Quantum Living - So What?

Let's talk about the Big Bang, the event that becomes apparent when you project the movement in the universe backward to its origin.

Half a century ago, astronomers noted that the material of the universe was moving apart. Not only that, but those things furthest away were moving the fastest. Since the speed of light has been shown to be an upper limit for things to travel, it meant that things further away have been traveling longer, and the light we see from them took longer to reach us. Many expensive experiments were done to measure and test these things.

So what?

The movement shows that something started things moving outward. This THING is called the Big Bang - the event at the beginning of the universe we live in. This is the "Let There be Light" moment and beyond it, the Cause of it, is the subject for Religion and not Science. On this side of, we can use Science to track what occurred. As to WHY anything occurred, back we go to Religion. See how nicely they work together?

In the Beginning, there was not only an unknown impetus that started us all up, but Science mainly agrees that it is unknowable. Religion calls it God, but Science has to stick to what it can prove. Those are its rules.

Immediately AFTER the beginning, the universe was smaller than a beach ball (still being argued) and from the temperature of things today, the temperature back then can be estimated. It was so hot that not only could matter not exist, but the particles that make up matter couldn't exist, either. The 'ball' was pure energy, but as it expanded and cooled, the building blocks of matter began to condense out. As further cooling took place, eventually matter formed as simple hydrogen and some helium. These swirled together into the first stars, etc. Enough about that process - for now.

Let's get back to quantum science.

It had been theorized that any two quantum particles which have been associated with one another will retain an association no matter how far apart they move. This is called 'quantum entanglement', and of course it was called a silly idea - until experiments were designed which prove that entanglement takes place. Entanglement means when you change the properties of one such particle (say its spin), the other particle has to change to keep the original spin relationship equivalent- no matter how far away the particles are! Turns out it works - just as the mathematics had predicted for some time.

Since ALL matter in the universe emerged from a single ball of energy (no one is quite sure how small) then everything could be assumed to be subject to entanglement with everything else. In other words, the universe was, and still is, a single interdependent system. This is likely stretching the theory a bit, but it makes sense to me.

Here is where science meets religion, because religions (some of them, anyway) have been saying something like this for centuries.

There is only ONENESS.
("Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is ONE") Mark 12:29

I believe that the essence of religious teaching is that there are dual thought systems, dual paradigms, two fundamental modes of conscious awareness (There are actually more, but these two are enough for most of us, for now.)

One mode of awareness is the understanding that all things are one. Most of us have this in the form of a suppressed, subconscious understanding. I am not referring to a cold intellectual appreciation of the interconnectedness of things, I am talking about a gut-level awareness, a feeling-level knowing that informs our every action. Jesus taught this when he said, "What you do unto the least of these (others), you do unto me."

The other mode of awareness is what we consider normal. We identify ourselves, and all things, as separate, apart in space, or in time. We live in a world of THINGS - of him, her, and it. We then may feel alone and isolated in dealing with the complexity of the world. Of course life is complex when we have to navigate through a million separate things and people every day!

Our common mode of awareness- of separation- is referred to in the book of Genesis. When we ate of the fruit (tasted the results) of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we shifted into a mode of judgment, separating things and labeling them, some good, some evil. We divided creation into camps, and we created our sense of separation. By rejecting what we judged as evil, we set ourselves apart.

A tree as a metaphor is an idea rooted deeply in the material world, but reaching upward toward the spiritual realm. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil refers to an idea that is rooted in materialism, but affecting us spiritually. The serpent is a symbol for our emotions, which are tightly coupled to our physical body (as the snake has no legs). Emotion is driven by chemical changes in our endocrine/glandular system, and carried chemical to every part of the body.

When we judge others and not their actions as evil, we reinforce our separation from others. Actions can be changed, but the labels tend to stick. Instead of healing evil, we thrust it away from us. You can't heal what you don't acknowledge - right, Dr. Phil?

Many of the world's religions aim at healing our sense of separation. They take different paths to do so, and people must choose what fits. The Christian message of atonement is AT-ONE-MENT, realizing the oneness of all. The Buddhist message of detachment is detaching from the world of THINGS, in effect separating from the separation!

There is only one reality - whatever that is; but there are several ways to look at it, and experience it. The Garden of Eden story is a story of breaking away from our sense of Oneness, which in early man was likely intuitive or instinctive. We became human by gaining our conscious awareness, which led us to a sense of isolation and separation - a life of difficulty outside of Paradise. Now maybe we are ready for the next step, to regain our realization of Oneness, but at a conscious level.

One reality - both science and religion are trying to uncover it, from two paradigms of thought. We must eventually combine the insights from both, if we are to progress as a species, or as spiritual beings.