The Quantum State of Being, Part IV: The Creation of Being

 Being emerges through relationship.

It cannot exist outside itself and independent of itself. 

There can be no Being without a priori relationship, because Being alone has no measurement applied to it. Unmeasured, unseen, unencountered and un-apprehended, it cannot exist. It only begins its existence when perception — seeing — enters the picture.

 Perception at our level of consciousness, self observation, engages us in relationship through the action of consciousness in the collapse of the undifferentiated states around us (objects, events, circumstances, and conditions) into fixed and identifiable entities. Consciousness as we experience it, in other words, performs the same function on a macroscopic scale that consciousness does on the quantum level: it takes the unformed and gives it form. Each individual consciousness is, in other words, a representative of a cognitive collapse that defines Being through emergent properties of perception. The same thing that is happening when quanta “form” particles with defined properties as they are observed happens in us, just on a much larger scale. Yet what is formed depends on what is observed; the less refined our observational skills, the less defined and more disorganized our Being is.  

The creation of reality depends on the refinement of observational skills at every level.

Yet it leaves us with the question of the quantum state itself, which was named for the very fact that it was assumed to be granular, that is, discontinuous and formed of impossibly tiny forces, or, energy packages (quanta.)

The quantum state, which I sensed on that interesting morning in 2008, is an egalitarian entity. In and of itself, all quanta are identical to one another and have no separating or identifying characteristics.  

This is true of all things that exist before consciousness perceives them.  There is something; but that something is nothing. This philosophical conundrum is a restatement of the problem of the quantum state. It’s the same as the electron that is in two places at once: something and nothing, or Schrödinger’s cat, which is both dead and alive. Our Being, before we see ourselves, occupies that exact same paradox — in an exquisite irony that can only be changed if we make an inner effort to Be, we are alive… 

and dead.

Before we “observe” the action of an electron, defining its position or speed, there is no electron.  There is simply the possibility of an electron. What there are, are quanta; and their potentialities are multidirectional, that is to say, any quanta can fulfill any role at the point of observation where the presence of consciousness creates its committed existence within the classical state. We won’t find that there are charmed quanta or up and down quanta, for example, because they have zero characteristics prior to the resolution of their Being. In a sense, this answers the question of what happens when a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it: no, there is no sound.

We are much the same way. We’re nothing as we begin (think of Gurdjieff’s command that we recognize our own nothingness.) Presuming an interest in inward development, it’s that very unformed nothingness of Being which we attempt to resolve through observation. 

This is a risky business, because while we do, conceptually speaking, collapse the  unresolved wave/particle duality within our own Being as we develop, what we develop into is unpredictable. Gurdjieff’s way of saying this was to explain that the universe could produce both good and bad individuals — beings with true objective reason and Hasnamusses.  

It’s the question of responsibility, the way we form relationships, and how much we care about others that matters here. 

Care is what imparts the movement that forms gravity and relationship.

The universe is a system of relationships; but it is also a system of sheep and shepherds. Each field of gravity, each individual attractive force of consciousness (idiot), becomes responsible for the lower forms around it; in this way, the sun is responsible for the planets, the planets are responsible for the formations and beings they have, and so on. It’s an independence of multiplicities. All of it forms around one of two alternatives: caring and not caring. Love and no love.  Referring back to Gurdjieff’s Hasnamusses, their chief feature is always selfishness. They deny relationship; whereas Beings of higher reason affirm it.

 The metaphysical reasons for this enter sophisticated territory. I’m not prepared to deal with it in this particular essay.  What matters the most to me is the question of what we care about. Gravity, that ineffable and perfectly refined sense and sensation of Being, can exert a force within intellect, the body, and feeling. In each case, it needs to be well defined and invested in in order for harmonious Being to develop. Our inner sense of gravity is what causes us to care about who we are and who others are; and only by coming into relationship with this force that emerges from the quantum state and creates being can we begin to become human – which is to care on the level we are on.

In this sense, although it is wrong in many ways, we could say that we create ourselves — but only to the extent with which we create ourselves in relationship to other Being. We can believe in ourselves; or we can believe in others, and in God. This is that same dilemma that Swedenborg presented us with in his analysis of the difference between hell and heaven.

There is no being and no consciousness without belief. At the point where the quantum state collapses into classical reality, a choice has to be made as to what one believes in. Belief is at the root of consciousness itself; to try to be aware without believing is like trying to make soup and leaving out the water. Consciousness, in other words, carries the obligation to believe in some thing;  of commitment is made, and perhaps this is the characteristic feature of the collapse of the quantum state. When it takes place, there is a commitment to one thing or another. The die is cast.

 Yet this happens over and over again, an infinite number of times.  Without that arising of awareness, commitment, and then discipline, relationship, and feeling, there is no Being. This brings us to the question of the many Names of God in Arabic systems. These Names of God, or forces, are conceptual entities of attitude and mindset. Not indifferent bits of matter. We live within these forces, which are active and conceptual, metaphysical and fluid. The fact that the forces manifest themselves through the vehicle of particle physics may be of technical interest — especially when it comes to the art of making things — but it has very little, in fact, to do with the question of being itself, and what its purpose is. Mechanistic rationalism might claim that there is no purpose; but I find that explanation purposeless. 

We're creatures of purpose, entities that arise and believe; trying to divorce this capacity and these faculties from the nature of human Being itself is an absurdity.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.