QUANTUM TANTRA REVEALED
This post was originally published in 2002 by Frank Thomas Smith in his remarkable SouthernCross Review. It's never yet appeared on this quantum tantra blog and New Year 2025 seemed like a good time to expose these raw speculations anew.
Like the Newtonian physics it replaced, quantum physics grows out of a worldview
that sees nature as separate from man, as a dangerous Other to be tamed and
controlled by scientists who have decoded her (mostly mathematical) rules.
Despite lip service payed to "quantum wholeness" most physicists still view the
world as Us versus It, as conscious mind confronting mindless particles. Though
their methods differ radically from Newton's, modern physicists regard quantum
mechanics as just that, a new type of mechanics--subtle and strange, to be
sure--but at base as soulless and impersonal as Newton's gravity-driven
celestial machine.
Despite statements in some quantum texts that Observer
and System form an inseparable whole, I know of no physicist that has ever
merged with his apparatus: the relationship of the modern scientist to his
quantum System is every bit as aloof as that of a pre-quantum Victorian
scientist to his pendulum clocks and meter sticks. Despite their nominal belief
in the "undivided wholeness" of the quantum world (described especially well by David Bohm), physicists, in the name of "scientific objectivity" hold themselves
apart from the nature they are examining and practice dispassionate
"observation" rather than merging. Such aloof inquiry results, predictably, in a
picture of nature that, despite its quantum strangeness, is essentially dead and
lifeless.
Can it be that quantum mechanics has limited itself
unnecessarily by thoughtlessly maintaining old mechanistic and separatist
notions inherited from its Newtonian past? Feminist critics of science such as
Evelyn Fox Keller and Sandra Harding see physics as blinded by "patriarchal
biases" and look toward a more clear-sighted "successor science". Can we find a
radically new way to approach science that is more in tune with the way the
world really is, the way quantum theory hints it might actually
be?
"Quantum Tantra" attempts to blaze a new pathway for science by
incorporating previously discarded and marginal ways of thinking into a new
synthesis. Two non-mechanistic, non-separatist traditions are of particular
interest for this purpose: Western alchemy and Eastern tantra. Alchemy is based
on the notion of a partially psychic chemistry in which the mind of the
alchemist merges with the material cooking in his alembic. Tantra teaches that
the universe is not mere motion of dead matter but the sexual play of two divine
beings and seeks techniques to directly participate in that holy play. The goal
of "QuantumTantra:" is to initiate an entirely new direction of research by
approaching quantum theory and its paradoxes as if they were incomplete
fragments of a "successor science" based on tantric and alchemical
principles.
For instance, what kind of science would result if we
regarded the world not as a collection of dead objects but, in the manner of
certain Sufi mystics (practitioners of 'ilm al-qulub or "science of hearts"), as
the very body of the Beloved? What could be learned about nature and ourselves
if, instead of treating her as an object to be passively observed, we begin
looking for ways to "woo her", to become actively involved in natural processes?
And suppose our attempts at wooing and deeper involvement were guided, not by
vague myths of pre-scientific peoples, but by powerful insights, bold hunches
and inspired guesses gleaned from three centuries of math-enlightened physics?
What is the deepest kind of union with nature that twentieth-century minds can
envision? What is the deepest kind of union we can actually
achieve?
Western religion sees the world as a job completed by a lone
omnipotent being (traditionally male) long ago in the past, an event in which
humans played no part. Practitioners of tantra, on the other hand, consider the
world to be created anew each moment, as the love play of two divine beings,
Shiva and Shakti, and believe that humans can participate to some extent in that
union, in partnership with another being, performing a kind of "cosmic physics"
in a soft laboratory of entangled muscle and mind. Which is the better
world-myth? Is the universe more like an ancient one-man job or present-moment
two-part joy?
Along with much else of deep human concern, science has
tamed and sanitized sex as a mere psychobiological process, like breathing or
digestion. Sex in the West has been subject to glaring scrutiny, in hundreds of
books, thousands of magazine articles and millions of pornographic images, but
in spite of massive scientific and media exposure, sex continues to fascinate us
with its primitive mystery. Each of us, no matter how sophisticated, senses that
he or she could still be sexually surprised.
Mystics of many persuasions,
using ecstatic introspection as tool have attempted to examine this world's deep
reality from inside and claim, like quantum physicists, that truth at that level
strains human powers of description. Most mystics are solitary, but, alongside
these one-person paths, a more social way of exploring the inner world in
couples and small groups has also existed, a yoga-for-two calling itself
"tantra" from the Sanskrit word for "weaving".
Tantra begins with the
surprising claim that sex is not only holy, but that it is in some sense a
direct participation in the creation of the world, an event which Western
science and religion assert to have happened in the far distant past. Tantrikas
also claim that the universe results from the playful union of two divine beings
and that this divine union can be directly experienced in the sexual act.
Though there are many tantras (tantric scriptures) they all agree that the
truth of these statements is not to be taken on faith but must be directly
experienced. If tantra can be regarded as a science, it is the kind of science
that values experiment more highly than words.
Tantric adepts (tantrikas)
use sex neither for recreation nor procreation but for exploration of deep
reality, as a kind of hands-on, wide-eyed descent into Being. In the past these
intuition-inspired sexual explorations of deep inner nature were carried out
within cultures that knew almost nothing about the deep structure of matter as
seen from without. Likewise our math-guided understanding of outer nature has
been achieved in a vacuum of spiritual knowledge. "Quantum Tantra" will for the
first time weave these two methods of probing reality together by merging the
insights of tantrikas with the insights of physicists. In addition "Quantum
Tantra" will explore the possibility of a new style of scientific inquiry based
on the strengths of both tantra and physics.
"Quantum Tantra" will
explore the possibility of a sacred sexuality enriched by the metaphors of
modern physics as well as the possibility of a new tantra-inspired style of
doing physics. The central mystery of physics is how possibilities become
actual; the central mystery of tantra is deciding what to do
next.
Quantum tantrikas are particularly inspired by a wholly quantum
form of connection called "phase entanglement''--the type of connection
responsible for the voodoo-like direct influence proved by John Bell to underlie
the world's everywhere local phenomena. Three "physics icons" in the quantum
tantra book of natural wonders include: a single quantum system entangled in its
own mirror image (Drexhage experiment); Bell's much-studied quantum twosome (EPR
experiment); and a recently concocted quantum threesome (GHZ experiment) each of
which illustrates important features of the peculiar quantum style of
connection.
These three examples of matter quantum-entangling with other
matter prepare us to think about the more unconventional and exciting
possibility of human minds quantum-entangling with matter in new forms of union.
These new styles of directly experiencing nature will involve our quantum parts
(oscillating possibilities) rather than our computer-like Newtonian parts
(actual particles), will involve giving up control, yielding to matter's way,
relaxing, being moved by, being penetrated by and taking in nature, letting
"nature measure us" rather than "us measuring her", will involve scientists
taking turns in the "male" and "female" roles rather than staying stuck in the
single pose of "objective observer" (which we can always return to with fresh
insights)
Most likely these new forms of entanglement with matter will be
practiced first not by conventional scientists but by ordinary people with less
old-fashioned conceptual baggage to overcome. Stuck-in-the-past scientists may
be the last to enjoy the benefits of this quantum-inspired, physics-assisted
deep union with nature. Quantum tantra, with unique labs in every household, may
be a true people's science, its wisdom passed on privately mouth-to-mouth;
See also Opening Night and Elements of Tantra.
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