Quantum Mechanics for Beginners

Quantum Mechanics for Beginners

[00:45] The Quest for Quarks

Jai Guru Deva. Thank you for listening to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knoles. and today I’d like to talk to you a little bit about quantum mechanics, which is a more detailed and applied science that comes from the broader study of quantum field theory, and to help people who are new to this, get an understanding of it.

And to help me, I have sitting here on my lap, a book entitled The Quest for Quarks. Q-U-A-R-K-S. Quarks. And we’ll describe quarks in a few moments.

Cambridge University Press, author, Professor Brian McCusker, Professor of Physics Cambridge University Press, at the University of Sydney as he was at the time this book was written and one of the foremost influencers of yours truly. Professor McCusker was a meditation student of mine, and I was a quantum-field theory and quantum mechanics student of his, not in a formal sense as a university student, but, better than that, I considered him to be a personal mentor on the subject of physics.

And having attended many times as an invitee, Professor McCusker’s opening class for a given year of first-year students at the University of Sydney, Australia, in the subject of physics, professor McCusker would hold forth with his rather introductory lecture…

“You might be wondering,” he would say. “what it is as physicists you’re going to end up understanding, what you’re going to end up learning about.”

“I’m sure you think,” he would say, “that you’ll understand, for example, what are the forces that cause billiard balls to bounce off of each other in particular directions, at what trajectory, what momentum, depending on what the billiard ball is made of, at what elevation on the earth’s surface the collision takes place and so on, so on, so on.”

And, he said, when he was first a physics professor, in his very early days, that he would very often give his students an experiment. It involved a very simple pulley device that was purely hypothetical. Nobody had a pulley in front of them. It was simply described to them.

A string went through the pulley, and on one end was an open string that you would pull down over this wheel, the pulley, and at the other end of the string, some kind of a weight that weighed x, whatever x represented, 10 kilos or something.

And he would, having given them all the means whereby they could arrive at a calculation, would say to them, “What level of force pulling down on the string would be required to lift the, let’s say, lead weight of 10 kilos on the other end of the string? Alright, let me hear your calculations and then hands up.”

[04:33] Ignore That

And some student would say, “Professor McCusker, please tell me, what is the 10 kilogram weight comprised of? Is it lead? Is it steel? Is it jello? Is it a bag of powder? What is it?”

And McCusker’s answer to this, typically, as he described it, would be, “Ignore that.”

Then somebody might say, “And what is the string that we’re using to pull this 10 kilos up by the pulley? What is the string comprised of? Is it jute? Is it linen? Is it poly? Is it plastic? Is it wire? What is it?”

To which he would reply, “Ignore that. Just give me how much force is going to be required.”

Then some smart student might say, “Professor, when was the last time the pulley had its wheel, where it connects with its device that holds it up? When was it last lubricated? And with what was it lubricated? Was it lubricated with very fine oil, with machine oil, with sewing machine oil, or with graphite, or anything at all?”

To which he would say, “Ignore that.”

And then somebody would say, “At what elevation is the mechanism? Because the draw weight, the draw power on the open end of the string, pulling up the 10 kilos weight on the other end, is going to be different depending on the gravitation that’s occurring at different levels of elevation. So are we at below sea level in a desert area like Death Valley in California, or are we on top of Everest, at nearly 30,000 feet elevation, in Nepal?”

To which the professor would say, “Ignore that.” And then he said he began to realize that what he was teaching was ignorance.

“Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.” and he said this really hit him one day, and he realized that instead of teaching ignorance, ignoring, systematized ignoring, he needed to actually teach physics. And to actually teach physics, we have to ask, and have answers to, every single question that could possibly apply in a given formula, in a given way of understanding the world and its mechanics.

[07:28] The Ultimate Discovery of Physics

And for that, he began to realize that what he was teaching in physics was actually simply a lead-up to him teaching the ultimate thing in physics, which is this: “You might wonder,” he said, “what will be your understanding at the end of your course of training with me in physics and getting your bachelor’s degree? I aim to teach you the ultimate discovery of physics, and that is this: that we can demonstrate, using laboratory science, that there are not as many as two things in the universe.

“There are not as many as two. There’s less than two, there’s only one. There is one indivisible, whole field. That one indivisible, whole field appears to be many things, but in fact, is only one thing. It appears to be many, but it is only one.”

We’ve said that that field is one, indivisible and whole, but now we have to add another property to it. One, indivisible, whole and conscious. Well, that might seem so surprising to you, but we’ve just said that we can demonstrate, and have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt thousands of times, that when we look into the finest level of the universe, we discover that there’s actually only one thing.

We’ve said that already. That means that all apparent forms and phenomena, all things, actually are properties of this one thing. Because there aren’t two things, there’s only one.

[09:30] Consciousness in Physics

“Consciousness exists. Presumably, you are conscious,” he said to the student body of 350 people sitting in the lecture theater. “Presumably, you’re conscious to some extent, and I am conscious, so, I think. You are conscious, and I am conscious. A sunflower following the sun across the sky, using phototropism, is demonstrating that it is conscious. Consciousness evidently exists in the form of predictable responses to stimuli.

“Consciousness exists. Since consciousness exists and there is only one thing, we have to conclude that consciousness is one of the properties of the one indivisible wholeness.

“And so, what does this mean? I know what you’re going to say next: ‘Oh, but we learned in high school that everything’s made of atoms.’

“And yes, atoms are made of nuclei, the nucleus of the atom, and then all of the electrons swirling around the nucleus of the atom at dizzying speeds. If we break down the nucleus, it’s made of protons and neutrons combined, some protons, some neutrons, depending on the atom.. If we go deeper into the protons and neutrons, we will discover sub-nuclear particles, and we call these things quarks. There are other names, but there’s a broad category, quarks. If we look at what makes the quark, we find something surprising. It’s not a particle.”

[11:28] There Are No Particles

And he said, “The ultimate discovery of physics is this, that there are no particles. The particles are an appearance that come into being when you attempt to measure whether or not they exist. When you’re not in the process of attempting to measure whether or not the particles exist, the particles do not exist. What exists is a probability function.”

Now, that’s a fancy word for there being the one indivisible wholeness, which only becomes particulate when someone, a consciousness, is looking for it. When you’re not looking for it, it can be demonstrated in lab science that what exists is the one indivisible, whole unmanifest field.

The one indivisible, whole unmanifest field is the reality until someone is expecting otherwise by attempting to measure it. In other words, what brings the tiniest particles into existence, and therefore the whole universe into existence, is the expectation of the observer. Now, this is not what is taught in classical physics.

[13:01] Questioning Assumptions

And so I’m going to read to you some excerpts from Professor McCusker’s excellent book, which I highly recommend, and hopefully inquiries for this book will be so many that you’ll end up having to go to eBay or some place to find your copy instead of at the University of Cambridge Press.

“These assumptions, at least one of these assumptions, has to be wrong. The first assumption is observed phenomena are caused by some physical reality whose existence is independent of observation. Sometimes this is called the assumption of realism. Roughly, it means that if you are alone in a room with a table, and shut your eyes, the table does not disappear. (But who is to know if it did disappear?)

“The second set of assumptions: Two. Often called the assumption of induction, this says that inductive inference is a valid mode of reasoning and can be used to draw legitimate conclusions from consistent observations. It has been impossible to prove logically that this is so, but most of science is based on this idea.

 “Three. This is called separability or locality, and it says that action at a distance does not occur, and that no influences propagate faster than light.

 “If we drop any of these assumptions, we destroy the 19th-century “scientific” materialist view of the universe.”

Now, essentially, what this McCusker, and indeed anyone who is an expounder of the subject of quantum mechanics, has to deal with is that our usual notion that there is a world out there made of things that exist independently of an observer.

This idea has been completely misplaced, destroyed by the discoveries of the quantum field, the discoveries of the one indivisible, whole consciousness field that it is fact, being able to be shown, through laboratory science, to be the basis of not only all things but also of you the observer.

[15:50] You Live in a Universe that is a Response to Your Expectation

And so, if we want to arrive at the ultimate conclusion that should be drawn from quantum mechanics, and I have to add at this juncture that quantum mechanics, as it stands today, is by far, by many factors, the most successful theory of modern science.

It can predict the appearance of a form or phenomenon with the accuracy of nine decimal places. It can predict the locality and appearance to an equal number of multiple zeros after the dot, .0000009% probability of where the thing will appear and when it will appear.

There’s no other tool of modern science that comes anywhere close, not anywhere close, to quantum mechanics capability for predicting the appearance of objects, when, and where. And yet, quantum mechanics does ask of you to buy the idea that you, the Knower of all of this, are one with the Known. The one indivisible, whole consciousness field has to be you too.

You see, the idea is, it is omnipresent, and it can’t be omnipresent without also being you. And so anything, any idea that you hold, any idea that you cherish, that you, the Knower, are separate from and independent from the things around you, or even the idea that you, the Knower, are separate from, or independent from, the Unified Field itself, is a mistaken idea. It’s an idea that doesn’t match laboratory science.

You are not an independent observer of independent objects. The Knower, the process of gaining knowledge, and the Known are all one thing. And we’re going to call that, using Vedic terminology, the Self. You live in a universe that is a response to your expectation.

This is an important takeaway from quantum mechanics and will help us begin the process of a bigger understanding. People like Professor McCusker are very impressed by the fact that they, the scientists of the modern era—quantum mechanics is about a hundred years old as of this date—but, this modern era of science, which has been forced to embrace the truths of quantum mechanics because of its accuracy, because of its success as a physics theory, are not the first to have arrived at these conclusions.

[19:15] The Aristotelian Demand

Because people who train in physics frequently, at university, are also required to train in other disciplines, notably ancient philosophy. One of these ancient philosophies may well have been the ancient philosophy of India, known as Vedanta, V-E-D-A-N-T-A, Veda Anta. The final conclusion, the Anta, of the Veda, the final conclusion of Vedic knowledge, which is there’s only one thing and you are it. There’s only one indivisible, whole consciousness field, and all matter, all forms, all phenomena are made of It, and It also is you, the Knower.

And so then what do we do with all this? Where does this lead us? It leads us to the necessity for satisfying what I refer to as the Aristotelian demand. Aristotle was very aware of the Vedanta philosophy and himself embraced it, as evinced in so many of his teachings. Aristotle was a member of the duo of Plato and Aristotle, both of whom had Socrates as their guru, the famous Socrates of ancient Greece.

Aristotle placed a demand on education as needing to satisfy what I call the Aristotelian demand, the demand of Aristotle, which is the demand for a first science. Before studying anything else, before learning anything else, one has to learn about the true nature of the Knower, the true nature of Self, the true nature of the experiencer.

Rather than diving straight into questions about, and giving answers upon, the Known, the play and display of objects around you, and the forces that unite them or govern them, one must first satisfy the first science, which is knowledge of the Self, knowledge of the Knower, the Aristotelian demand for the first science.

So these ideas have been around for many, many ages, but today we’ve been able to turn quantum mechanics to our great advantage into things like laser production, computer technology, and so on. The modern era, including all of artificial intelligence, is 100 percent reliant upon the gifts that have been brought to us by quantum mechanics.

And so quantum mechanics is there, but it’s not just a mechanistic way of getting things done. Quantum mechanics reveals to us the true and ultimate nature of the world in which we live. The world of there being actually only one indivisible, whole thing, and you are it. This is the fundamental idea that is delivered by the best of modern science, and the best of Vedic science.

Jai Guru Deva.