The Secret Connection Between Quantum Physics And Buddhism

quantum physics and the nature of reality [Music] the last 100 years of science has begun to bridge the gap between the scientific and spiritual understandings of the nature of reality this can be most clearly seen between the teachings of Buddhism and the scientific findings of quantum physics Buddhists point to the notion of emptiness as that which is the ground from which everything arises and everything returns to according to Buddhists everything that you feel see hear touch think or taste in this moment is arising from the empty ground of infinite potentiality we are going to investigate

what this ground of emptiness is and how the apparent world and ourselves arise from it as explained in spiritual traditions and by the scientific findings in quantum physics two examples will help us to begin you may have a dream in which you gorilla is chasing you everything in the dream feels very real and you are terrified however in the morning you wake up happy and no longer afraid knowing that it was all merely a dream that you the gorilla in the world of the dream all were created by and disappeared back into the dream consciousness

nothing about the dream was real however the dream Consciousness was in a sense real it was the real potential ground without which the dream could not appear a blank piece of paper can also serve as an example even though the blank paper itself communicates nothing it stands as infinite potentiality in that an infinite variety of languages ideas stories Etc can be expressed upon it thus emptiness can be understood as an infinite field of potential and in a sense more real than anything which appears on or rises from it this notion of emptiness has some amazingly

strong similarities to what is called the quantum field in quantum physics to understand these similarities we need first to inquire into the materiality of the world in a Quantum understanding of materiality we find that material exists in two forms as particles and as waves what is very strange about the wave form of materiality according to quantum physics is that it has no definite location in time or space in fact the waveform is understood as being everywhere all at once and thus spread out through the entire universe an example may help imagine you have an orange

in your hand now this Orange in its particle form is locatable in time or space but spread out in an infinite number of possible States through R the entire universe in the other world the orange s particle is a thing but the Orange's wave is pure potentiality how can this be how can something that seems to be in a particular place at a particular time also exist everywhere all at once according to our usual understanding of the nature of reality this is an utter impossibility however scientists working in quantum physics have confirmed the truth of

particle or wave materiality thousands upon thousands of times they have done this with an experiment known as the double slit experiment we will look more closely at the details of this experiment in a moment but when the results of this experiment it was an earth-shattering shock to the scientific Community the most profoundly shocking find was this a double slit experiment proved not only that materiality was both particles located in space and time and waves which were everywhere all at once but that whether they appeared as particles or waves was determined by human consciousness how does

this relate to emptiness atoms are known to be 99.12 times 9 percent empty space just absorbing that fact must Force us to redefine our understanding of not only the nature of reality but the reality of our very selves but if reality is only empty space then why does reality feel so solid located and real if I am only empty space why do I feel so solid located and real Quantum physicists explain this feeling of solidness is being caused by a is yet undefined repulsive force between atoms this repulsive force is similar to magnets pushing away

from each other when two of the same sides are put together therefore you never actually touch anything solid rather it is this repulsive force that gives the illusion of touching something solid of you being something solid if you are sitting in a chair you are actually not touching the chair rather the atoms in your body and atoms in the chair are repelling each other and it is actually this repulsion that you are experiencing you're always experiencing forms of energy you never experience anything solid it is this mysterious repulsive force that gives you the completely illusory

feeling that you are experiencing not emptiness but something solid and real the particles that make up these atoms arise from what Quantum scientists call a Quantum field the particles that make up these atoms arise from what Quantum scientists call a Quantum field the particles are not different from the field but are in fact part of the field like waves are to the ocean the quantum field is outside our perception but remains as the pure potentiality for matter all matter arises from this Quantum field and falls back into this field the field itself is spread across

all space and time this Quantum field is the very ground from which every atom all matter the universe and our very selves arise from and falls back into there is a similar notion within Buddhism it is called dependent arising or practice this states that all things are interconnected and that the idea that there are independent existing objects in the world is an illusion everything is dependent on everything else for its seeming appearance its seeming solidness within the quantum field when two particles begin to affect each other in a particular way they are said to be

entangled now this is what it gets even stranger once these particles have developed this relationship of entanglement from that point on anytime one of the particles is changed or affected the other particle will reflect this change whether across the room or across the universe you might think of entanglement like this imagine you and a friend each held a basketball now with those basketballs we entangled like particles can be each basketball would reflect what happened to the other basketball no matter how far away from each other they were with a two meters or thousands of light

years entangled particles seem to act as the one particle even though they are two and no matter how far the distance is from each other and it doesn't stop there at the moment of the Big Bang all the matter that exists in the universe was compressed into an infinitely small point this means that all particles in the universe are ultimately entangled particles it is clear from this that quantum entanglement points to a profound Oneness of all existence but where does the mind and human consciousness fit in all this in Buddhism and many other religious Traditions

the mind is the center of reality the mind is not merely part of reality but is the very thing that creates what we take as reality in much the same way as scary gorillas and worlds can be created in our dreaming state thus according to this point of view the world is not outside our minds but is created by them this understanding that our apparent reality is created by our minds is the central teaching of the Buddha two and half thousand years later it is the same conclusion arrived at by quantum physics it was the

quantum physicist Verna Heisenberg who first realized the very observation of electrons affected their positions in time and space he calls this the uncertainty principle and went on to say quote what we are observing is not nature but nature as it is affected by our observing Minds thus reality is defined by the mind that is observing it end quote this reveals not a problem for scientific method but rather points to the dreamlike quality of the quantum particles that make up our universe the way in which human consciousness affected these Quantum particles become very clear with a

previously mentioned experiment called the double slit experiment in this experiment Quantum particles are fired through two lead slits when observed the particles make patterns and appeared as particles however when not observed the particles make wave patterns in other words when the particles were observed they appeared as discrete finite possibilities locatable in time and space that is to say as particles but when not observed they appeared as infinite potentiality that is to say as non-locatable in time and space is waves whether we are Buddhists or Quantum physicists we can only conclude this prior to the Mind

reality exists only as infinite potentiality or if we were to put it in Buddhist terms devoid of thought or mind reality is realized to be emptiness or pure potentiality thus in conclusion and most simply put 1. the radical nature of reality is emptiness or pure potentiality two the world of apparent reality as it appears to us is merely a projection of our minds or human consciousness this is the nature of reality according to quantum physics [Music] say to be in my mother too baby [Music]