The Reality Prize

Esalen Seminar on the Nature of Reality Poster

THE REALITY PRIZE

 In the late 1970s, Esalen Institute co-founder Michael Murphy decided to invite physicists down to Big Sur to see what might happen. One of Mike's speculations was that “Perhaps a new kind of inspired physicist, experienced in the yogic modes of perception, might emerge to comprehend the further reaches of matter, space and time.” So it happened that physicist Saul-Paul Sirag and myself found ourselves leading workshops on quantum mechanics for Esalen guests and holding yearly invitational conferences for selected scientists focused mainly on the theme of Irish physicist John Stewart Bell's non-locality theorem for quantum-entangled systems.

Quantum theory is one of our most successful mathematical tools for understanding the behavior of Nature at her most basic level. This theory has never made a wrong prediction and some of its results agree with experiment up to 13 decimal places. However its success is marred by what one might call The Reality Crisis. Though I have struggled with this theory for more than fifty years, I cannot tell my son Khola a simple story about how the world works on the quantum level. And neither can anyone else.

Quantum physicists represent the world in two ways depending on whether the world's being looked at or not. Waves of possibility when not looked at; And an actual particle when we look. Plus physicists don't really know what “looking” means — an embarrassing situation called “the measurement problem”. Wanna stump a physicist? Ask him (or her) what they think it takes to turn many shimmering quantum possibilities into one hard quantum fact.

Oddly enough, The Reality Crisis (physicist's inability to tell a good quantum story) does not hamper at all our ability to use this wonderful tool to make successful predictions. So, for the most part, practical physicists have consigned “thinking about reality” to the philosophers, to physicists who have already made their mark in the world and to amateurs (from the French word “to love”) who have no reputation to lose. “Do not keep saying to yourself if you can possibly avoid it,” warned physicist Richard Feynman, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will go 'down the drain' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”

To explain how one particle becomes actual is puzzling enough, but the stakes are raised once two particles are involved, especially if they happen to be created in a state of “quantum entanglement”. Then, when unlooked at at least, the two entities do not possess their own attributes. Only the union of the two is in a definite state of being, until a measurement is made. Erwin Schrōdinger was the first to point out the peculiar nature of entangled quantum systems and to comment that this strange mode of being was what most distinguished the quantum world from everyday stuff..

But in Schrōdinger's day, entangled quantum systems were hard to come by. So quantum entanglement, for the most part, remained a theoretical curiosity, if it was even mentioned at all.

That all changed in 1964, when a physicist named John Stewart Bell, whose hobby happened to be quantum reality, discovered, during a sabbatical leave from his day job at CERN accelerator, what is now know as “Bell's Theorem.”

The Bell Experiment

 

Imagine a source S of polarization-entangled photon pairs A and B. Photon A is sent to Alice and photon B to Bob who each have a device that measures photon polarization. One of the important features of a quantum measurement is that Alice cannot just ask “what properties does her A photon actually possess?” but must make a choice of what attribute to ask about and which attributes to leave unknown.

Quantum attributes come in complementary pairs (and often triplets). If you ask about position, you forego finding out about momentum, a discovery attributed to Heisenberg, known as “the uncertainty principle”. Photon polarization happens to be one of those quantum attributes that is triplely uncertain, so when Alice chooses to measure one photon polarization plane, she necessarily forfeits all knowledge of the other two polarization planes.

At both Alice and Bob's stations, imagine a clock face that represents the direction that the two experimenters choose to interrogate their photon's unknown polarization. If Alice chooses to ask at 12 o'clock, a PLUS in her detector means that her A photon polarization is Vertical (V); a MINUS means that its polarization is Horizontal (H).

Two features of this system are typical of an entangled state:. 1. No matter what their clock settings, each observer always gets a random sequence of PLUSs and MINUSs; 2. Whenever Alice's setting is the same as Bob's, if Alice gets a PLUS, Bob will always get a MINUS and vice versa. Their results are said to be 1. Perfectly random and 2. Perfectly anti-correlated.

Since polarization-entangled states were almost non-existent in 1964, nobody really knew if this would actually happen to Alice and Bob, but a simple quantum calculation gives the result quoted above.

Physicists “represent” an unobserved quantum system by a mathematical entity called a wavefunction. I carefully use the word “represent” rather than “describe” because we don't really know what the real relationship is between the wavefunction and the actual world, another embarrassing situation called “the interpretation problem”. Physicists know how to use the wavefunction to correctly calculate (the probability of) all experimental results but they don't really know what the wavefunction means.

So what more does this magnificently useful but utterly mysterious wavefunction say about the Alice and Bob experiment?

First: Quantum theory says that whatever happens is entirely independent of the distance between Alice and Bob. If they are in the same room, as in most practical physics experiments, the results will be exactly the same as if they were ten thousand light years apart, separated by vast interstellar distances.

Second: While unobserved, the wavefunction does not assign any polarization attribute to either Alice's or Bob's photon, but when Alice measures her photon, using a clock direction of her choice, her photon instantly acquires a definite value, AND SO DOES BOB'S PHOTON even though Alice and Bob might be separated by galactic distance. This instantaneous connection, if it is real and not just confined to the theory, violates all the norms of modern physics.

Alice's apparently instant action on Bob's photon has gotta be faster than light (goodbye Einstein) but that's only part of the trouble. This interaction, unlike any we are familiar with in physics, is not diminished by distance. Furthermore, this Alice-Bob intimacy is not transmitted by any field we know of-- it just happens. Alice's action on Bob's photon is, in brief, unmitigated, unmediated and immediate.

Physicists label such alleged behavior, as “non-local”, a tame word that conceals their deep intellectual loathing for an unholy abomination, for a deeply unnatural act. In the world of physics, a “non-local interaction¨, if such a thing ever occured, would be a mortal sin against the Holy Ghost. Non-local interactions are, in physicist's minds, comparable to believing in voodoo, which, come to think of it, is alleged by its practitioners to behave somewhat “non-locally” too.

Third: But what about Einstein? If Alice has access to a non-local interaction, can she and Bob exchange signals faster than light using entangled photons? Since quantum theory describes all experiments perfectly, it can easily answer this question. And the answer is NO. No superluminal signaling is possible using entangled photons. What forbids this is the randomness of each individual event which exactly smothers any alleged non-local Alice-Bob connection.

So what did Bell do with this strange situation? He went against Feynman’s warning about trying to tell a story about what's really going on. Bell's Theorem is not about quantum THEORY, not about quantum EXPERIMENTS, but about quantum REALITY.

Bell tried to imagine the most general model of reality that he could think of, using the term “hidden variables” to make his guesses amenable to mathematical calculation. He imagined all the influences that might go into forming Bob's polarization measurement and left out just one: Alice's choice of what to measure. If Alice's choice is allowed to influence Bob's result, that would imply the existence of a real (we're talking about reality here) non-local interaction in Nature.

Using this one assumption, Bell calculated a set of inequalities that the EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS of any local model of reality must satisfy.

Guess what? The results predicted by quantum mechanics do not obey the Bell Inequalities. Therefore REALITY MUST BE NON-LOCAL. Bring out your crosses and holy waters, folks. The witch doctors is loose!

The reception of Bell's remarkable proof, which was published in 1964, in an obscure and rather short-lived journal, was a resounding silence. John Clauser, then a graduate student at Columbia, discovered Bell's Theorem in 1969 and wrote him about the possibility of doing an actual experiment to check whether the quantum predictions were correct. Bell reported that this was the first comment on his paper he had yet received—more than four years after its publication.

You often hear it said that when Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity,  only six people understood it. In truth, there were probably lots more than six. But it is fair to say, that when John Bell published his now famous paper, ONLY SIX PEOPLE CARED. John Clauser was one of them.

For the next part of the story I quote David Kaiser's “How the Hippies Saved Physics” which discusses Clauser's accomplishments in great detail.

“Clauser, a budding experimentalist, realized that Bell's theorem could be amenable to real-world tests in a laboratory. Excited, he told his thesis advisor about his find, only to be rebuffed for wasting their time on such philosophical questions. Soon Clauser would be kicked out of some of the finest offices in physics, from Robert Serber's at Columbia to Richard Feynman's at Caltech. Bowing to these pressures, Clauser pursued a dissertation on a more acceptable topic—radio astronomy and astrophysics—but in the back of his mind he continued to puzzle through how Bell's inequality might be put to the test.”

John Clauser lecturing at Esalen

 I first met John Clauser in his lab at Berkeley in the early 70s where he had cobbled together an ingenious device to test the Bell Inequalities using the few entangled photons that a mercury-vapor lamp produces. He hoped he would gain fame by showing that, for this particular system, quantum theory was wrong, and Reality was Local, as Einstein would have guessed. He succeeded however in finding that quantum theory was right, which means, according to Bell's Proof, that Reality must be non-local! This world, all that we can see around us, remains stubbornly local, but is undergirded, at least in the case of entangled photons, by a network of instant invisible voodoo-like connections.

I was introduced to Clauser as a member of Elizabeth Rauscher and George Weissman's Fundamental Fysiks Group and marveled at his Rube Goldberg setup for measuring polarized-photon coincidences. (He was using pile-of-plates polarizers, for Gods sake!) In addition to recruiting experimentalist John Clauser, FFG also attracted Henry Pierce Stapp, a Berkeley theorist interested in fundamental questions. All of our later ESNR meetings included Clauser and Stapp as core personnel.

Henry Stapp pushed us to closely examine every assumption that goes into Bell's proof, especially those that seem most self-evident, and Clauser kept us posted on other Bell Inequality tests besides his own that were being planned and carried out around the world.

The title of our Esalen Conference: Esalen Seminars on the Nature of Reality, was neither silly nor pretentious. We really were studying “reality” as physicists might view it, as an attempt to tell a story about what's actually going on behind the wavefunction mystery and the measurement mystery. For our ESNR motto we chose a quote from Goethe's Faust, who was also a passionate seeker of Reality. Attesting to the real strangeness of our quest, Clauser's colleague Abner Shimony dubbed these Bell tests "experimental metaphysics."

Our third Esalen meeting (ESNR #3) in 1982 featured a ceremony sponsored by Charles Brandon, one of the founders of Federal Express, to award both John Bell and John Clauser “The Reality Prize” of $3000 each for their firm establishment through theory and experiment of non-locality as a general feature of the world. Bell's Reality Prize was accepted by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat since Bell could not be there in person. We assured the participants that this prize was merely the first of many that would be bestowed upon the two of them.

Reality Prize Announcement: Esalen Catalog

 

Unfortunately, John Stewart Bell died in 1990, at the age of 62 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

In 2010, John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the prestigious (Ricardo) Wolf Prize.

And just last week, the same three men were honored with the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Hearty congratulations to all three of you, O bold and noble champions of quantum reality!

Clauser, Zeilinger, Aspect: Physics Nobel Prize 2022: Quanta Magazine

Quantum Reality

White Tara: compassionate, playful Protector of all worlds

QUANTUM REALITY

Shall I look at Her?
Or shall I not?

Hard
Small
Separated
If I look.

Soft
Spread-out
Connected
If I don't.

Hard particle and soft wave: both?
Small, right-here 
              and spread-out everywhere: both?
Lonely separate yet deep connected: both?

Honey
Some day You gotta show me
How You do that.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire

Nick meets a Luck Wave (design by August O'Connor)

THAT NATURE IS A HERACLITEAN FIRE

I have spent more than a third of my life speculating (with congenial physicist friends) about what quantum mechanics might actually mean -- and have even written a book about it. The gist of the quantum dilemma is that we have a Quantum Theory that successfully predicts the results of every physical measurement. But with this theory comes an utter inability to tell a plausible story about what's really going on in the world -- both before, during and after a measurement. Physicists today possess an essentially perfect Quantum Theory, know how to experimentally produce subtle and delicate Quantum Facts, but cannot convincingly tell their kids a Quantum Reality story that adequately explains both Quantum Theory and Quantum Facts.

Many words concerning quantum reality were exchanged by quantum theory's founders -- especially Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr -- but not much progress was made until the remarkable discovery of Irish physicist John Stewart Bell who formulated an experimental test that could confidently eliminate an entire class of quantum reality models. Not only is it rare for physicists (or anybody else) to TALK ABOUT REALITY, it is even rarer (such was the importance of Bell's discovery) to come up with EXPERIMENTS ON REALITY. Consequently, Bell's original 1964 paper has become one of the most-cited publications in physics.

Bell's original experiment involved TWO ENTANGLED PHOTONS -- one sent to Alice and one to Bob. About this setup, quantum theory says two seemingly contradictory things: 1. that the quantum state of Bob's photon depends instantly (faster-than-light) on Alice's choice of what to measure; 2. that this apparent instantaneous action can never be used for signaling.

The physics jargon for instantaneous voodoo-like connections is the word "non-local". Non-local effects (either in theory or in practice) are as welcome in physics as a corpse at a wedding feast.

So before Bell came along, the theory of entangled systems was manifestly non-local (BAD!), but the same theory also assured that no experiment would ever be able to directly reveal this non-locality (GOOD!).

So quantum theory of entangled systems is NON-LOCAL: But all quantum facts are LOCAL.

What about quantum reality -- the underlying causal dynamics behind both theory and fact? Do we live in a world that's deep-down linked by abominable (to the physicist) non-local connections? Or is quantum reality nicely local, just like the quantum facts?

Bell's surprising conclusion (a powerful mathematical proof, not a mere conjecture) is that no local reality can underlie this everywhere local world.

Quantum reality must be non-local, according to Bell's proof.

To a physicist, Bell's conclusion is preposterous and must certainly be wrong. My first entry into the Bell's Theorem game was an attempt to disprove John Bell. Which ended in my formulating the world's shortest proof for the non-local nature of quantum reality.

Bell's Theorem is so simple that it is difficult to find a flaw. But Bell's greatest weakness can be summed up in the dichotomy: if reality exists, then it must be non-local; but if you DENY REALITY, then you are let off the hook.

But what could "denying reality" possibly mean?

One innocent (but crucial) assumption in Bell's proof is called "contrafactual definiteness" (or CFD, for short).

When you do the Bell experiment on a single pair of entangled photons, both Alice and Bob can set their detectors at only ONE SETTING. But to prove BT, you need to consider the possible results of FOUR SETTINGS. Four settings for the same two-photon event.

CFD assumes that: if we had performed three other measurements -- other than the actual one -- we would have gotten three definite (but unknown) results.

But if the nature of the quantum world is such that CFD is not valid, then you can't prove Bell's theorem. In fact, in a non-CFD world, you cannot even formulate Bell's theorem.

A recent paper by Gerold Gründler from Nürnberg, Germany, (What Does Bell's Inequality Actually Prove?) analyzes a few ways of "denying reality" by postulating (and perhaps even proving -- I am not sure) that we live in a world which does not support CFD. Gründler revisits and revises an earlier work by Israeli physicist, the late Asher Peres, entitled Unperformed Experiments Have No Results (3 page pdf).

Peres's paper suggests that we might live in a world where Unperformed Experiments Have No Results. But what are the details of such a world? How does it actually work?

What would it be like to live in a world where CFD is inconceivable?

Here's one attempt to visualize such a world.

Our thinking about the classical world is dominated by movies. It is easy to imagine rewinding the film, changing only one thing, then doing an (imaginary) retake. Certainly this cinematic model of reality allows us to at least imagine what the results of Unperformed Experiments might look like.

We can even add quantum randomness to the picture by allowing some features of the scene to depend on pure chance. Imagine filming a gambling table -- each reshoot, even of the same game, will give definite but different outcomes -- outcomes that are governed by statistical laws -- analogous to the probabilistic outcomes predicted by quantum mechanics. Bell's Theorem can be proved in a world like this -- a world of definite but statistically determined results.

To move into a non-CFD world, consider the case of a single Uranium atom. Physics considers all Uranium atoms to be EXACTLY THE SAME. Yet this one decayed in one second, while its identical sister is still alive after a million years. The first atom's short life is not due to some defect in its constitution. That's just the way the quantum world works -- identical quantum objects behave differently -- FOR NO REASON AT ALL.

Now consider how the movie analogy might work in a fully quantum world. We rewind the film, KEEP EVERYTHING THE SAME. Then change just one setting and reshoot the experiment.

Keeping everything the same is easy in a quantum world: every photon, electron, quark has always been just the same as every other. But the big problem is that each particle in the universe now behaves differently than in the first take -- giving rise to an entirely different universe -- a universe in which not only does the camera not exist, but the cameraman, the human species, and all life on Earth have vanished. In this second take on our present quantum reality the familiar Earth has no doubt disappeared as well.

As Heraclitus warned, you cannot step twice into the same river, because the river is never the same.

Might an Asher-Peres world in which Unperformed Experiments Have No Results be "hyper-Heraclitean" in the sense that in this kind of quantum reality even the same river is not the same river? In fact this river revisited second time round might not even be a river at all but the insides of a black hole.

Trying to visualize quantum worlds in which CFD is inconceivable might push us to think more deeply not only about fully quantum concepts such as "superposition", "entanglement" and "wave/particle duality" but also to revise our old-fashioned assumptions about everyday classical concepts such as "same", "different", "spontaneity" and even how to correctly use the word "again" when it comes to properly refilming in our imagination the very same event that has already happened once.

JUJITSU UNIVERSE

We house-broke quantum reality

Trained Schrödinger's Cat to purr

Now daily life's more uncanny

Than atoms ever were.

Asher Peres, who titled his bio "The cat who walks by himself", played a vital part in publicizing the role both he and myself played in the discovery of the quantum "no cloning rule". (How the no-cloning theorem got its name.) which eventually inspired MIT professor David Kaiser to write his popular science history book: How the Hippies Saved Physics. In addition to his pioneering work in quantum information theory, Asher Peres will probably be remembered most as a member of the team of six people who devised the remarkably clever Quantum Teleportation process.

The title of this post was taken from Gerard Manley Hopkins's splendid poem: That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection.

Asher Peres (bottom right) and his five buddies who invented Quantum Teleportation

Gilliam Does Quantum Reality: Part Two

Harold Gilliam at Baker Beach, San Francisco

Harold Gilliam died last month (Dec 2016) at age 98. He was an eloquent writer on environmental issues and a popular columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Intending perhaps to explore the inner environment of the physical world, Gilliam attended a weekend workshop at Esalen Institute in the summer of 1985 given by myself and my friend and physics colleague Heinz Pagels, To commemorate Gilliam's death and the death of Pagels who died a few years later, I am reprinting a few weeks apart the two Sunday Chronicle columns that Gilliam wrote about his experience with us in Big Sur. Part One is here. Fasten your seat belts for "Gilliam Does Quantum Reality: Part Two"

TO BE AND NOT TO BE

Harold Gilliam, SF Chronicle Aug 25, 1985

"To be or not to be." is not the question. It is the answer.
                --- Fred Alan Wolf

Bell's Theorem is the most profound discovery of science.
                --- Physicist Henry Stapp

Esalen Institute, on a verdant shelf of the Big Sur coast, far from the frenetic agglomerations of the Bay Area and Southern California, is an idyllic place for leisurely contemplation, for gazing out to sea and looking for clues as to what the world is all about and what your own place in it might be.

And that is what 17 people from various points of the compass were doing there on a recent weekend in a workshop on Quantum Reality as we noted here last Sunday.

We peered (metaphorically) into the microscopic world of the quanta, where atoms and subatomic particles perform their weird unearthly dances that physicists are only beginning to understand.

Consider Bell's Theorem, for example, which has revolutionized our view of the world, at least in the eyes of some quantum physicists.

As explained to us by physicist Nick Herbert, author of Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics, Bell's Theorem, very much simplified, states that, if you shoot twin particles in opposite directions, and then if you change the spin or polarity of one of the particles, the other must change in the same way at the same instant, whether it's across the lab or across the galaxy.

Since the change in the two particles occurs simultaneously, this action seems to violate Einstein's dictum that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light -- 186,000 miles per second. How does the second particle 'know' immediately that the first particle has been changed, unless some superluminal message passes between the, an event for which physics has no explanation? The theorem seems to indicate also that events (and maybe people) can be influenced by forces that are "non-local" -- extremely remote.

Herbert explained it this way: "The mechanism for this instant connectedness is not some invisible field that stretches from one part to the next, but the fact that "a bit of each part's 'being' is lodged in the other."

Bell was not talking about people, but particles, yet his theorem has been eagerly adopred by believers in extrasensory perception: If particles can "communicate" with each other simultaneously over long distances (violating Einstein's speed limit), minds can surely do the same.

Everyone has heard the stories: A mother wakes up in alarm and learns later that her child at that moment was in danger. "Remote viewing" experiments at SRI International and elsewhere claim to substantiate telepathic communication. Perhaps part of each person's being is "lodged in the other."

And perhaps, some say, both are lodged in a transcendental mind that constitutes the basic order of the universe. Is science, I wondered, finally meeting religion in the rarified atmosphere of Bell's Theorem?

Herbert was speculating in a different direction about faster-than-light communication: "Superluminal signals would open up similar channels from the present to the past -- channels that would allow people today to change what by conventional reckoning has already happened.

I was reminded of a certain legendary young female:

There was a young lady named Bright
Who traveled much faster than light
She went out one day
in a relative way
And came back the previous night.

I was already drawing up a list of past events I would like to "unhappen; when Herbert's colleague spoke up in dissent. Pagels is the author of The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature and a new book on the origin of the universe Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time. He is also the executive director of the New York Academy of Sciences and somewhat of an iconoclast. it turned out he didn't agree with Herbert at all.

Heinz Pagels & Nick Herbert, circa 1964

"Bell's Theorem does not prove that anything can travel faster than light," Pagels maintained, "It's a quantum fact, accepted by everyone, that the observer has an effect on what he's observing. Under Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, as soon as you observe or measure certain aspects of the quantum world, you change them. So the change in Bell's particle, which seems to happen faster than light, simply reflects what the observers are doing when they measure the particles."

Herbert's response and Pagels' rebuttal went too fast for me to even begin to follow, but it was clear that the two views represented a central schism in the fast-moving world of quantum physics -- Pagels representing the establishment view and Herbert the speculative, philosophical school.

When the dust had settled, i raised a question that had plagued me throughout the weekend. Physicists can spin mystifying theories about the invisible world of the quanta, but what does all this have to do with the price of potatoes?

Pagels responded with a glowing vision: "Quantum research results in new technologies, giant new industries, new economies, and in fact a whole new idea of civilization can come out of these developments. New technologies change our perceptions. The printing press, for example, led to the development of books and a new literacy that made democracy possible. The impact of computers has already made major changes in our economy.

"Nuclear weapons have created a period of unsurpassed world stability. There has not been a war between two nuclear nations -- as a result of a technology that came out of quantum physics.

"We're already living in the world of the quantum revolution: Microchips, the whole world of the computers, the whole world of the revolutions in molecular biology -- all these came out of the human mastery of the microworld that was made possible in part by the advent of quantum physics. The full implications of living in the world of the quantum revolution have not yet dawned on us. But these new technologies are driving the engines of social change,"

We sat there in silence for a moment, listening to the roar of the ocean. Then somebody said it: "But are they driving the engines of social change in the right direction? Nuclear weapons. for example ..."

Pagels responded: "I said these were technologies that changed our perceptions. I didn't say whether they were for better or for worse. That's for other people to decide, in terms of their own values. The new technologies open a whole new spectrum of moral choices, alerting people to examine their own consciences about matters as fundamental as human survival. My own view is that we must learn to live without using nuclear weapons."

I thought about that as i shifted around on the uncomfortable pillows that substitute for chairs at Esalen. it seemed to me that there was one overarching fact that had not received much attention: Quantum physics is giving us incredible new powers that we are ill-equipped to use. It's like putting a 5-year-old at the steering wheel of a Maserati on a downtown street. Compared with the R & D devoted to quantum research and its weapons-technology offspring, the attention given to learning how to use these powers wisely is minuscule.

Later, as I strolled along the clifftops over the roaring surf, it occurred to me that the contribution of quantum theory might not be limited to technology. For example, pre-quantum physicists assumed that the constituents of an atom were simply particles like electrons and neutrons. Later theorists decided that they were not particles but waves. The current view is that they are simultaneously particles and waves. Not "either/or" but "both/and".

In the Newtonian particle view everything was sharply defined as one thing or the other. Quantum theory introduces the idea that an object can be perceived in two or more ways, each valid. To be and not to be. That's the meaning of ambiguity.

The American mind, schooled in Newtonian definiteness and frontier certainties, is accustomed to precise labels. There are good guys and bad guys. There are friends and enemies. You are either with us or against us.

It seemed to me, as I paced the shoreline, that the quantum "both/and" approach might prove useful in our relations with each other and with other nations. A nation (like a person) might be aggressive, intransigent and tyrannical. It might simultaneously be peace-loving, friendly and cooperative. And the question would be: Can we move beyond merely opposing the negative qualities to encouraging the positive ones with equal energy and vigor?

Here, I speculated, might be a model that could revolutionize world politics just as the discovery of the quanta has revolutionized physics. It would not be the first time that a new scientific paradigm had led to a new world-view that had altered everyone's thinking in profound ways and influenced the course of history.

Or maybe, I thought, as I inhaled the aroma of salt and kelp on the sea breeze and watched the sunlight glittering from the swells offshore, maybe I was just experiencing an Esalen high.

View of Pacific Ocean from the Esalen baths

Gilliam Does Quantum Reality: Part One

Harold Gilliam (1918 - 2016)

Harold Gilliam died this month (Dec 2016) at age 98. He was an eloquent writer on environmental issues and a popular columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Intending perhaps to explore the inner environment of the physical world, Gilliam attended a weekend workshop at Esalen Institute in the summer of 1985 given by myself and my friend and physics colleague Heinz Pagels, To commemorate Gilliam's death and the death of Pagels who died a few years later, I am reprinting a few week apart the two Sunday Chronicle columns that Gilliam wrote about his experience with us in Big Sur. Part Two is here. Fasten your seat belts for "Gilliam Does Quantum Reality: Part One"

THE WEIRD WORLD OF THE QUANTA

Harold Gilliam SF Chronicle Aug 18, 1985

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific -- and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise --

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

 -- John Keats

In the last 10 years physicists have learned

more about the universe than in previous

centuries -- they have seen a new picture of reality

requiring a conversion of our imaginations.

 -- Heinz Pagels

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory

has not understood it.

  -- Niels Bohr

Driving down the Big Sur coast to Esalen the other day, looking for some clues to the new picture of reality, I saw on roadside buildings, along several miles of Highway 1, big hand-lettered signs: THANK YOU, FIREFIGHTERS.

The reason for the expression of gratitude soon became evident.. The steep hillsides to the left of the road were charred for miles where the Rat Creek fire had raced down the slopes on a hot dry wind from the east, burning nearly everything in its path.

Esalen, on the ocean side of the highway, barely escaped. The burned hills behind us were screened by Esalen's trees, and we faced the ocean, but occasionally we caught the odor of the scorched earth of the Santa Lucia, and that pungent reminder of another reality became a symbol of the ambiguities in the amazing world of the quanta.

The weekend workshop had a formidable title: "Bell's Theorem and the Nature of Reality." Our leaders were Bay Area physicist Nick Herbert, author of the new book Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics and Heinz Pagels, executive director of the New York Academy of Sciences, author of The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature and Perfect Symmetry: the Search for the Beginning of Time.

With titles like these, we were expecting some tall talk, and we got it, interspersed with good-natured banter between the two physicists who were each convinced that on certain points the other was dead wrong.

In the mellowed-out ambience of Esalen, the 17 workshop participants sprawled on the carpeted living-room floor of the Big House, a former seaside residence, and contemplated the invisible microcosm of the quanta, which seems to turn our common-sense view of the world upside down, or maybe inside out.

The future results of such a revolutionary shift in viewpoint are unpredictable, but the phenomenon has happened before in world history. Nick Herbert reminded us the new view of the universe developed by Isaac Newton overturned the hierarchical medieval world view and pictured a world governed by law -- forming a philosophical basis for a society of laws rather than arbitrary leadership.

The Declaration of Independence: ("We hold these truths to be self-evident ---") cited natural law as the basis for democratic government. In the same way, quantum theory, we were told, seems likely to revolutionize our Newtonian-based views of the world -- and maybe also our technology, our economics, our politics, our entire culture.

Newton had described a clockwork universe ticking along in orderly, predictable fashion -- a gigantic machine governed by such laws as gravitation. "Quantum theory," Herbert told us in the Big House at Esalen, "has smashed Newton's clockwork."

What has replaced Newton's clockwork is a picture of reality that can't be grasped by conventional thinking. Listening to Herbert's description of some very weird interpretations of the quantum world, I began to feel that the theories must have come out of a bottle. Actually they came out of a microscope -- or rather out of certain complicated contraptions such as the cyclotron and the bevatron at the University of California at Berkeley, that serve as supermicroscopes peering into the curious world of the atom.

Quanta are simply particles that are atom-sized or smaller; quantum theory describes these particles and their attributes -- more or less. No one has ever seen an atom, of course, but scientists can detect what the atoms are doing and can smash them together to find out what they're made of. As the supermicroscopes improve, they keep finding smaller and smaller particles, like a series of Chinese boxes.

Physicists examining the workings of atoms were badly shaken up when the particles they found seemed to violate Newton's laws that had been accepted for 300 years as descriptions of how the world works.

Quantum Reality image by Todd Stock aka Dr Paradise

"One of the best kept secrets of science," Herbert told us, "is that physicists have lost their grip on reality." He proceeded to list eight different and partly conflicting versions of how physicists look at quantum reality, most of them utterly preposterous to the non-physicist. Consider these, for example:

# The Copenhagen interpretation was originated by the late Niels Bohr and his colleagues at the Copenhagen Institute. Outlandish as it seems, it is now the view of most mainstream theoretical physicists, Herbert explained. The world we see around us is real, but that world is made up of particles that are not real -- at least not as real as what we see.

As if statements like that were not mystifying enough, Herbert went on to point out that some Copenhagen physicists go further and say that even the world we see around us is not real until we observe it.

Sitting there on the floor of the Esalen living room, trying to adjust the big pillows to be more comfortable, I recalled the old riddle as to whether the tree that falls in the forest makes any sound if there's no one there to hear it. These Copenhagen theorists would say: "No, the tree makes no sound because it isn't really there. Nothing is there until somebody observes it."

In other words, reality is created by the observer. Is the reality of the universe a mirror of one's own mind?

A sobering notion, I reflected. Whatever it means. It could mean that we are not simply cogs in Newton's mechanical universe, but that we somehow participate in ongoing Creation. "Observer-created reality" implies that we have something to say about how the world is put together. Maybe.

"The universe," Sir James Jeans wrote as he contemplated quantum theory, "begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine."

Before I could absorb that one, Herbert was listing a further interpretation.

# Reality is an undivided wholeness. We are all part of the universal being. This viewpoint was expressed by Berkeley physicist Fritjof Capra a few years ago in The Tao of Physics, the book that first aroused popular interest in the interpretation of quantum theory. Capra found certain correlations between this quantum view of reality and the teachings of oriental mystics.

The book created flurries of excitement among mental telepathy enthusiasts, who maintained that physics had now proved the existence of what they had believed all along -- that a transcendental unity behind surface appearances included the interconnectedness of human minds with one another and perhaps with a universal mind.

Actually physics proved no such thing. Capra was simply calling attention to some interesting parallels between quantum theory and the intuitions of the mystics.

# The next quantum reality Herbert described for us was the most outrageous of all. It was the "many worlds" interpretation: In this view reality consists of a steadily increasing number of parallel universes.

Science fiction writers have fun with this one. In one universe you are sailing to Alpha Centauri in a space ship. Simultaneously, in another universe you are having chicken dinner with Henry VIII.

Or you toss a coin and it comes up heads, but in another universe on the same toss the same coin comes up tails. Everything that can happen does happen -- someplace, in some other universe.

I protested silently. It makes no sense, it's not logical. But at that moment Herbert started talking about quantum logic, which is totally different from traditional logic. Under the new logic, apparently, parallel universes make sense.

By this time I had been able to rearrange the pillows in a relatively comfortable position, and as I closed my eyes for a moment to contemplate quantum logic, the voices in the room began to merge with the soporific roar of the surf below, and my mind drifted off.

Instead of a quantum physicist talking to us, it was a fellow in a long robe. He was saying that although we can see the sun rising in the east and setting in the west on its daily trip around the Earth, we are suffering from an illusion. Things don't happen that way at all: the Earth is actually revolving around the sun.

What a preposterous notion, I thought. How could anybody believe in such nonsense? The man, who said his name was Copernicus, was obviously out of his mind.

Before I could tell him so, he was gone, and there was physicist Herbert at a blackboard showing us how Bell's Theorem worked. It turned out to be wilder than anything we had heard so far. And if you want to know what all this has to do with the price of a Big Mac or the national deficit or your latest telephone bill, join us here next Sunday.

The Big House: Esalen Institute

Bell's Theorem Blues

Irish physicist John Stewart Bell (1928-1990)

 During the month of November the Naughton Museum at Queen's College in Belfast, Ireland, is hosting events and exhibits related to one of their most famous alumni, Belfast-born physicist John Stewart Bell. The festival is entitled Action at a Distance: the Life and Legacy of John Stewart Bell. The director of the museum, Shan McAnena, contacted me for advice and as a possible exhibitor. Her exhibits were to be centered not around physics but on art inspired by John Bell's work. Shan was interested in me not for my books about quantum physics, nor for my published papers on Bell's theorem but for something I wrote long ago as a joke.

In my book Quantum Reality which describes attempts to conceptualize quantum theory in human understandable terms, I write a lot about John Bell and his famous theorem. During this book's progress I exchanged letters with this brilliant physicist and Bell even wrote a blurb for Quantum Reality (along with Heinz Pagels and Isaac Azimov). Finally at the end of the book I included a song that I wrote that summed up Bell's Theorem in a nutshell. This song Bell's Theorem Blues was what Shan McAnena wanted to include in the Queen's College tribute.

A bit about Bell's Theorem and why it is so extraordinary: Most accomplishments in physics are either about theory or experiment -- some new piece of mathematics that explains the facts or some new piece of machinery that permits us to measure those facts. Bell's Theorem however is neither about theory nor about experiment but about Reality Itself. It is very unusual to find a sane person that attempts to speak coherently about Reality Itself. But Bell not only spoke about Deep Reality, he actually MATHEMATICALLY PROVED something important about this invisible nature which lies beneath everyone of our theories and experiments. Bell's accomplishment is unique. I challenge you to find another human being in the history of human thought who has produced anything even close to what this astonishing Irishman has done.

And what was the physics community's response to Bell's remarkable achievement? His physics colleagues either ignored Bell's work (which was initially published exactly 50 years ago in a new and obscure short-lived little journal called Physics). Shortly after it was published, physicists either ignored Bell's Theorem-- or dismissed it entirely as "mere philosophy".

Fifty years later, the importance of Bell's Theorem is generally recognized and has inspired work in quantum computing, quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation and many aspects of physics that employ quantum entanglement. (Part of the story of Bell's Theorem's rise from obscurity to stardom is told in David Kaiser's book How the Hippies Saved Physics.)

So I wrote this song as a joke at the end of my book. In one of his last videoed physics lectures at CERN in 1990, organized by Antoine Suarez, Bell actually shows off the text of Bell's Theorem Blues to an audience of physicists. But Bell quickly adds  "I'm not going to sing it." Bell merely quotes it. In his Irish accent.

Boulder Creek Blues Trio: Galt, Bowers and Rush

The Belfast museum required a song, so I persuaded my favorite local musicians to perform this little bit of musical physics. One Sunday morning in October at pianist Jack Bowers's Santa Cruz, CA, studio, the Boulder Creek Blues Trio consisting of Joy Rush (vocal), Jack Bowers (piano) and George Galt (harmonica) transformed for the first time my words on paper into a musical quantum number. You can hear Bell's Theorem Blues here (full lyrics plus an audio file). Sheet music, an mp3 recording and a video of the recording session were shipped to the Naughton Museum in Belfast to be presented as "art inspired by Bell's Theorem". Here's the first verse of Bell's Theorem Blues:

Doctor Bell say we connected

He call me on the phone

Doctor Bell say united

He call me on the phone

But if we really together, baby,

How come I feel so all alone?

A young John Bell on his Ariel Motorcycle

Here's the BBC report on the Belfast celebration and here's an account of the honoring of John Bell by the Royal Irish Academy. Several researchers whose work was inspired by Bell's Theorem are giving public lectures at various Belfast venues. A motion to name a street in the Titanic quarter after Bell was denied by the city council because of their policy not to name streets after people. As a compromise the city fathers voted to name the street Bell's Theorem Crescent, possibly the only street in the world named after a mathematical theorem. The City of Belfast also designated Nov 4 as "John Bell Day" to commemorate that big day 50 years ago when John Bell published his famous proof which demonstrates that reality is non-local.

Belfast City Hall illuminated in rainbow colors to honor John Bell.

Tim Quantum Leary Reality

Timothy Leary: an Irishman who saved civilization?

Whenever I find a library book that someone has written in, my feelings are two-fold: first I am irate that some jerk has defaced a library book and second I am elated that a mere book had the power to elicit commentary. I am reminded of the Chinese attitude toward painted scrolls in which viewers sometimes add poems and commentaries of their own directly on the painting. These comments are executed with appropriately elegant calligraphy and signed with the viewer's red stamp. Thus the Chinese painting is not a static thing but grows in content as it passes thru the hands of its many owners.

When Bruce Damer told me that he owned a copy of my Quantum Reality book that had been annotated by psychedelic pioneer Tim Leary, I was immediately reminded of those Chinese scrolls whose owners were impelled to add their own calligraphy to somebody else's art. Bruce Damer, PhD, is the proprietor of a computer museum in Boulder Creek (called the DigiBarn) but as one of the executors of the Leary archives he also came into possession of a room full of materials that the New York Public Library decided not to include in their Tim Leary collection.

A page of Quantum Reality calligraphed by Tim Leary

So a few nights ago, over Ahlgren wine and gourmet food served by Bruce and his wife Galen, we examined the Tim Quantum Leary Reality scroll. Along with the expected underlinings were comments both of agreement and Tim's additions in his own handwriting which were sometimes printed and sometimes in script. One thing I noticed was the full-bodyness of his question marks (see above) -- Tim's questioning is not puny, but executed in big brush strokes.

In my Chapter 7, Describing the Indescribable: The Quantum Interpretation Question, Tim approved of my epigraph quoting him thus: "They are not smooth-surfaced, rectangular or carbon-ringed units which fit together like bricks. Each molecule is a heavenly octopus with a million floating jeweled tentacles hungry to merge." Hungry to merge indeed -- and equipped with a brand-new kind of entanglement that continues to baffle our Newtonian imaginations.

And to my citation of physicist Bryce DeWitt's feelings when first encountering the mind-boggling grandeur of the multi-universe model of reality, Tim adds, in big-block letters: PSYCHEDELIC.

Right at the beginning, Tim challenges my claim that physicists do not possess a single clear picture of the reality that supports the most successful theory of nature that humans have ever devised. Leary scrawls "Fredkin" across the first page and in other places, to suggest that perhaps the universe deep down resembles a cellular automaton (digital physics) as proposed by MIT's Ed Fredkin. This is not the place to argue such issues but this challenge shows that Tim is not passively ingesting this new material but actively engages it.

Bruce pointed out that Leary seemed to have read (and annotated) many books in Bruce's collection but in none of them (besides my own) did he seem to have read so far and to have annotated so profusely. "A high honor, Nick. Tim might have actually read your book from cover to cover. Perhaps even in an altered state."

It is important to realized that in addition to all the drugs he took, Tim was first and foremost a writer with more than 20 books to his credit. Not only did he have the courage (no timid academic he) to repeatedly explore these altered states, but he possessed the discipline and skill to attempt to describe and model them in words. My favorite Leary book is not his celebrated trip guide modeled after the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but his book High Priest describing 16 of his own altered-state explorations, and his Psychedelic Prayers in which Tim tries his hand at interpreting Lao Tzu's classic Tao Te Ching.

By far the best of Tim's annotations to the Quantum Reality scroll relates to his alleged role as a womanizer. Next to the name of a famous European scientist, whom I will not identify, Leary appends this comment (in his highly legible script): "His cute daughter, [name redacted] worked for and flirted with me -- the proposal a 'cinq a sept' in 1951.

Yes, I had to look up 'cinq a sept' -- a most elegant inscription for the Tim Quantum Leary Reality scroll and perfectly apt to my quantum tantra quest.

Nick Herbert peruses the Tim Quantum Leary Reality scroll

My Dinner with John and Mary Bell

Dinner Party chez Pierre and Mary Noyes: March 1988

In his best-selling book How the Hippies Saved Physics, MIT professor David Kaiser describes how the members of an informal, outside-the-mainstream research group in Berkeley (Elizabeth Rauscher's Fundamental Fyziks Group) were able to make significant advances in a then-unfashionable field (quantum foundations) which has since become a respectable and flourishing part of physics.

However, Kaiser failed to mention that along with Berkeley's FFG, a like-minded group at Stanford (ANPA West, founded by Stanford professor Pierre Noyes), was also enthusiastically exploring the once disreputable field of quantum foundations. ANPA (an acronym for Alternative Natural Philosophy Association) was organized by Cambridge physicist Ted Bastin and his friends. The "bible" of ANPA was a collection of essays edited by Bastin Quantum Theory and Beyond which featured papers by David Bohm, Yakir Aharonov, Geoffrey Chew as well as lesser-known quantum-edge explorers). ANPA East was centered in Cambridge while its Western focus was Pierre's group at Stanford.

ANPA West meetings took place mainly in buildings in and around Stanford with an occasional trip into the redwoods to David McGoveran's house in Boulder Creek. The main focus of ANPA West was "bit-string physics"-- the world viewed as a computer program -- and attempting to calculate the value of fundamental constants via a technique called "combinatorial hierarchy". But a glance at the ANPA West Journal (a kitchen-table-top production by Tom Etter and Suzanne Bristol) shows that ANPA West members were also interested in other foundational topics including new quantum logics and Bell's Theorem. [Computer graphics wizard Dick Shoup has scanned and posted all these journals here.]

Physicist Henry Stapp (a prominent FFG member) has called Bell's Theorem "the most profound discovery in science". But despite its alleged profundity, this theorem was dismissed by the majority of physicists as "mere philosophy" and research into its implications was considered to be a "career breaker". For instance, John Clauser's advisor warned him, in effect, that he would never achieve an academic physics position if he persisted in doing a Bell's theorem experiment regarded at the time as an exercise in "mere philosophy".

Clauser's advisor was right -- John never did get an academic post -- but when Bell's theorem finally became fashionable in wider venues than Big Sur's Esalen Institute, Stanford's ANPA West and Berkeley's Fundamental Fyziks Group, John Clauser's trail-blazing work was belatedly recognized with one of the physics profession's highest honors.

Although I had corresponded with John Bell at CERN while writing Quantum Reality, I had never met the author of "the most profound discovery in science". I had one chance to meet Bell in 1982 when Saul-Paul Sirag and I invited him to Esalen Institute in Big Sur to receive (along with John Clauser), The Reality Prize, funded by Charles Brandon, one of the founders of FEDEX. It pleases me no end that of all the awards John Bell has since received (including a Nobel Prize nomination shortly before his untimely death in 1990 at age 62) our Esalen Reality Prize was the very first to publicly honor this extraordinary man. John Bell, however, did not come to Big Sur but instead sent a colleague, Bernard D'Espagnat, to accept the Reality Prize.

John Stewart Bell was my hero. I had spent a lot of time reading his papers, arguing with colleagues about his work and even developing my own bare-bones, stripped-down version of Bell's famous theorem. So you can imagine my delight when Pierre Noyes invited me to his home in the Stanford foothills for a seminar by John Bell and a few days later to a dinner party with John and his wife Mary Ross Bell, also a physicist. (This was in March 1988, only a few years before Bell's death.)

I recall very few details of that dinner in '88, except that for me it felt like sitting in an extra chair at Jesus's Last Supper. In John Bell's presence, I felt that close to holiness. One of the most charming aspects of John and Mary Bell was their Irish accents which lent a particular sparkle to their speech. Both John and Mary were brilliant, witty and entertaining. Our table talk was further enhanced by many many glasses of fine wine produced by Pierre's son David (proprietor of David Noyes Wines in Sonoma). Thank you, Pierre and Mary Noyes, for greatly enriching Nick and Betsy Herbert's lives.

Here's my favorite Bell story from those meetings. It took place in Pierre's living room in Bell's seminar a few days before the luminous dinner. In front of the black board, John Bell was arguing a particular point when a Stanford physicist loudly objected:

"But how can that be, John? Isn't such-and-such true?"

To which Bell replied (and you've got to imagine this delivered in a sparkling Irish accent):

"So ye believe such-and-such, do ye? Well. in three minutes, I'll have ye believin' the opposite."

And then, in less than three minutes,  John Bell proceeded to make good his boast.

Letter to St. Charles

St. Charles Borromeo (1538 - 1584), Bishop of Milan

To Louis Fabro, Director of Alumni Affairs, St. Charles Borromeo Preparatory School, Columbus, Ohio.

As a 1954 St. Charles Borromeo alumnus who moved to California in the 60s, I have been enjoying reading in your newsletters about the changes taking place at my old high school.  After all the new construction, I'm sure I would not recognize the place. A lot of changes have occurred in 60 years including the new pedestrian bridge across Alum Creek near the site of the Mary Grotto where some of us--not me--would sneak behind to smoke cigarettes. Is there still a seminary on the grounds where boarding-school students would steal beer from the novitiate's refrigerators? I remember assisting as an altar boy at morning mass in the chapel when I came early to school. And being castigated by Monsignor Galen in math class which was not so unusual: Msgr. Galen's standards were high and few of us escaped this brilliant man's good-natured criticism.


Responding to your request for material for your Alumni News, here's what's been happening to Nick.

After graduating from St. Charles, I got a BA in physics from Ohio State and a PhD in Physics from Stanford.

I held various jobs in industry during the 60s and 70s, then dropped out of the mainstream to home school my son Khola and do physics at home--a decision which introduced me to many other independent researchers working at the edges of conventional science. During this time I wrote three books, the best-selling Quantum Reality, still in print and ebook, Faster Than Light, and Elemental Mind, a book about consciousness. In the late 70s, I was invited to teach and lead seminars at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA on the implications of Bell's Theorem, a new mathematical proof by Irish physicist John Stewart Bell, concerned not merely with experiments, nor with theories but with "reality itself". Two of my achievements in this area were the shortest proof of Bell's theorem and a thought experiment (called FLASH) which led directly to the discovery of the quantum No-Cloning Rule, a fundamental fact of nature that sets limits on the behavior of quantum computers. My work was recently publicized in MIT professor David Kaiser's popular book How the Hippies Saved Physics and in Supernature, a soon-to-be-released feature-length film by Jeffrey Kripal and Scott Hulan Jones dramatizing the 50-year history of Esalen Institute. I live in Boulder Creek, CA with my cat Onyx, work out twice a week, have published two books of quantum-erotic poetry and am learning to play the Irish whistle. Not such a bad life for a boy both of whose grandfathers were immigrants from the Ukraine who worked as coal miners in South-eastern Ohio. See what a difference a St Charles education can make!

Nick Herbert, St Charles Borromeo, Class of 1954

Quantum Theology

The Holy Trinity: Three Persons in One God

The early Catholic church taught that there were two paths to discovering the Nature of God--Revelation and the study of nature. Revelation includes the teachings of the church itself which include such mysteries as the Holy Trinity--the notion that God (Deus) was one being consisting of three separate Persons: Father (Pater), Son (Filius) and Holy Spirit (Spiritus). The figure above, which appears in most Catholic catechisms, declares that the Father is not (non est) the Son, and the Son is not (non est) the Spirit. But both the Son and the Father are (est) God. Various analogies have been used to illustrate this Mystery, from the union of three candle flames to Saint Patrick holding up a shamrock. When I went to school I was told that the Trinity was a mystery no human could understand-- an intellectual tactic similar to the popular "shut up and calculate" "explanation" of Quantum Reality.

Revelation also includes the direct experience of God by individual mystics. But this Path was not encouraged by the Church both because it threatened the Church's teaching monopoly and because such personal revelations could be contaminated by human frailties and desires. Although I spent four years studying theology and other topics at a Catholic prep school, we never once discussed the revelations of any mystic. However in the St Charles Borromeo library I discovered the classic mystical text "Dark Night of the Soul" by St John of the Cross. After reading this book cover to cover, I decided that if this was what it meant to be a mystic, then mysticism was not for Nick. Much later in life I experimented with psychedelics--following Blessed Terence McKenna's dictum: "Now even bad people can see God."--and directly experienced many of the paradoxes of consciousness that up till then I had only read about. Not only are the mysteries of Body, Mind and God intellectually complex, I concluded, they are often flat-out terrifying.

The second Path to God is through the study of the world. If God indeed created everything like an artist creates a painting, song or sculpture, then one might hope to learn about the psychology of the artist by looking as deeply as possible at the details of that artist's work--an endeavor called Natural Theology. Albert Einstein when he said: "I am not interested in this phenomenon or that phenomenon. I want to know God's thoughts--the rest are mere details." was speaking as a Natural Theologian.

Today the practice of Natural Theology has taken a peculiar turn. Physicists have discovered the Secret of the Universe. We now possess the equations that accurately predict the results of every phenomenon we are able to observe in the laboratory--equations that are only beginning to change our world through classically-impossible new technologies such as lasers and computer chips. The Secret of the Universe is called Quantum Theory which gives us unprecedented control of the Quantum Facts. However the price physicists pay for this triumph is steep--we must give up Quantum Reality. We are no longer able to tell a plausible story about WHAT IS HAPPENING when a Quantum Fact appears. And the world we see is made of nothing but Quantum Facts. Werner Heisenberg expressed this awkward situation thus: "Our conception of the objective reality of elementary particles has evaporated in a curious way--not into the fog of some new, obscure or not yet understood reality concept but into the transparent clarity of a new mathematics."

When I was eight years old, I was initiated into another way to experience God--by taking Him directly into my body--by swallowing at Mass a piece of bread whose "substance" had been changed by the words of the priest into the substance of God. This Church explained this miracle in terms of a Medieval physics in which all matter consists of an invisible "substance" to which are attached visible and palpable "accidents"--accidents such as "white, thin, two inches around, etc". When the priest says his magic words the bread's accidents remain the same but the bread's invisible substance is changed into the substance of God--hence the term "transubstantiation" that refers to the physics of the Eucharist.

Priest in Philadelphia turning bread into the Body of God

What an odd concept, that God might not dwell in a far-away heaven, but might take residence in a piece of bread. And bending the doctrine a bit, God might not just invisibly inhabit the substance of the consecrated Host, but the substance of all matter, however lowly. God, or some aspect of God, might be invisibly present beneath everything. God, or some foretaste of God, might be teasing us by appearing to physicists as Quantum Reality.


If it's God who's running the quantum theater, He/She certainly behaves like a showoff. Almost every sort of contradiction we can think of, God (or nature) effortlessly combines without anything exploding. The quantum world is both analog and digital, both fully deterministic and utterly random, combines both wave and particle in a single phenomenon. And lately God's showing off Her chops in the hot new arena of quantum entanglement. If you're keen to explore the quantum entanglement chapter of Natural Theology, then get thee to a modern optics lab.

Quantum optics experiment: Can the bizarre behavior of light reveal the hidden nature of God?

One of the most beautiful examples of quantum entanglement is the GHZ experiment--named after three physicists, Goldberger, Horne and Zeilinger. In the GHZ setup three photons A, B, and C are emitted from a common source (labeled GHZ in the picture below). These photons travel in three different directions (oriented somewhat like a Mercedes symbol) to three distant lab stations where Alice, Bob and Charlie are prepared to measure the spin direction of their particular A, B or C photon. This being quantum mechanics, Alice cannot just "measure" the pre-existing spin of her A photon. Alice must chose a direction and the photon will respond with spin pointing entirely along that direction ("spin-up") or entirely opposite that direction ("spin-down"). Although before being measured, Alice's photon could have pointed in any direction on a sphere (an analog quantity), Alice's action forces that photon to make a digital choice. The Quantum Reality dilemma consists of the fact that although we can perfectly predict the results of the GHZ experiment, we are unable to formulate a plausible story about WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING at Alice's photon detector. We are equally ignorant about WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING at all photon detectors anywhere in the Universe including the photon detectors in your eyes that make it possible for you to read this page.

A photon is said to be in a spin "eigenstate" if there is a direction Alice can choose where that photon will register spin-up 100% of the time. When a photon is in a eigenstate, it makes sense to say that photon A is spinning in a definite direction. It is easy to put photons in spin eigenstates. A pair of polarized sunglasses can do the job.

However the three GHZ photons are not produced in eigenstates but in a state of spin entanglement. "Quantum Entanglement" is impossible to describe in classical terms. The three GHZ photon no longer possess the property "spin" on their own. The only entity that possesses a definite spin is the entire three-photon system all at once. Thus photon A is "not spinning", photon B is "not spinning",
photon C is "not spinning". But the system as a whole has a definite spin. The GHZ arrangement bears a vague resemblance to the mystery of the Holy Trinity--it's completely incomprehensible to the human mind, what nature is doing with these three photons. However the GHZ mystery differs from the mystery of the Trinity in that the GHZ mystery is not just words in a book--it's the sort of thing that ordinary light does every day. Today's physicists are only at the beginning of our exploration of Quantum Reality. Likewise today's natural theologians have only begun to appreciate the handiwork of the Universe's inhumanly eccentric artist.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, our knowledge of matter is deep and sophisticated--our knowledge of mind and of God shallow and primitive. When experiments and theories about mind, when experiments and theories about God begin to match the sophistication of our experiments and theories about matter, only then will we be able to enjoy the fruits of a true quantum theology.

QUANTUM THEOLOGY

Protestant, Catholic, Muslim and Jew,
Bacterium, bobcat, skunk, kangaroo,
Photon, electron, spins even and odd
Is what lies under this the Substance of God?

Most old-fashioned concepts of God 
were not so astute--
Story-book Yahwehs and Wotans 
for Richard Dawkins to refute.
Now science has shown us that Nature deep down
Turns human ideas of reason and logic around.

If Quantum Reality gives us glimpse of Divine
Then Her everyday acts defy human design.
Each quantum event in the Universe grand
Hides a magnificent miracle we don't understand.

Holy Trinity is kid's play compared to GHZ
A common ho-hum triple-photon mystery.
If Nature works marvels in stuff deaf and blind
How is She handling the Mystery of Mind?

Perhaps God's not a Goon who holds all the Aces
But a mystery inside our most intimate places.
Maybe Her Mind & yours are as close as a shave
Mad, goofy-entangled--like particle/wave.

The GHZ experiment: Three photons in one entanglement