I see energy, what do you see?

“Grandma, you know a table isn’t a solid object” my seven-year-old grandson informed me. He went on to explain it was energy, and followed up with the updated science on black holes. All four educated adults could only follow his quantum physics and black hole lecture so far. His dad finally said, “Ok, you’ve lost us. How about we talk about something we all understand?”. He quickly switched to everything you could possibly want to know about dinosaurs.

When Louis Armstrong sang “What a wonderful world” by lyricists George Weiss and George Douglas, he truly captured what it feels like to be in wonder. Watching a grandson unfold cursory wisdom of quantum physics demonstrates he is “learning much more that I’ll ever know”. 

I hear babies cry 
I watch them grow 
They’ll learn much more 
Than I’ll ever know 
And I think to myself 
What a wonderful world

Of course quantum physicists will disagree. They know what he knows, and much more. They were probably regaling their families with this information when they were seven. The question I have is where does this ‘knowing’ come from at seven years old? His intelligent parents were not into physics. They didn’t have books laying around the house to stimulate conversation regarding the behaviour of particle waves at this early age. Their books were tailored to the average seven to ten-year-old. He had no older siblings or childhood friends of physicist (or the armchair variety). It could have been something he heard, but how does a child then assimilate the information in a way which makes sense to him and allows him to further build on the complex concepts? I wonder. . . and I recognize this world is full of wonder.

There are others who are assimilating a “knowing” in a way that allows them to build on a complex concept. They are experiencers of energy outside our “normal” realm of understanding. They are near-death, out-of-body, shared-death and other spiritually transformative experiencers.

You could say these folks have experienced quantum by being part of it.

Some of these experiencers believe beyond doubt they are part of the quantum field. They left their bodies through an unusual event as are trying to make sense of what happened. I’m not a scientist, so I won’t be challenging this belief, or get into entanglement, the holographic principle, biophotons, or the field of potentiality. I simply want to ponder how unusual or “unexplainable” experiences are being interpreted by quantum scientists. 

Most experiencers refer to these unexplained happenings as “transformative”. They sometimes refer to it as a “religious” experience. They almost exclusively refer to it as a “spiritual” experience. These spiritually transformative experiences often undermine the belief one has in the fabric of existence and all that makes meaning in their life up until the time of the experience. Naturally, they look to science for an answer.

Newtonian physics does not provide an answer to these phenomena. Materialistic science leaves a gaping hole in explanation. Where shall people turn but to quantum science?

If you are looking for a real good read on quantum and spiritually transformative experiences you will find this article a good start: https://near-death.com/quantum-theory-supports-ndes/.

In addition, author Kevin Williams provides further scientific resources to continue building an understanding of the many potential synchronicities between quantum and anomalous experience. 

I looked down at my body, which lay inert on the hospital bed. All attempts to resuscitate were abandoned. I felt nothing for that life or that body, it had served me well, like a great pair of running shoes. When I looked up, to the right, I could see lights were swirling around in a tunnel, and I started through it. I could see the colours begin to fade toward the brightest white I had ever seen. It was not blinding, I didn’t squint, but it was brighter than the sun.

The tunnel and light are both common themes in near-death experiences. The tunnel represents movement, as through a portal to another dimension. If you are dead, how can you can look back at your body? How can you sense movement through a tunnel? Further, how are you sensing at all? If your body is dead, how is it you are still you?  Williams writes:

 Quantum theories such as the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and its corresponding many-minds theory supports this new paradigm. These quantum theories also supports the theory of quantum immortality which theoretically makes the immortality of a non-physical “soul” possible. If one views consciousness as a fundamental, non-physical, part of the universe, it becomes possible to conceive of consciousness continuing to exist after the death in a parallel universe. These quantum and holographic paradigms assume anomalous phenomena such as NDEs to certainly be within the realm of possibilities.

We are all made of energy, and we know energy cannot be destroyed. Some experiencers believe the sum of all the energy of each being would result in a light brighter than the sun.

While I felt like I was moving through the tunnel, it didn’t feel like I was moving through time. I felt everything all at once. Once I was in the light, it felt like I was being downloaded information that I had once known but had forgotten. My only way to describe it to you is to make it linear, once this, then that. That is not how I experienced it there. It was all at once, but not confusing. There was no past, present or future.

Time is a tricky human concept. Quantum physics allows us to understand the “timeless oneness” people describe from their spiritually transformative experiences:

European astrophysicist by the name of Metod Saniga used NDE research to develop a mathematical model of time which seems to offer solutions to problems vexing scholars since Einstein. In brief, Dr. Saniga takes seriously the testimony of NDErs when they describe experiences in a realm where “time stops” and where some of them “see the past, present, and future all at once.” Dr. Saniga describes this realm as “the Pure Present.”

Author Kevin Williams continues to present strong arguments for the alignment of spiritually transformative experiences and the field of quantum physcis. In many ways, it is the research into anomalous experiences by quantum physicists which provides real examples of quantum spirituality at work in our lives. And I wonder. . .