There Are Many Mansions (2)

  On a Spiritual Interpretation

 of the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics

John 14:2: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you."

 In an earlier post I began discussion of the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics by describing the Scroedinger's cat gedanken experiment of Erwin Scroedinger. I suggested that better understanding  of this thought experiment could be achieved by visualizing the viewpoint of the cat. This suggested that differing viewpoints might result in different "world lines". By "world line" I mean here that reality actually splits into more than one version dependent upon the collapse probability waves - giving rise to multiple universes. 

What I'm proposing here, in the strongest sense, is that our reality is determined by our consciousness. That each of us live in a physical reality that is slightly different from anyone else. That our belief structures also structure that reality. 

Is there any evidence of this at all? As apocryphal as such evidence may be, subjective evidence is still worthy of consideration in my mind. Here is a small example of such evidence. I clearly remember an occasion in which my "new thought/age" minister told me that he had cast a horoscope for a certain area of the country. I thought this most unusual, not just because I give little credence to horoscopes but because I'd never heard of casting a horoscope for a place before. In a conversation with him several years later the subject came up again. He seamed surprised and puzzled as he claimed to have never done any such thing. So, two different people appear to have experienced two different realities. 

This might be chalked up to errors in memory but I'm not satisfied with that explanation. Times arrow is reversible for the laws of physics. It seems to me perfectly reasonable that the wave equations  for me and my minister collapsed into two differing realities. For me the wonder was that there was some bleed through between the two realities.

 Of course, allowing such flexibility in what we call "reality" also introduces all kinds of problem for the usual conceptions of causality. It introduces potentially massive communication problems if your reality is different than mine. I think most of us would grant that reality for any of us is colored by our emotional view. What I suggest here is that our reality is determined by all of our consciousness. That there are, indeed, many mansions in the many worlds which we inhabit and that we are in some part responsible for building them with our consciousness.

How does this work on a group basis? If each of us lives in an individual reality dependent on our own consciousness, how will we ever understand each other. I think the key is resonance. I like to use the term "consensus reality". Consensus reality is that generally accepted view of world shared by the larger group. It has no greater claim to universal validity than any individual view but it is that reality which resonates with the whole of the group.

How do these differing realities interact? I use the visualization of Venn diagrams. For example, in the case of the Scroedinger cat, visualize two intersecting circles, one for the experimenter and one for the cat. Where the circles intersect the realities are the same. There is a common truth between them. Where they do not intersect, the realities are not the same. Where they do intersect the quantum wave functions are in resonance. In the S-cat example the intersection in which the cat lives for the observer, her universe is in resonance with the cat's. The observer simultaneously exists in the world of all possible quantum states but the larger intersection is where the cat lives. The quantum waves are resonant and that intersection is the mutually preferred state.

This proposed view of a greater reality more inclusive than the consensus reality helps to explain such phenomena as those associated with differing observer reports. Most especially this helps explain differing observations of such rare phenomena those labeled psychic. It helps explain why they aren't repeatable as they are, by nature, much more readily influenced by individual consciousness than those in the larger consensus reality. It helps explain how it is that a certain well known magician and psychic debunker has never observed such phenomena despite an apparently earnest search to do so. Strangely, his disbelief in the existence of such is precisely that which precludes his observation of them.

The consensus reality in modern western society is the scientific viewpoint. By definition for something to be "scientific" it has to be repeatable. It has to have a commonality and mathematics gives it the largest possible commonality As having been derived from the logical framework of mathematics, the consensus reality that  has proven the most efficacious in building modern western society is the scientific viewpoint.By definition for something to be "scientific" it has to be repeatable. It works and it allows us to communicate from a common framework  Therefore, I conclude the the sane reality - that in which we may best communicate - is the scientific reality. But... it is not the only reality.

 In a future blog I hope to speak on the accepted  laws of logic which preclude a multi-world view from the scientific consensus reality. Specifically Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle which says of Truth that something must be true or false but never both simultaneously. In Non-Aristotlean Logic or, as used in A.E. van Vogt's classic S.F. novel, The World of Null-A. Notice that before the collapse of a Scroedinger probability wave to a specific state this is exactly the situation that is modeled. "Achintya bheda abheda" or inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference in everything as stated in some Hindu philosophies. I propose that conscious choice (on some level) is, itself, responsible for this collapse to a specific state.

One of the chief tenets of science is that a scientific premise is testable. This is a primary consideration for those who criticise the string theory model of the universe. No one has come up with a way to test it. It may actually be untestable. A similar problem occurs with Non-Aristotilean logic. Yet this does not mean it is untrestable in principle. 


"Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter..."
 Sir James Jeans - The Mysterious Universe (1930)