Mary Sparrowdancer (in an email):

Beautiful! Einstein was unable to free himself of the bondage of Laws. This is perhaps because of Judaism which is a religion of Laws. Einstein did what anyone wearing a millstone of Laws would do - he created more laws. He then chained us down, because he could not transend a law that said nothing could go faster than the speed of light. A child who knows nothing about The Laws, however, will be able to tell us all that the mind, itself, can go faster than the speed of light, and does all the time. Is the mind "matter" - and what is "matter" other than compressed consciousness...

My reply:

Thanks for that comment, Mary,

which I took the liberty of appending to the article.

You are making a point that only a woman could get so clearly.

To which Mary then adds:

You are most welcome. I first experienced maya (or something) when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I was lying on the floor under a chair looking at the chair leg, and suddenly I realized there was no up, and no down, no in and no out, no big and no small - there was just "something" and it was through everything, and everything was a part of it. I was part of the chair leg. I tried to explain this to my parents, who then took me to a doctor. I didn't hear about "maya" until I was about 20.

In 1988, I went to visit the Hopi to see if they could explain the universe to me. They did. They told me, "Everything that happens is normal." I asked them to please explain this further. The teacher said, "If it happens, it must be normal." I then returned home, satisfied and normal at last.

Best to you - this was a great way to begin the day!

Sean McCutcheon says (by email):

There's a book called Quantum Questions, edited by Ken Wilber, that is a collection of mystical writings from virtually all of the founding contributors to quantum mechanics.

Quantum Questions (Ken Wilber)

I wrote to Sean McCutcheon:

Sean,

I have put your message up as a comment to make it visible to others. Someone else also pointed to Wilber's book. Do you remember if there is a description of Heisenberg's experience in his own words?

A quick search inside the book on Amazon did not yield much of interest, and I don't have the book available.

His reply contains pertinent information, so here you go:

There are 5 essays by Heisenberg included in QQ but they don't include a description of his personal experience(s); they are philosophical essays on science and religion, arguing a position that is essentially mysticism of a roughly Platonic sort.

I tend to agree with what Heisenberg has to say -- but I like Schrodinger's essays more. His position was essentially Advaita Vedanta, expressed in more Western terminology.

Wigner's and von Neumann's essays on the observer effect and the irreducible role of consciousness (not collected in the book, no doubt because they disagree with the editor's views) are also worth reading.

I recommend the book. Nearly everything in it is of high quality, with the possible exception of Wilber's preface and introduction, which are erudite with respect to comparative religion but not so well informed with respect to the history of science. Wilber argues that quantum mechanics doesn't have non-materialist ontological implications, which is clearly false. Of course, he has said elsewhere that there haven't been any significant developments in quantum theory since 1925, which demonstrates his ignorance of the most philosophically significant experiments, including the many proofs that quantum superposition and the observer effect are physically real (e.g.,
(1) the double-slit experiment done with single electrons, atoms and molecules;
(2) working quantum computers;
(3) matter-wave interferometers)
and so is non-local connectivity (e.g.,
(1) the experimental verifications of Bell's Theorem;
(2) the routine use of entanglement in quantum information theory experiments;
(3) the now-commercially-available use of entanglement in quantum encrypted networks).

Sean

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"If what we perceive as a miraculous event, contrary to the laws of nature, later appears as the quite natural manifestation of some reality we had not previously recognized, then we have to re-evaluate the whole situation in the light of the new knowledge. What had appeared to be contradictory and not worthy of belief or acceptance now becomes a set of new facts that can be reconciled with a larger body of knowledge."
- Thomas Banchoff (in a discussion of higher-dimensional space)

- - -

P.S. - Did you see this recent item in the science press?

It appears that plants have evolved mechanisms to make use of quantum superposition effects for greater energy efficiency in photosynthesis than would be possible classically. Apparently, the use of superposition for simultaneous, parallel operations (in parallel universes?) that we're just now learning to exploit for quantum computing has been used to advantage in similar ways by nature for a long time.

Quantum Secrets Of Photosynthesis Revealed

"This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one."

"Electronic spectroscopy measurements made on a femtosecond (millionths of a billionth of a second) time-scale showed these oscillations meeting and interfering constructively, forming wavelike motions of energy (superposition states) that can explore all potential energy pathways simultaneously and reversibly, meaning they can retreat from wrong pathways with no penalty."

Sean

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"Still less can appearance and illusion be taken as identical. For truth or illusion is not to be found in the objects of [sensory] intuition, but in the judgments upon them, so far as they are thought. It is therefore quite right to say that the senses never err, not because they always judge rightly but because they do not judge at all."
- Immanuel Kant

Dear Sepp

the top place regarding the experience of non-duality goes to Ramana maharishi of arunachalam the 'gur' of Paul Brunton. He was a 'master, of Vedantic Hinduism. The link may be of use
best@

Jose Luis Lopez-Bonilla sends in an extract from Christianity and World Religions by Hans Küng:

WHAT IS MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE?

Not only pop musicians and film stars, but crowned heads and distinguished Western intellectuals have visited Indian gurus and ashrams. The German physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker tells us that, early in his career, ever since reading the sermons of the Buddha and the Chinese classics, he "felt more spontaneously at home in spiritual Asia than in Europe." This is how he relates his indescribable mystical experience at the grave of the Hindu saint Sri Ramana Maharishi in Tiruvannamalai: "Once I had taken off my shoes and stepped in front of the Maharishi's grave in the ashram, I knew in a flash: 'Yes, this is it.' The truth is, all my questions were already answered. Grouped in an affable circle, we were given a tasty lunch served on large green leaves. Afterwards I sat near the grave on the stone floor. The knowledge was there, and everything had happened in half an hour. I was still aware of the world around me, the hard seat, the humming mosquitos, the light on the stone. But in those rapid moments the onionskin-like layers that words can only hint at, 'You' - 'Me' - 'Yes,' had been broken through. Tears of bliss. Bliss without tears. - Very gently the experience brought me back to earth. I now knew the love that is in the meaning of earthly love." (The Garden of the Human, 1977, p. 595)

We are the Artists as well as the Art

April 23rd, 2007 by Elliott Maynard

John Wheeler, Physicist from Princeton and a colleague of Albert Einstein offered a unique perspective of our role in the process of Creation: “Now we learn from the quantum world that even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron we have to shatter the plate glass: we have to reach in there…So the old word observer simply has to be crossed off the books, and we must put in the new word participation.”

Wheeler goes on to suggest that the very act of observation is an act of Creation, and that it is our Consciousness that is doing the creating.

What is perhaps most unique about this viewpoint is that, to think of ourselves as “participants in Creation,” rather than simply passing through the universe during the brief period of a lifetime, requires an entirely new perspective and perception of what the Cosmos is, and just how it works.

…Source: Greg Braden, 2007 - The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief

Amrit Sorli comments by email:

most interesting

enlightenment means also you discover the A-Temporal nature of the universe

see my article on the attached file

John O'M Bockris comments by email:

Your mentioning of Heisenberg made me think how fundamentally the Uncertainty Principle has sunk into American life.

I think much depends on the UP, even Quantum Mechanics, itself.

But is it true?

So what is the Proof?

So it seems the manifestation of matter is the rusults of unbalance as in an equation of opposites; i.e. up/down, in/out, hot/cold, happy/sad, ad infinatum. These opposits are fueled by the energy of thought, particularly feeling & desire. The force (magnatude) and direction (side of the equation) will always have a resultant; that is until balanced wherein the sum is zero, null, nothing, nonexistant.

When concious as not apart (as is a vector of opposites), one becomes the whole and sees or is any and all of the parts simultaneously. This then might be called enlightenment.

Hello,
At age 33, in 1990, Kundalini left its indelible mark upon my neurology and may be of significant interest to you and the community at large. I believe that my pituitary and pineal glands have been affected such that I may now discharge, at will, what I perceive to be sizable blasts of some sort of neurological energy (electrochemical?). What is interesting is that a simple scalp EEG may show extraordinary findings.

Among other things, I think that this information is very relative to brain evolution and has the power to answer many unresolved questions, but who is doing such research? Would you happen to know who I could talk to?

In addition, I have experienced the 7 seals or chakras and possess a great deal of interesting or even pertinent information for anyone’s evolution, spiritual or otherwise. Do you suppose there is any interest in having a mystic occupy a teaching post and if so, who to speak with about this?

I look forward to your advice or direction and thank you in advance.

Sincerely,
Brent Belchamber
250-382-8804
Brent56@telus.net
Victoria, BC. Canada

Sepp, I'm trying to reach Sean McCutcheon, would you contact me? Thanks!

Dear sir,
I would like to inform you and your readers of my books, "History of Mysticism" and "Body And Soul", which may be found in full on my website: www.themysticsvision.com. I believe that you will find some pertinent answers to many of the questions regarding science and mysticism which you and your readers are discussing on your website. Many thanks.
Swami Abhayananda