.
“Once we have granted that any physical theory is essentially only a model for the world of experience, we must renounce all hope of finding anything like the correct theory … simply because the totality of experience is never accessible to us."
Hugh Everett III
I think that through conscious awareness in the dream state and the liminal state along with deep meditation and the quest to achieve pristine awareness in the waking state…we may actually be able to greatly expand our accessibility to the totality of experience.
Well…I believe that there truly is no totality of experience. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem basically tells us that there is never an end…there is always more. Always. I guess that means that there is a whole lot more to experience than what we are experiencing now.
Experience is, of course, always defined by subjectivity…a seemingly dualistic and interdependent exercise.
I read somewhere that Siddhartha became deeply absorbed in meditation under the Bodhi tree and reflected on his experience of life, determined to penetrate its truth. So it seems as though we must come to an understanding of the usefulness of experience, even as we come to a realization of its empty nature.
I am also determined to penetrate the truth of life. That puts me in seriously good company.
Hmmmmm…would that be our goal? Enlightenment? The attainment of non-attainment as Naropa said to Tilopa in his Mahamudra transmission?
At first sight, the logical consequence of experience having to cease when subjectivity ceases due to its defining interdependence, may lead to interpreting this state as a state of absolute annihlation, which would be an extreme and a false conclusion.
But, if the logic holds true, what does it mean in this equation? Does it really mean annihilation of experience when subjectivity is annihilated?
Perhaps yes in the conventional sense of experience (being conventionally known as subjective).
Perhaps no in a non-conventional sense of experience (what frame could this be?).
Does the interdependent trinity of knower, act of knowing and that which is known, perhaps universally hold valid even if these three variables transcend their conventional subjectivity.
Could this mean that annihilation of subjective experience and subject, may lead to an omniscient state arising of union of knower (rigpa), knowing (experience, energetic expression) and knowledge (totality)?
No subject which experiences. Instead borderless oneness of omniscient consciousness in everything?
Hard, if not impossible to wrap the mind around it… at least for subjective me
I might say that experience is that which defines the character of a phenomenon. I have seen this as a definition of that nebulous term “suchness”. In this illusory world in which we abide suchness/experience gives us a way to relate to things around us but we should remember that it does not show us the true nature of those things.
From a perspective of pure unconditioned awareness (rigpa), we cut through suchness/experience. Now experience and its co-dependent subjectivity cease to exist while that which we had been “experiencing”…does not.
I’m currently reading Carlo Rovelli’s “Helgoland,” he’s a leading physicist, fine writer, and this is a good overview of QM. Interestingly, he comes to the same insight I share in Dreams of Light, that the only “thing” that exists is relationship. A good chapter on Nagarjuna – leading thinker in Buddhism on the topic of emptiness. Easy quick read, worth it.
Was pondering that very question during the day today as I work my way through Guy Armstrong’s “Emptiness”. I came to the conclusion that the only “thing” that exists is pure awareness.
Dependent Co-arising, right? The Universe is not a bunch of little particle balls bouncing around each other. It is an infinite web of relationships. The jeweled net of Indra.
