QM and consciousness

The founders of quantum mechanics knew there was something funny about its relation to consciousness. It seems that lesson has been lost through the decades, with many modern researchers believing that approaches like decoherence have solved the problem. They'll tell you that the idea that there's any relationship between consciousness and QM is just flapdoodle. But it's far from solved; we've just kicked the can down the road to ever-more esoteric ideas. If you don't believe me, here's the world's greatest physicist agreeing.

Why is there so much debate about the correct interpretation or formulation of QM? It's not just arcane maths. It centers around the measurement problem: why do we see only one result out of the sea of possibilities QM predicts?

This question is all too easy to conflate with a much more straightforward one: why does a spread-out wave function suddenly become localized (particle-like) when it interacts with measuring devices and/or the environment? For example, why does a light wave stop showing interference when a detector is placed at the two slits?

Well, when a particle encounters a measuring device, the device effectively works by becoming entangled with the particle. If it's a tiny measuring device (e.g., another single particle whose spin is made to match that of the first -- hence "measuring" it) the math is very straightforward, and clearly shows that the first particle won't exhibit "interference." Yet it also predicts that we can perform an interference experiment on the pair of particles. So the quantum-ness isn't gone; it can be found in the larger system, but requires that we are in careful control of all the involved particles.

So does the quantum-ness ever really disappear? Well, as our technology improves and we're able to do bigger and bigger (but still tiny) experiments, things keep looking quantum. But in a truly macroscopic system (such as one that includes an experimenter's body and brain) it is almost unthinkable to have control over all the relevant degrees of freedom that we'd need to confirm it. This is called "decoherence," and it's explained by roughly the same math before, showing that a system should "look quantum" as a whole if we could control everything, but we can't, and so we don't.

So is that it? Problem solved.

If you were following along, you might have noticed the sleight of hand I pulled on you. This whole thing is about measuring a particle. There could have been more than one outcome of that measurement. Everything I've told you so far is about why there's no interference between those outcomes, and nothing about why there's just one result instead of two (or many, depending on what property is being measured).

Here's where the different formulations collide. The orthodox ("Copenhagen") interpretation is that probably somewhere in that ill-defined micro-to-macro transition something magic happened and two became one. A genuine collapse, with each of the outcomes happening with 50% probability. And how could you disprove it? To show that there are still two, you need to do something like an interference experiment, and we already saw you can't at that scale. The system would be decoherent, and while there would still be two possibilities, each would behave basically like a collapsed result. So no experiment today can tell apart whether it collapsed or merely decohered.

This second approach can be extended such that a collapse never happens. Instead, every time there's more than one thing that can happen, the universe splits so that all the things happen. You know, each in its own parallel universe (this is called the Many Worlds Interpretation, or MWI). This neatly sidesteps the question of why we only see one outcome: we don't; we see all of them (in different universes).

Maybe that tickles your fancy, or maybe you'd rather retreat to the safe confines of Copenhagen, but in either case you've really cheated yourself.

Do you remember what question we were trying to answer? It was the measurement problem: why do we see only one outcome instead of many? Even if you have an answer ("we don't!"), it should make you think: why are we asking such a funny question? The easy answer is that we're wired to think primitively but I want you to look closer.

The reason we're asking this question is because the math predicted multiple results but we're seeing only one. We are experiencing only one world. If your solution to this conundrum is "you only think you're seeing one; that's just a trick," then I suspect I know your answer to the question: is consciousness a trick of the brain? Obviously the questions "are you really experiencing one world?" and "are you really experiencing something" are intimately related.

The reason the measurement problem won't go away is that it's intimately tied to the question of whether you "actually experience" anything.

What's the problem with just answering "yes?" Well, the math is supposed to describe everything that's happening. There's nothing there that could account for this strange idea that some real, external thing called "consciousness" somehow swoops into the equations at random points (human brains) and gives an "inside view."

Moreover, consider what things look like from the view of any embodied consciousness in this multiverse (if MWI is true): from his perspective, the rest of the world -- including other people -- obeys the "branching" laws of physics, but from his perspective it gets reduced to one. In other words, he's all alone with this magical power. Are the other people even conscious?

We can't have any of that.

But the problem is that you do really experience something. Pause for a moment, and look around. Doesn't it sure seem like something is going on? I emphasize "sure" here. If you check very simply and straightforwardly, you will notice an immediate and unequivocal certainty before your intellect kicks in and explains it all away ("This is just a trick of my brain! Nothing to see here; move right along!"). This certainty -- that something sure as hell seems to be happening -- is more profound than it may seem the first few times you encounter it. You can't be nearly as sure that time or space exist as that ... consciousness ... and even that doesn't touch the profundity I'm hinting at.

But we're not ready to face this possibility. You can confirm this yourself, as your mind comes up with one explanation after another to disprove the fact that you're really experiencing anything. Of course you could just check again, but who has time for confronting that they exist in an outrageously profound way?

And that is why the problem won't go away; not just because we haven't figured out the appropriate math, or haven't been willing to overcome our ape-like beliefs.

"I'm not going to attempt to define consciousness, in a way that's connected with the fact that I don't believe it will become part of physics. ... And that has to do, I think, with the mysteries that bother a lot of people about quantum mechanics and its applications to the universe. ... Quantum mechanics kind of has an all-embracing property, that to completely make sense it has to be applied to everything in sight, including ultimately, the observer. But trying to apply quantum mechanics to ourselves makes us extremely uncomfortable. Especially because of our consciousness, which seems to clash with that idea. So we're left with a disquiet concerning quantum mechanics, and its applications to the universe. And I do not believe that disquiet will go away. If anything, I suspect that it will acquire new dimensions." -- Ed Witten 

Theravada and Mahayana

Wanted to share some quotes from Kenneth Folk (who practiced Vipassana in the Mahasi tradition for many years, until he finished the path according to its teachers). This is just one perspective, but I find it intriguing.

Basically, he says there are two modes of practice: "developmental," which uses phenomena (such as sensations and thoughts) to develop toward a physio-energetic completion, and "awakening," which is primordial awareness coming to recognize itself. Those that just target the former will likely only lead to the former realization, whereas those that target the latter can result in both.

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/106307

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[I]t's unlikely that [Ramana Maharshi] became an arahat in the moment of his initial awakening. Awakening doesn't depend upon development; it is its own attainment. Arahatship, on the other hand, seems to be directly correlated with the kundalini phenomenon Ramana mentioned (see my essay above), and is the culmination of a developmental process. This is why I differentiate Awakening/Realization and development. The former is the noticing of that which is prior to the arising of time. The latter is completely dependent on time and the physical world.
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If Ramana is correct, this is good news for pure Advaitists. They need not fear missing out on the fruits of development even if they never spend a moment on practices that specifically target development. All that is necessary is to dwell as primordial awareness. By the way, the common denominator between pure concentration practice and dwelling as the "I AM," is... concentration. Concentration, coupled with insight, leads to developmental enlightenment. Ramana's practice promotes both concentration and insight. All of this makes perfect sense when seen through the lens of the Buddhist maps. The non-dual aspect is, of course, not addressed in Theravada, which is why we have the Mahayana. If Hinayana were complete, there would be no need for Mahayana or Vajrayana.
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For the purposes of this discussion, I'm defining Awakened in a particular way. In this context, Awakened is not synonymous with arahatship. Rather, it refers to a perspective in which primordial awareness knows itself. Lot's of people who are not arahats have access to this perspective. And it appears, based on my observations of and conversations with some people who I believe are arahats, that not all arahats have access to this perspective. On the other hand, maybe they just don't value this perspective; but I would say that it amounts to the same thing, as this perspective is considered the highest understanding by virtually every school of enlightenment except Theravada. To know it is to love it. :-)

We are now at the very heart of the debate between "Hinayana" and "Mahayana." How is it possible that people can spend their whole lives meditating and not come to the same conclusions?

For me the answer is simple: If people would stop arguing long enough to actually master the other camp's practice, they would value both perspectives. Too often, people dig in and attempt to defend their own limited understanding rather than branching out and embracing multiple understandings. It takes a lot of work. You can't just say, "I'm enlightened and therefore anything I don't already know about doesn't matter." You have to keep practicing even after arahatship because there is always something you haven't yet understood.

So, to answer the question directly, there are arahats who are masters of vipassana and samatha but who have never committed themselves to the mastery of non-dual practice and thus do not understand the full implications of Awakening.

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You could make the case that both Awakening and Arahatship are enlightenment--which gives us two distinct situations, both going by the name "enlightenment." I think that some people reject the idea of "two enlightenments" as aesthetically displeasing. I tend to agree that, as an aesthetic, the idea of two enlightenments fails to inspire. Reality, however, has rarely shown itself to be subordinate to my aesthetic concerns.

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I don't think the Theravada ideal is both development and Awakening. I think it's just development as I'm defining it. The Bumese, for example, don't talk about "turning the light around," "awareness knowing itself," "realizing what has always been true," etc, all of which are recurring themes in Advaita, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. They seem to take enlightenment as an entirely linear process that fundamentally changes the practitioner over time. Theravada, notwithstanding the occasional instant-arahat story in the suttas, is about as far as you can get from a sudden-enlightenment school.

Among those who do talk about awareness knowing itself (see Mahamudra, for example), there is wide consensus that this Realization is by far the most important thing to have, and that pure developmentalists are somehow missing the boat.

I like Theravada, but I like to keep in mind that it is the little brother of the enlightenment schools in spite of its self-serving claims to greater authenticity.

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I will say that someone who fully commits to the non-dual route and (accidentally) develops to the point of arahatship has completed the two-fold program. But someone who reaches arahatship by doing only developmental practices may or may not stumble hard enough on the non-dual to get hooked and explore it further. In that case it would take some outside influence to encourage that yogi to keep practicing, as s/he would intuitively feel done.

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The thesis I'm offering is that by becoming absorbed in the awareness you will progress along the developmental path, thus killing two birds with one stone. This position seems to be supported by such luminaries as Ramana Maharshi and Jack Kornfield, among others. Mind you (and getting back to the point I made in the essay), pure non-dual teachers (e.g. Tolle, Adyashanti, Ganga-ji, Mooji) don't like to talk about development, presumably because they believe it is a distraction. (How can you become absorbed in the awareness now if you are planning your future awakening?) Nonetheless, I'm giving you the holistic understanding for better or worse: if you do the non-dual practice properly, you will develop just as efficiently as if you did pure vipassana.

The only down side to this is that to some people all this talk of awareness knowing itself is incomprehensible gibberish. Fine. For those people, I recommend vipassana. This is really a can't-lose situation. The important thing is to be committed to some kind of practice, to do it every day, and to take intensive retreats whenever possible and do it some more. The finite part of it will eventually be finished and the infinite part will keep you entertained for a lifetime.

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My sense is that people who are Awake tend to talk about it a lot, at least when the conversation turns to mysticism. People talk about what they value. So if somebody talks for a half-hour about meditation but doesn't say anything about awareness, I suspect that awareness is either not known to them or not important to them. For concrete examples, compare the speech of a Mahasi master with the speech of a dzogchen master or a Mahamudra master. The dzogchen and Mahamudra guys are all about awareness knowing itself, whereas the Mahasi guy will talk about body sensations or noting mind states. These are two very different orientations and I think it would be wrong to conclude that these people are all having the same experiences but talking about them differently.

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My response to a question from a friend about whether to combine vipassana and the "I AM:"

I like to use the source/river analogy. The Source is where things have not yet diverged into subject and object. One definition of enlightenment would be unfettered access to the Source. Both the "I AM" perspective and the vipassana perspective are downstream from the Source. That's fine, as most people will do a lot of downstream practice before they realize that the Source is always available. Your question is which practice to do, or if they should be combined.

"I AM" is so close to the Source that it does not admit the kind of investigation that is vipassana. Vipassana is slightly further downstream from "I AM." "I AM," because it is so far upstream, is upstream from suffering. What's not to like? To introduce vipassana to the "I AM" is to pull yourself further downstream than you need to be, into a perspective that admits suffering. Since the "I AM" does everything vipassana does (i.e. it efficiently develops the psychic anatomy toward arahatship), and has the added advantage of being upstream from suffering, there is no percentage in doing vipassana if you are able to become absorbed in the "I AM." It would be like stepping over dollars to pick up quarters.

So, anytime you are able to become absorbed in the "I AM," AKA the no-dog, just do that. If that isn't happening for whatever reason, downshift to vipassana. Just realize that although investigating the no-dog with vipassana or doing vipassana from the point of view of the no-dog are perfectly good and useful practices, they are in fact vipassana; once you introduce that level of investigation you have pulled yourself downstream from the pure no-dog for no good reason.

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Actually, descriptions of stream entry/1st path, as defined in the Theravada tradition, are remarkably consistent across individuals. That's one of the things that really drew me to vipassana in the first place. My teacher told me that the Progress of Insight was so accurate, and that it described a process that was so hard-wired into the human body/mind, that a teacher could accurately pinpoint a student on the map and watch her or him go through the 16 insight knowledges one after another, just as if it were scripted. And this would happen irrespective of whether the student knew or had even heard of the map. I have since found this to be true again and again; first path is not at all nebulous. Same for second path. After that, it gets harder; teachers don't even agree on exactly where to put the dividing line between 2nd and 3rd path. But it gets easier at 4th path, which is a very easy call, as you know when your insight disease goes away. Post 4th path, it gets fuzzy again and there are all sorts of ways that enlightenment can manifest, which is why I started this discussion. I wanted do go deeper than the usual it-all-ends-up-in-the-same place talk and explore the reality of it.

So simple

"The root of the whole of samsara and nirvana is the nature of the mind. To realize this, rest in unstructured ease without meditating on anything. When all that needs to be done is to rest in yourself, it is amazing that you are deluded by seeking elsewhere!" -- Saraha

"The ultimate Truth is so simple. It is nothing more than being in the pristine state. This is all that need be said. Still, it is a wonder that to teach this simple Truth there should come into being so many religions, creeds, methods and disputes among them and so on! Oh the pity! Oh the pity!" -- Sri Ramana Maharshi

"A mind imbued with conceptual elaboration is a mind of samsara. A mind free from conceptual elaboration is liberated. The very nature of mind-itself is primordially, intrinsically free of elaboration. ... People go awry in their practice because they fail to recognize this point and pursue it. ... In reality, it is enough to leave the mind in its own unstructured state. Why have so many complaints and questions? Why complicate the issue?" -- Gyatrul Rinpoche

The simple fact

If you could -- just for a millisecond -- notice the simple fact of consciousness (or rather, if consciousness were to notice itself -- because what, other than consciousness, notices?) without your mind subtly spewing out answers (and questions) about what it is (just an illusion!), where it comes from (just neurotransmitters!), whether or not it's anything special or remarkable (not particularly!), etc., you would be brought to your knees in a profound humility, reverence, awe, and gratitude that you could never have imagined possible.

Before wondering "why am I here?" or "what is the meaning of life?," perhaps spend more time looking (nonconceptually) into exactly what you mean by "I am here" or "I am alive." I guarantee you will be surprised and delighted -- and with enough luck (or really, enough sincerity, precision, simplicity, and directness), it will unequivocally resolve (if not exactly "answer") your first question.


So close you cannot see it
So deep you cannot fathom it
So simple you cannot believe it
So good you cannot accept it
-- Kalu Rinpoche

ACIM and Buddhism

It is remarkable how similar A Course In Miracles (or at least, this interpretation) is to the Mingyur Rinpoche quote:

The Course's assertion is that everything stems from the mind. The mind's thinking provides the basis for everything that it experiences. Whichever way the mind chooses to look at reality, it will find itself surrounded by and experiencing a "reality" that is the precise mirror of that. The mind's fundamental belief-system first manifests as inner feelings, emotions, interpretations and perceptions; and then manifests as the "outer" reality in which the mind seems to live.
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Our healing, then, must be a healing of the mind, a healing of our fundamental perspective on reality. This is what the miracle does. It comes in a moment, a holy instant, when we decide to temporarily suspend our habitual perspective on things. As we momentarily loosen our grip on the ego, our minds are allowed to shift into a new way of seeing things. And since our thinking is the foundation for our entire experience, as our thinking shifts, so does everything else. Our whole experience of life is allowed to brighten from the bottom up, making this kind of healing more deeply liberating than being healed of even the most insidious and destructive physical disease.

What do you really have?

What does it mean to be happy?

It means that for just a moment, you are not longing for something else. You are not craving or searching or yearning for things to be different in any way. What you have is truly enough.

That's it. That's a simple but complete description of the condition we spend lifetimes struggling and fighting and killing for. Of the one and only thing everybody fundamentally wants.

This may surprise you. It couldn't be that simple, could it? After all, most of the time you're not longing for something else, and yet you're not perfectly happy, right?

You may not have noticed that for the vast majority of your life, your mind is indeed preoccupied with scheming up ways for things to be different. It can take some practice to detect.

Or perhaps you are aware of this, but consider it perfectly reasonable. If you didn't seek ways for things to be different, you wouldn't accomplish very much, right? It's lazy to be content with what you have.

But have you noticed what you really have?

Suppose you say "I have a sports car!"

Concretely speaking, what you have then is not a sports car, but the thought "I have a sports car!"

Suppose you go to your garage and point at it, to prove it to me. Now what you have is a visual field that looks something like this:

(Yeah, right, you only wish you had a Lambo)

You can get it in and vroooom off into the distance, and you may have super-sweet vroooom sounds and wind in your hair, but you'll never have a Lamborghini.

What you will only, always, and ever have is this one moment and whatever it contains. Just one frame. You can save all you like, but you'll never have more.

Wouldn't it be a damn shame if you didn't want the one and only thing you had?

Wouldn't it be an incredible tragedy to discover at the end of your life that all you ever really had to do was appreciate the one thing you had?

Wouldn't it be unfortunate if the reason you failed to appreciate it was fear? Fear that if you enjoyed what you had, that you would turn into a lump of complacency?

Wouldn't it be amazing if the opposite turned out to be the case? That when you started enjoying what you had -- not what you thought you had, but what you actually had -- that things got better, not worse?

Wouldn't it be funny if teachers have come before to tell us of this, and we are just refusing to listen?

“Accept — then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.This will miraculously transform your whole life.” -- Eckhart Tolle

Abstractions, gratitude, and god

Consider how life goes.

You are presented with a bewildering array of colors, sounds, and textures. From their behavior, you infer the existence of abstractions called matter, time, space, etc. to explain them. Next, you take these abstractions to be the (only) "real things," and the experiences from which you inferred them to be secondary. The things you have merely inferred become certainties, and the things you can actually be certain of (experiences) become curiosities at best.

It's a marvelous sleight of hand that is remarkably hard to detect, but the payoff is worth it. It is possible (indeed overwhelmingly common) to spend a whole lifetime missing out on connecting with the Sure Thing in favor of abstractions.

One remarkable place we do this is in expressing gratitude. We suspect there's something profoundly amazing about just being alive. To objectify this sense, we have to make use of abstractions. What is life? A combination of amino acids. How did they come about? From fusion and other processes. So we become grateful for amino acids, fusion, evolution, etc. Those are all fascinating things to be grateful for, but again there's a sleight of hand: the realization that sparked the gratitude was the sense of being alive, not any of the abstractions that we suspect caused that miracle.

It is actually possible (and incredibly worthwhile) to allow the gratitude to remain precisely on the alive-ness itself, and not on any of the abstractions (such as our calculation of the remarkably low odds that we should be alive). I hesitate to proffer my own take, but here goes: if you manage to be genuinely grateful for the Real Thing for even a moment, you may catch a glimpse of what sages across time have been calling Enlightenment or God. (Yes, those too are abstractions, so don't chase them either.)

How do you get to the Real Thing?

One possibility is to deepen your felt sense of gratitude, but don't be grateful for anything in particular, or because of any particular reason. Don't let your gratitude "land" anywhere. Be grateful for "what is," without in any way identifying what it is or why it is.

Another technique commonly offered is meditation. It certainly can work, but there's a common trap you can fall into: abandoning some of the abstractions, but solidifying deeper ones. For example, it's easy to sit and meditate with a clear mind, while maintaining (and even deepening) the sense that you are an individual meditating within a real world. You will know you are making progress when your gut-felt certainty about your abstractions called time, space, self, objective reality, etc. begin to loosen. What arises in their stead? I will leave that for you to discover.