Steiner and Schrodinger's Equation

[Cleric K]

So, if the photon is detected in A, the photon was observed on the upper path, it was forced to collapse. And only an actionable bomb can have forced the collapse, simply by monitoring the only alternative possible. So it’s not weird. An active bomb has the quality of an observer no matter what, and observation creates wave collapse.

Federica, thank you for your elaboration. Yes, the points that you have mentioned about superposition and the half-silvered mirror are taken for already understood in Sabine's video.

Now, the 'bomb' in this experiment is used only to make it more dramatic. As you noticed, it's the same as simply placing any barrier which can absorb the photon and thus acts as an observer/collapser. A live bomb is simply something which stands on the way of the photon and can absorb it. This absorption which can trigger an explosion is only for drama. A dead bomb is the absence of a barrier. I think this part is somewhat confusing because my first guess would be that a dead bomb would still absorb the photon but will not explode. It turns out that a dead bomb is the same as the absence of a bomb or that it is transparent for photons. I don't think Sabine made that clear enough either.

There's a fun cartoonish game that exemplifies quantum optical effects. Many famous experiments are modelled there. Here's the bomb experiment.

The presence of the bomb can be controlled with the Y/N switch. The link above opens the experiment in 'beam' mode where light looks like continuous laser and it shows what percentage of its energy reaches where. There's also 'waves' mode (although I think it would have been more appropriate to call it 'photons' mode) which can be chosen through the slider in the upper left corner. Now with the 'play' button, single photons can be emitted.

So we have two cases. One is:


I understand why you say that the above is not weird. Actually it's the more understandable of the two because we can follow it completely with classical logic. We imagine a single photon emitted. The first half-silvered mirror sends it with 50% in each direction. Thus 50% of the time the bomb is triggered. The other 50% it goes on the other path and unsurprisingly is split once more in the upper mirror, landing with 25% in each detector. We don't even need quantum science here. We can do with completely classical and local reasoning.

The other case is actually the weirder:



It is not that weird if we imagine light as continuous energy beams/waves (not made of discrete particles). In that case we imagine that the energy is smoothly split in two at the first half-mirror, then recombines and interferes at the second. The two beams that go upwards at the upper half-mirror (not drawn on the above illustration but they would be the reflected upper beam and the part of lower beam that passes through) are out of phase thus they interfere destructively. They become out of phase because passing through the half-mirror (not reflecting) shifts phase with 90°. It is as if the wave is slowed down while it passes through the glass. Here's a visual cue about what phases mean.



On the other hand, reflecting at the surface (without entering the glass, this holds for both half- and full silvered mirrors) shifts the phase 180°. If we count the reflections/refractions, for the upper beam we have 180° at the first half-mirror (because it is only reflected), 180° at the full mirror in the upper-left and 180° at the other half-mirror. So we have 180° + 180° + 180° = 360° + 180°. But 360° is full rotation so it brings the phase to its initial state and is the same as 0° - not shifted at all. Thus effectively, the upper beam arrives at the upper detector at 180° phase.

The lower beam passes through the lower half-mirror getting shifted 90° as it passes through the glass, then it is shifted 180° in the mirror down right and finally shifts another 90° while passing through the glass of the upper half-mirror. Thus we have 90° + 180° + 90° = 360° or effectively that beam doesn't have phase shift. The final result is that the beams are 180° out of phase and thus they interfere destructively.

Analogously, for the right detector. For the upper beam we have 180° + 180° + 90° (since it passes through the glass of the upper right half-mirror). The final phase shift is 90°. The lower beam has 90° + 180° + 180° so it is also at 90° phase. That's why both beams are in phase at the right detector.

Now all this is understandable through the reasoning above but there's one problem. The above reasoning would suggest that the detector at the right should receive only 50% of the initial power of the laser. Let's follow it again: the first half-mirror splits the beam in two each carrying 50% of the initial power (thus the two split beams are dimmer). If we think about the two split beams separately, they are once gain split at the upper half-mirror, so they become even dimmer (25%). If we now take again the two initially split beams together, it seems that we have 2x25% that go up and 2x25% that go right. Those that go up are out of phase and annihilate each other. What goes right is in phase so adds up to 25% + 25% = 50%. So we should be left only with the 50% energy that goes right, right? Yet the experiments show otherwise. The whole 100% of the power goes right. This is already quite difficult to comprehend classically. It certainly doesn't make sense if we imagine it with water waves. It's like the energy of the waves that annihilate each other is magically transferred to the other waves that interfere constructively.

But things become even more strange when the intensity of the laser is lowered to such an extent that only individual packets of energy (photons) are emitted at a time. This is what really shatters our classical intuition. If we imagine a photon as some energy ball that travels along one or the other path, there could be no notion of interference (there's nothing to interfere with). Photons would have to land in either of the two detectors with 50% chance.

So if we reason classically with waves, it seems that we should find 50% powered laser in the right detector (the other 50% energy are lost in the beams that go up and annihilate themselves). If we reason classically through particles sent one by one we should see each particle arriving at one of the detectors with 50% chance (no energy is lost in this case). But in reality, neither of this is observer experimentally. No matter if we have beams or emit photons one by one, in all cases 100% of the energy is received at the detector on the right. As said, this is somewhat disturbing when we think about continuous beams but it is downright illogical when thinking about individual particles. If photons are balls that travel through one or another path, what prevents a single photon to ever land in the upper detector?

If we contemplate something like the above and allow it to work its way to its full consequences, we should realize how much of our classical intuition (based on throwing apples, for example) is not valid in these domains. The above setup is effectively similar to the double-slit experiment for which Richard Feynman said:

"a phenomenon which is impossible […] to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics].

In the light of all the above, I agree that Sabine got it somewhat upside-down. She takes for a clear fact that if there are no barriers, light should go 100% in the right detector. Then she thinks how when a barrier is placed, 25% of the time a photon will be detected in the upper detector. This isn't weird if we think classically. It's what is to be expected if there was no quantum mechanics but only photons flying as apples.

So to summarize. Let's say that we don't know if there's a barrier at the upper beam. If we think classically, when we emit photons one by one we can imagine them as apples flying through specific paths. If we receive a photon at the upper detector this doesn't really tell us anything about whether there's a barrier on the path. In the photons-as-apples world (thrown one by one, thus no interference effects) we can always expect some photon to be detected at the upper detector. If there's barrier we'll receive only 50% of the photons that go through the non-barriered path and which are further split to 25%-25% by the upper half mirror. Half of the time we'll receive nothing at the detectors because it would have been absorbed by the barrier/triggered the bomb. If there's no barrier, then we'll always detect something at one of the detectors with 50% chance. Thus in a classical world we can know that there's a barrier only if we don't receive anything at the detectors (thus the bomb must have been triggered).

The weirdness comes when we already know that these photons act according to quantum rules (confirmed experimentally, not simply a floating theory). Then we know that without barrier we have 100% at the right detector.

If we ever detect something at the upper detector and we hold on to our quantum understanding then we know, it is guaranteed, that there's a barrier. This is the weirdness. That a photon arriving at the upper detector is only possible if there is something which could have absorbed the photon, although it didn't (in this particular case).

So in a nutshell, the bomb experiment is somewhat convoluted because it presents as a mystery something which appears as such only when we have already gotten used to the initial mystery (of which Feynman speaks) and the 100% going right. When we have become numb to that initial mystery and have accepted is as a matter of fact, then in the bomb experiment it simply reemerges in a more dramatic form and we forget that it is no more mysterious than the first mystery that we have gotten numb to. But it is essentially the same fundamental mystery of which Feynman speaks. And of course, it only looks like a mystery because for a long time we've become used only to thrown apples that fly in specific paths. We have forgotten that, for example, in the astral world there could be 'two churches in the same place'.

[AshvinP]

Not directly an answer to any of the questions here but it might be valuable to contemplate the following phenomenon for those unfamiliar with it:

Thank you for sharing this fascinating experiment! I can’t say that I understand the significance of the experiment too deeply, but here are some initial thoughts. It immediately brings to mind Steiner’s suggestion in various places to pay more attention to what doesn’t happen in the course of our experience. That is a way of gaining intuitive resonance with the 'super-positioned' states of being that are characteristic of higher planes of consciousness. These more holistic states filter down into relatively fragmented and sequential states of being in our normal waking experience, while the rest is experienced as the 'outer world', 'memory', or as 'future potential' that can be realized, or perhaps as 'alternate universes' in our modern abstract thought.

This way of considering historical events as the result of immediately preceding events is just the same as if a peasant were to say: — The wheat that I shall harvest this year is the result of the wheat of last year. The seeds remained, and the wheat of last year is again the result of the wheat of the year before last. One thing depends on the other — cause and effect. Except that the peasant does not really follow this rule: he must of course interfere personally in the growth of the wheat. He must first sow the seeds in order that an effect may follow the cause. The effect does not come of itself. From a certain point of view this is one of the most terrible illusions of our materialistic age, for people believe that the effect is the result of the cause; they do not wish to form the simplest thoughts concerning the real truth of these things.

I have already given you an example, by relating to you a sensational event in the life of a human being. It is indeed so, that people prefer to contemplate sensational events rather than consider the other events, which are of exactly the same kind and take place every hour and every moment of our life. I have told you how such an event can occur: A man is accustomed to take his daily walk to a mountainside. He takes this walk every day for a long time. But one day during his walk, on reaching a certain spot, he hears a voice calling out to him: — Why do you go along this path? Is it necessary that you should do this? The voice says more or less these words. On hearing them he becomes thoughtful, steps aside and thinks for a while about the curious thing that has happened to him. Suddenly a piece of rock falls down, which would have killed him had he not stepped aside after hearing the voice. This is a sensational event. But one who considers the world calmly, yet spiritually, will see in this event one of the many which take place every moment of our life. In every moment of our life something else, too, might happen, if this or that would occur.

Perhaps in that sense, the experiment is a quite outward, mechanical way that our thinking imagination has devised to amplify its ability to attend to what doesn’t happen, what exists as 'potential' but is also quite real and could have happened. That is the potential we actually grow into across the threshold, either via initiation or death, and experience from its inner perspective, which is actually the perspective of living disincarnate beings. It sort of reminds me of people who would engage in ‘dowsing’ with divining rods to attune their consciousness with earthly vibrations that point towards locations of underground water. Perhaps this experiment is a modern scientific means of divination, in a much more mechanical and therefore constrained sense, generally used to only satisfy curiosity and gain reputation rather than essential life purposes.





The problem I see is that, if we don’t become conscious of the spiritual nature of what is taking place, i.e. that it all flows through our own thinking imagination, it can be seen as a way of getting supersensible information without communing with the spiritual beings responsible for that information. In ancient times, this type of otherwise inaccessible information was experienced as actual speech-like messages from the higher worlds of intelligent beings. Now the intellect is devising ways to obtain that information while experiencing it as an entirely mechanical process of ‘photons existing in a superposition, taking both paths’ and so on. The fact that the whole thing was devised in our thinking imagination and the implications of that fact are forgotten/lost. But if we do retain that reality in our consciousness, then we can take such things as fascinating imaginative symbols for the higher moral ideals towards which we strive, such as the reality expressed as follows.

Imagine that half the world is hidden from you. Half of the person sitting across from you has never been appreciated, half of the garden has never been seen or smelled, half of your own life has never been truly witnessed and appraised. If we fail to attend to the interior of self and world then, indeed, half the world is missed. When we turn toward contemplation we are turning to the forgotten half, toward that half of the world which modestly and patiently awaits our freely given attention. While the rest of the world is on red alert, shouting for every minute of our conscious life, the equally important interior dimensions of existence wait quietly. When it seems impossible to find the time to meditate, we can remind ourselves of these facts. We give so much time to the demands of the world; isn't it proper and even essential to give time to the silent half of the world that patiently waits us? Shouldn't we give as much time to the inner as we do to the outer? With such thoughts we recall that the good we do has a source. Are we not profoundly nourished and guided by the inner dimensions of existence? Can we really know and do good if we are cut off from the gentle interior source of renewal and wisdom? We can be guided by outer tradition, but aren't the great wisdom traditions themselves grounded in that same interior realm?

Zajonc, Arthur. Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love (pp. 52-53). SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

he [Schrödinger] was striving to develop a nuanced understanding of the etheric forces that act in polar opposition to mere physical forces and thereby sustain life. Of course, he didn't know them as 'etheric forces' or have any understanding of the spiritual nature of these forces, and such a suggestion would be entirely outside the scope of a secular scientific work. He does discuss, however, that quantum mechanical wave functions give a better understanding of what is observed in the dynamics of a living organism, but even that extension to physical laws is not adequate for a full understanding of the phenomena of life, which according to him is directed by hitherto unknown laws. We can clearly sense that he is probing the etheric forces - the "order-from-order principle"

Ashvin, thanks for sharing that passage from Schrödinger, and the wonderful Steiner lecture, in which I read a certain, very interesting, different edge compared to other pedagogical approaches he made to the same topic.


Now, I would confirm disagreement with the green. To say it bluntly - without any intention to minimize the author’s intelligence, good faith, intuition and initiative - I think the expression “he is probing the etheric forces” would only be appropriate if the probing were conscious. Otherwise, my dog (that I don’t have) can be said to be probing the etheric forces, just by existing and moving in the morphic spaces it’s unconsciously familiar with. I don’t know Schrödinger and I have only read the excerpt you have shared, but my guess is, that’s exactly what he has been doing: moving within the spaces he was familiar with, the intellectual spaces - exclusively - and I could provide specific indications suggesting that, from his words. Nonetheless, I don’t deny he was a very gifted scientist, or student of reality. What he was doing in his attempts to understand life, I believe - to his credit - is similar to the direction later explored in much more detail by Levin, as extensively illustrated for us by Cleric in that incredible essay.


There, it is said about Levin’s model:

It is practically still cemented in planar intellect, a horizontal slice within the vertical hierarchy, that simply tries to spread its patterns into all levels. It's still far from the understanding that these levels are only abstract conceptualizations of real inner spiritual activity that has to be integrated within the human being. Without such understanding, quite infernal goals will utilize this possibility to manipulate the formative forces of Nature.

And the same can be said, I believe, of Schrödinger’s thoughts. I think he was searching for a supplementing theory to add on top of (not in polar opposition to) the ones that work for inanimate matter, the laws of physics. He was not searching for a new mode of cognition. In my opinion, the “order-from-order” idea anticipates (yes, here we can say that!) Levin’s idea of morphological spaces as ordered superstructure of levels of lawfulness, in contrast with the probabilistic approach that extracts “order from disorder”.

the idea that the laws of physics, as we know them when studying isolated particles in highly controlled (constrained) experiments, are enough to explain the complicated dynamics of biological chemistry, is entirely an assumption.

Schrödinger, as said, is gifted because he tries to see beyond that assumption, as Levin does, but much earlier. Does this mean they are probing the etheric plane? No, as Cleric said for Levin. For that, it would be necessary to understand that the mode of cognition itself has to be evolved.

Failure won’t demotivate scientists. Most of them will continue to refine the CGOL rules of physics, patching them in the most varied ways in order to replicate the appearances of living cells. Very few will consider that there might be something insufficient in the mode of cognition they exercise.

[AshvinP]

he [Schrödinger] was striving to develop a nuanced understanding of the etheric forces that act in polar opposition to mere physical forces and thereby sustain life. Of course, he didn't know them as 'etheric forces' or have any understanding of the spiritual nature of these forces, and such a suggestion would be entirely outside the scope of a secular scientific work. He does discuss, however, that quantum mechanical wave functions give a better understanding of what is observed in the dynamics of a living organism, but even that extension to physical laws is not adequate for a full understanding of the phenomena of life, which according to him is directed by hitherto unknown laws. We can clearly sense that he is probing the etheric forces - the "order-from-order principle"

Ashvin, thanks for sharing that passage from Schrödinger, and the wonderful Steiner lecture, in which I read a certain, very interesting, different edge compared to other pedagogical approaches he made to the same topic.


Now, I would confirm disagreement with the green. To say it bluntly - without any intention to minimize the author’s intelligence, good faith, intuition and initiative - I think the expression “he is probing the etheric forces” would only be appropriate if the probing were conscious. Otherwise, my dog (that I don’t have) can be said to be probing the etheric forces, just by existing and moving in the morphic spaces it’s familiar with. I don’t know Schrödinger and I have only read the excerpt you have shared, but my guess is, that’s exactly what he has been doing: moving within the spaces he was familiar with, the intellectual spaces - exclusively - and I could provide specific indications suggesting that, from his words. Nonetheless, I don’t deny he was a very gifted scientist, or student of reality. What he was doing in his attempts to understand life, I believe - to his credit - is similar to the direction later explored in much more detail by Levin, as extensively illustrated for us by Cleric in that incredible essay.


There, it is said about Levin’s model:

It is practically still cemented in planar intellect, a horizontal slice within the vertical hierarchy, that simply tries to spread its patterns into all levels. It's still far from the understanding that these levels are only abstract conceptualizations of real inner spiritual activity that has to be integrated within the human being. Without such understanding, quite infernal goals will utilize this possibility to manipulate the formative forces of Nature.

And the same can be said, I believe, of Schrödinger’s thoughts. I think he was searching for a supplementing theory to add on top of (not in polar opposition to) the ones that work for inanimate matter, the laws of physics. He was not searching for a new mode of cognition. In my opinion, the “order-from-order” idea anticipates (yes, here we can say that!) Levin’s idea of morphological spaces as ordered superstructure of levels of lawfulness, in contrast with the probabilistic approach that extracts “order from disorder”.

the idea that the laws of physics, as we know them when studying isolated particles in highly controlled (constrained) experiments, are enough to explain the complicated dynamics of biological chemistry, is entirely an assumption.

Schrödinger, as said, is gifted because he tries to see beyond that assumption, as Levin does, but much earlier. Does this mean they are probing the etheric plane? No, as Cleric said for Levin. For that, an understanding is necessary that the mode of cognition has to be evolved.

Failure won’t demotivate scientists. Most of them will continue to refine the CGOL rules of physics, patching them in the most varied ways in order to replicate the appearances of living cells. Very few will consider that there might be something insufficient in the mode of cognition they exercise.

Federica,

The way you are characterizing it here, I think the 'disagreement' turns out to be entirely a semantic issue. If I had said he was "dimly conceptualizing that there is a lawful force at work, not identical to known physical laws, to account for the phenomena of life, which esoteric science has already discovered as the 'etheric forces'", you would probably agree. As it happens, I use the phrase "probing the etheric forces" to mean practically the same thing. I agree with you that the intuition is still cemented in the planar intellect, but perhaps that it had loosened some for Schrodinger to encompass a more mysterious element.

I think that, like the QM scientists in Cleric's last post who get accustomed to the Feynman mystery, we can often forget the sheer mysteriousness of this 'etheric force' once we get accustomed to it through spiritual science. We could ask ourselves, before encountering spiritual science, did we have any concrete intuition, that could be expressed in clear and lucid concepts, that the basic phenomena of life should be explained through a lawful (not supernatural or miraculous) mechanism that is entirely unknown to physical science? Schrodinger did and that is a remarkable thing. From the standpoint of spiritual science and the concrete evolution of consciousness, however, it's not so remarkable, because we understand exactly why Schrodinger and many other thinkers were inspired by these concrete intuitions at this particular time. We know that it all relates back to events on the spiritual plane at the end of the 19th century that planted the seeds for imaginative cognition.

As we can see from many of Steiner's lectures, a thinker who weaves entirely in sense-free mathematical reasoning and becomes somewhat conscious that the phenomena he is exploring are also related to the forces responsible for that same reasoning, is already on the way to consciously probing the etheric forces. I think it's clear that Schrodinger was not all the way there, but I would say that he made it further than Levin (to the best of my knowledge of what Levin thinks) because, unlike the latter, he had the intuition that this 'order-from-order principle' must be related to what the ancients experienced as a spiritual reality, the realm of Divinities that is associated with our inner life of moral values which, in turn, make us in the 'image of God'. We can see that from the 'subjective' epilogue that he adds at the end of the book.

For the sake of argument, let me regard this as a fact, as I believe every unbiased biologist would, if there were not the well-known, unpleasant feeling about 'declaring oneself to be a pure mechanism'. For it is deemed to contradict Free Will as in warranted by direct introspection. But immediate experiences in themselves, however various and disparate they be, are logically incapable of contradicting each other. So let us see whether we cannot draw the correct, non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises: (i) My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature, (ii) Yet I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing its motions, of which I foresee the effects, that may be fateful and all-important, in which case I feel and take full responsibility for them. The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I -I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt 'I' -am the person, if any, who controls the 'motion of the atoms' according to the Laws of Nature. Within a cultural milieu (Kulturkreis) where certain conceptions (which once had or still have a wider meaning amongst other peoples) have been limited and specialized, it is daring to give to this conclusion the simple wording that it requires. In Christian terminology to say: 'Hence I am God Almighty' sounds both blasphemous and lunatic. But please disregard these connotations for the moment and consider whether the above inference is not the closest a biologist can get to proving also their God and immortality at one stroke. In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records to my knowledge date back some 2,500 years or more. From the early great Upanishads the recognition ATHMAN = BRAHMAN upheld in (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts. Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God). To Western ideology the thought has remained a stranger, in spite of Schopenhauer and others who stood for it and in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one not merely similar or identical; but they, as a rule, are emotionally too busy to indulge in clear thinking, which respect they very much resemble the mystic.

[Cleric K]

I am following your line of reasoning here. Do you think it makes a difference how we pose the question? In other words, we could pose it two different ways - (1) did Schrodinger's equation reflect the qualitative superposition that is characteristically experienced in the etheric space, which directs the transition of physical states 'from above'?, or (2) did Steiner's lecture with certain mathematical diffusion equations anticipate the Schrodinger equation IF the latter were to be raised from the flat quantitative space into the vertical qualitative space, i.e. the equation is taken more as a symbolic tool for pointing to qualities of the etheric space?

Let's look at simply “Did Steiner anticipate the Schrodinger equation”. I don’t have an answer but we can think from various directions. Please accept everything below not as some coherent argument but as topics that can stimulate further investigations.

One question could be: “If he anticipated that equation, what role would he have expected it to have for humanity?” Really – what would Steiner do with that equation if he had it in his hands?

A hint about the answer comes from the first lecture of the Light Course. There he starts with nicely differentiating the different activities that we do in science. He starts with arithmetics, geometry and kinematics. These three can be considered ideal because they can be completely studied in thought alone. But as soon as we want to apply them to Nature we have to go outside pure thought. We have to measure things against the perceptual domain. Thus we reach mechanics. That we can’t exercise purely in our mind. We must go to the perceptions to measure the actual weights and forces. Without that our thoughts won’t have any point of reference in the perceptual world and they could be quite arbitrary in relation to it.

He then proceeds to say that mechanical forces can be called central forces. This is how most of classical mechanics is thought about. For example, a charge produces a field from its center that spreads in all directions and can repel or attract other charges. Similar with gravity. Thus we have the classical Newtonian world of separate bits of matter that pull and repel each other through forces.

Then he says that this can never explain life. For life we must think in terms of peripheral forces. If we observe a few particles in a living creature, their movements can’t be understood solely by pulling and repelling of their central forces. Instead, we have to start moving to the Cosmic periphery and understand that each particle is influenced by the totality of that periphery. That’s why he says that for these forces calculation is no longer possible.

In the attempt, I should have to dismember the forces; one total force would have to be divided into ever smaller portions. Then I should get nearer and nearer the edge of the World: — the force would be completely sundered, and so would all my calculation. Here in effect it is not centric forces; it is cosmic, universal forces that are at work. Here, calculation ceases.

Once more, you have the leap — the leap, this time, from that in Nature which is not alive to that which is. In the investigation of Nature we shall only find our way aright if we know what the leap is from Kinematics to Mechanics, and again what the leap is from external, inorganic Nature into those realms that are no longer accessible to calculation, — where every attempted calculation breaks asunder and every potential is dissolved away. This second leap will take us from external inorganic Nature into living Nature, and we must realize that calculation ceases where we want to understand what is alive.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA320/En ... 23p01.html

I believe that this clear exposition in itself shows that any equation that has to do with the etheric forces could have no more than a pictorial value. It could only draw an Imaginative picture for us but it certainly isn’t meant to be used for calculation. That is a practical impossibility.

The reason why mechanics are successful is because we can more or less isolate these separate bits of matter that interact through central forces and we can utilize them in certain ways. Calculations are possible because we have to calculate some finite amount of centers that interact. But it is practically impossible to include in our calculation all the infinite periphery.

Here as a side note I would like to add my personal understanding. Actually Steiner himself hints at this a little below in the lecture where he says that there’s no force that is entirely central. Thus we shouldn’t imagine some ontological separation between living and purely mechanical forces. What I can add is based on our understanding that the lowest is at the same time the image of the most universal. We have mentioned this on several occasions. Just as we reach more universal archetypes as we go higher, all the way to the Trinity, so the deeper we go in sub-nature, the more things become the same, as if the highest Universal has been multiplied. In that sense we can conceive that a single particle is still the working of the whole Cosmic periphery. Yet the particles are images of the universal and effectively the whole periphery works in them in a very similar way. This gives the effect that we can take that particle in isolation and study its dynamics as if proceeding from its center. What we find in this way will more or less be applicable to all other particles of this kind too.

When however, particles are entangled in more complicated ensembles, this builds the physical hierarchy of molecules, organelles, cells, organs, organisms. Within these the various beings of the lesser hierarchies work in more specific ways. For example, a liver cell is animated by a different constellation of peripheral forces than, say, a brain cell. The organelles and proteins in these cells could be similar. They could be similar even among different species. These are influenced by more universal beings, usually the Spirits of Form. When we reach the particles, they are even more universal.

So this is my understanding why simple particles more or less lend themselves to calculation – because they seem to be universally the same everywhere and affect each other in the same way. It is much like in mathematics where we can calculate a limit where x tends to infinity and still get a nice bounded result for a given expression. For example:



At first glance it seems that if x is infinite we should also get something infinite. Yet the greater the x, the more the whole expression approaches 2. In a similar way, the simple particles are such conveniences which even though being the sum total of the whole infinite Cosmos, yet lend themselves to such an analysis as if we can take them individually and imagine that they interact through central forces alone.

In a living cell this is not quite possible. Even though the central forces are still there, since the highest Universal is always there, there’s a much more convoluted interplay of peripheral forces of the hierarchies which interfere in the most complicated ways. These we can no longer represent as simple central forces that act the same for each particle. Actually we may try to do that but we’ll have to produce very strange physics where each particle could vary the strength of its central forces, so to speak. These variations however, can’t be determined from the particles themselves. We simply have no means to measure the infinite interplay of the spiritual intents of the hierarchies in order to sum them up and determine what the apparent central force of a particle should be.

All of this speaks of the practical impossibility to calculate the appearances of living Nature. But there are also spiritual reasons which are simply due to the fact that the kind of thinking that calculates (and calculation is transition between thinking states based on the rules of mathematics) is no longer possible once the calculating intellect becomes concentrated and transforms into the nucleus around which Imaginative cognition develops (as mentioned in the Meditation thread). For the intellectual this seems like a kind of capitulation, that we simply don’t have enough faith in the intellect and give up. But in Imagination this infinite summation of spiritual intents becomes our immediate reality (like the churches in the same place in the Astral World lecture). Then it is clear that on the path of evolution we’ll leave behind our trying to calculate these infinite summations in the intellect but instead live consciously with them and contribute to them.

There are some more things that can be said about the way we can approach a truer experience of the ethers but let’s leave that for another time.

[AshvinP]

I am following your line of reasoning here. Do you think it makes a difference how we pose the question? In other words, we could pose it two different ways - (1) did Schrodinger's equation reflect the qualitative superposition that is characteristically experienced in the etheric space, which directs the transition of physical states 'from above'?, or (2) did Steiner's lecture with certain mathematical diffusion equations anticipate the Schrodinger equation IF the latter were to be raised from the flat quantitative space into the vertical qualitative space, i.e. the equation is taken more as a symbolic tool for pointing to qualities of the etheric space?

Let's look at simply “Did Steiner anticipate the Schrodinger equation”. I don’t have an answer but we can think from various directions. Please accept everything below not as some coherent argument but as topics that can stimulate further investigations.

One question could be: “If he anticipated that equation, what role would he have expected it to have for humanity?” Really – what would Steiner do with that equation if he had it in his hands?

A hint about the answer comes from the first lecture of the Light Course. There he starts with nicely differentiating the different activities that we do in science. He starts with arithmetics, geometry and kinematics. These three can be considered ideal because they can be completely studied in thought alone. But as soon as we want to apply them to Nature we have to go outside pure thought. We have to measure things against the perceptual domain. Thus we reach mechanics. That we can’t exercise purely in our mind. We must go to the perceptions to measure the actual weights and forces. Without that our thoughts won’t have any point of reference in the perceptual world and they could be quite arbitrary in relation to it.

He then proceeds to say that mechanical forces can be called central forces. This is how most of classical mechanics is thought about. For example, a charge produces a field from its center that spreads in all directions and can repel or attract other charges. Similar with gravity. Thus we have the classical Newtonian world of separate bits of matter that pull and repel each other through forces.

Then he says that this can never explain life. For life we must think in terms of peripheral forces. If we observe a few particles in a living creature, their movements can’t be understood solely by pulling and repelling of their central forces. Instead, we have to start moving to the Cosmic periphery and understand that each particle is influenced by the totality of that periphery. That’s why he says that for these forces calculation is no longer possible.

In the attempt, I should have to dismember the forces; one total force would have to be divided into ever smaller portions. Then I should get nearer and nearer the edge of the World: — the force would be completely sundered, and so would all my calculation. Here in effect it is not centric forces; it is cosmic, universal forces that are at work. Here, calculation ceases.

Once more, you have the leap — the leap, this time, from that in Nature which is not alive to that which is. In the investigation of Nature we shall only find our way aright if we know what the leap is from Kinematics to Mechanics, and again what the leap is from external, inorganic Nature into those realms that are no longer accessible to calculation, — where every attempted calculation breaks asunder and every potential is dissolved away. This second leap will take us from external inorganic Nature into living Nature, and we must realize that calculation ceases where we want to understand what is alive.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA320/En ... 23p01.html

I believe that this clear exposition in itself shows that any equation that has to do with the etheric forces could have no more than a pictorial value. It could only draw an Imaginative picture for us but it certainly isn’t meant to be used for calculation. That is a practical impossibility.

The reason why mechanics are successful is because we can more or less isolate these separate bits of matter that interact through central forces and we can utilize them in certain ways. Calculations are possible because we have to calculate some finite amount of centers that interact. But it is practically impossible to include in our calculation all the infinite periphery.

Cleric, thank you for returning to this question.

I hope that I didn’t give the impression that somehow Steiner was devising way to mathematically calculate the phenomena of living nature in a way that can be used directly for science and technology. That was not my intention and I think I sometimes take it for granted that others on this forum are aware of how impractical such a notion would be, but that isn’t always the wisest assumption and it is better to be more crystal-clear on these topics. In no way do I want to connote that we can rise to the experience of imaginative cognition through intellectual calculations. As you say, that is not only impractical but quite misaligned with the actual goals of spiritual evolution, i.e. to harmonize more and more with our experience in the spheres after death where all such intellectual thinking is left behind for living and creative participation in the perfection of souls and worlds.

It is always a great question to ask, "what is the purpose of this line of questioning and what can come from finding an answer to it?" Often times we may be seeking answers of out mere curiosity, or other shadowy motives, and the fact that answering the question cannot really lead to any productive spiritual results can reveal this to us. In this case, one purpose can be to open up avenues of thoughtful investigation that are not so much about calculating the etheric forces but about exploring our own conceptions of what the etheric forces are and how they relate to the physical spectrum or abstract conceptual spectrum that are the objects of mathematical studies. I think it’s clear that purpose has been realized on this thread to a significant extent, thanks mostly to your posts.

Besides that, however, I think answering the question of whether Steiner anticipated the Schrodinger equation in the affirmative could be little more than apologetic for Steiner and Anthroposophy when discussing the topic with scientifically minded people who may have a healthy skepticism of esoteric science. I imagine that was the main purpose for the author of that paper, although that’s just my speculation. Some people may be impressed that Steiner anticipated one of the key foundations of modern quantum mechanics, enough to spark their curiosity. Of course, if they have an unhealthy skepticism, rooted in stubborn prejudices and fear, then it will hardly make a difference. Answering the question could potentially also give us insight into what Schrodinger was probing in an unconscious or semi-conscious way.

Here as a side note I would like to add my personal understanding. Actually Steiner himself hints at this a little below in the lecture where he says that there’s no force that is entirely central. Thus we shouldn’t imagine some ontological separation between living and purely mechanical forces. What I can add is based on our understanding that the lowest is at the same time the image of the most universal. We have mentioned this on several occasions. Just as we reach more universal archetypes as we go higher, all the way to the Trinity, so the deeper we go in sub-nature, the more things become the same, as if the highest Universal has been multiplied. In that sense we can conceive that a single particle is still the working of the whole Cosmic periphery. Yet the particles are images of the universal and effectively the whole periphery works in them in a very similar way. This gives the effect that we can take that particle in isolation and study its dynamics as if proceeding from its center. What we find in this way will more or less be applicable to all other particles of this kind too.

When however, particles are entangled in more complicated ensembles, this builds the physical hierarchy of molecules, organelles, cells, organs, organisms. Within these the various beings of the lesser hierarchies work in more specific ways. For example, a liver cell is animated by a different constellation of peripheral forces than, say, a brain cell. The organelles and proteins in these cells could be similar. They could be similar even among different species. These are influenced by more universal beings, usually the Spirits of Form. When we reach the particles, they are even more universal.

So this is my understanding why simple particles more or less lend themselves to calculation – because they seem to be universally the same everywhere and affect each other in the same way. It is much like in mathematics where we can calculate a limit where x tends to infinity and still get a nice bounded result for a given expression. For example:



At first glance it seems that if x is infinite we should also get something infinite. Yet the greater the x, the more the whole expression approaches 2. In a similar way, the simple particles are such conveniences which even though being the sum total of the whole infinite Cosmos, yet lend themselves to such an analysis as if we can take them individually and imagine that they interact through central forces alone.

In a living cell this is not quite possible. Even though the central forces are still there, since the highest Universal is always there, there’s a much more convoluted interplay of peripheral forces of the hierarchies which interfere in the most complicated ways. These we can no longer represent as simple central forces that act the same for each particle. Actually we may try to do that but we’ll have to produce very strange physics where each particle could vary the strength of its central forces, so to speak. These variations however, can’t be determined from the particles themselves. We simply have no means to measure the infinite interplay of the spiritual intents of the hierarchies in order to sum them up and determine what the apparent central force of a particle should be.

All of this speaks of the practical impossibility to calculate the appearances of living Nature. But there are also spiritual reasons which are simply due to the fact that the kind of thinking that calculates (and calculation is transition between thinking states based on the rules of mathematics) is no longer possible once the calculating intellect becomes concentrated and transforms into the nucleus around which Imaginative cognition develops (as mentioned in the Meditation thread). For the intellectual this seems like a kind of capitulation, that we simply don’t have enough faith in the intellect and give up. But in Imagination this infinite summation of spiritual intents becomes our immediate reality (like the churches in the same place in the Astral World lecture). Then it is clear that on the path of evolution we’ll leave behind our trying to calculate these infinite summations in the intellect but instead live consciously with them and contribute to them.

There are some more things that can be said about the way we can approach a truer experience of the ethers but let’s leave that for another time.

These are great points and I think that your personal understanding aligns very well with my own conceptual exploration of spiritual reality. For instance, when contemplating Schrodinger’s statement:

So let us see whether we cannot draw the correct, non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises: (i) My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature

I first felt this was an unwarranted conclusion, but then realized he was being epistemically and phenomenologically honest. It is the same thing we meet with in occult science when it tells us that most people have little opportunity to work creatively on their physical-etheric bodies at this stage of evolution. The universal forces at work in these bodies, namely those of the 1st and 2nd hierarchies, are experienced as iron laws of karmic necessity at our current stage. The forces at work in the astral body, in contrast, are karmic laws that have become much more pliable to our creative spiritual activity. That also aligns nicely with the way you characterize the nature of ‘particles’ as embedding the highest forces of the whole Cosmic periphery.

In our time one of the key prejudices to confront is the feeling that our physical body (and implicitly the etheric body) belongs to “me” and we are therefore in control of it. When we simply reflect on the nature of our physical movements, however, it becomes clear that these are much more mysterious to our consciousness than we normally think. For example, when we have the intention to move our arm, this simply translates into the final result without us needing to micromanage the intricate process by which intentions become movements. We don’t need to direct all the various atoms and molecules along the nerve fibers and muscles and so forth.

When we reflect on these things enough, it becomes clear that the only place where we have direct creative responsibility is at the tip of our thinking activity. Everything else presents to us as governed by mysterious forces that we can only dimly model in our concepts, the latter leaving huge gaps of knowledge that fail to provide explanations for even basic aspects of experience like the creation of life, the emergence of consciousness, or the interaction between consciousness/soul and body. It is most important to not only recognize these realities conceptually, but to stir our inner life so that we can discern them experientially as well. We can pay attention to how this gradient manifests in our day to day experience.

As a side note, as I contemplate the Schrodinger epilogue more, it becomes even more remarkable to me that Schrodinger took this phenomenological reality of the physical-etheric spectrum – the iron law of karmic necessity we experience - which most modern thinkers would use as a means of steering towards conclusions of mindless mechanism and determinism, and instead steered towards the intuition that our higher “I” – “that encompasses all conscious minds who have said or felt ‘I’” - must be in some way participating in the unfolding of natural laws, thereby preserving metaphysical Free Will. It makes me think that if he had encountered some of Steiner's relevant lectures at the time, he would have felt right at home in them.

Returning to the previous train of thought on what you described for the ‘particle’, it also aligns well with Steiner’s discussion of the ‘occult atom’ and how it embeds the entire intentional plan for rounds of evolution. That is something I remember really confusing me when I first came across it, and I mostly just brushed by it. What you have written here really puts it in a more clear context for me.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA093/En ... 21p01.html

Let us follow all that subsequently happens. Now we must first become acquainted with a particular plan, namely the plan for our earth. Let us contemplate the fourth Round of the earth in which we now are. It is intended to humanise the mineral kingdom. Think how human understanding has already transformed the mineral world, for example, Cologne Cathedral and modern technology. Our humanity has the task of transforming the whole mineral world into a pure work of art. Electricity already points for us into the occult depths of matter.

When, out of his inner being, man has restructured the mineral world, the end of our earth will then have arrived; the earth is then at the end of its physical evolution. The particular plan by which the mineral world will be reshaped exists in the Lodge of the Masters. This plan is already finished; so that if one studies it one can see what is yet to come by way of wonderful buildings, wonderful machines, and so on. When the earth has reached the end of the physical Globe [state] the whole earth will have an inner structure, an inner articulation, given to it by man himself, so that it will have become a work of art, as planned by the Masters of the White Lodge. That accomplished, then the whole earth will pass over into its astral state. That is something like when a plant begins to fade; the physical vanishes, everything goes into the astral. In passing into the astral world, the physical gradually contracts, becomes a shrinking kernel encircled by the astral, going over into the Rupa state and then the Arupa state, until it vanishes in a sleeplike condition.

What then is left of the physical? When the earth has passed over into the Arupa state, there is then still a quite condensed tiny imprint of the whole physical evolution of what was devised in the Masters' plan; like a tiny miniature version of what the mineral earth once was. That is what goes across [from the physical]; the physical is there only as this tiny miniature version of previous evolution, but the Arupa is large. When it passes over out of the Devachan state, it multiplies itself outwardly into innumerable similar things. And when the earth again passes back into the physical state it is then composed of countless tiny globules, each of which is a print of what the earth previously was. All these globules are however differently arranged, although sharing a common derivation. Thus the new physical earth of the fifth Round 5 will consist of innumerable tiny parts, each of which contains the purpose of the mineral world which the Masters have in plan form in their Lodge. Every atom of the fifth Round [of earth evolution] will contain the whole plan of the Masters. Today the Masters are working on the atom of the fifth Round. Everything which precedes, in humanity, is compressed into a result, that is the atom of the fifth Round.

Therefore, if we examine the atom in its present form and then go back in the Akashic Record, we will then see that today's atom is undergoing a process of growth. It is growing more and more, it is becoming more and more separated [Gap in text] ... and contains the interweaving forces of mankind from the third Round of evolution. In that we can consider the plan of the Masters for the third Earth Round. What is at first entirely external becomes quite inward, and in the smallest atom we see mirrored the plans of the Masters. These tiny particular plans are nothing else than a piece of the whole plan for humanity. If one thus considers that the plan of one Round is the atom of the next Round, then one can see the pattern of the great universal plan.

[Federica]

Federica, thank you for your elaboration. Yes, the points that you have mentioned about superposition and the half-silvered mirror are taken for already understood in Sabine's video.

Now, the 'bomb' in this experiment is used only to make it more dramatic. As you noticed, it's the same as simply placing any barrier which can absorb the photon and thus acts as an observer/collapser. A live bomb is simply something which stands on the way of the photon and can absorb it. This absorption which can trigger an explosion is only for drama. A dead bomb is the absence of a barrier. I think this part is somewhat confusing because my first guess would be that a dead bomb would still absorb the photon but will not explode. It turns out that a dead bomb is the same as the absence of a bomb or that it is transparent for photons. I don't think Sabine made that clear enough either.

There's a fun cartoonish game that exemplifies quantum optical effects. Many famous experiments are modelled there. Here's the bomb experiment.

The presence of the bomb can be controlled with the Y/N switch. The link above opens the experiment in 'beam' mode where light looks like continuous laser and it shows what percentage of its energy reaches where. There's also 'waves' mode (although I think it would have been more appropriate to call it 'photons' mode) which can be chosen through the slider in the upper left corner. Now with the 'play' button, single photons can be emitted.

So we have two cases. One is:


I understand why you say that the above is not weird. Actually it's the more understandable of the two because we can follow it completely with classical logic. We imagine a single photon emitted. The first half-silvered mirror sends it with 50% in each direction. Thus 50% of the time the bomb is triggered. The other 50% it goes on the other path and unsurprisingly is split once more in the upper mirror, landing with 25% in each detector. We don't even need quantum science here. We can do with completely classical and local reasoning.

The other case is actually the weirder:



It is not that weird if we imagine light as continuous energy beams/waves (not made of discrete particles). In that case we imagine that the energy is smoothly split in two at the first half-mirror, then recombines and interferes at the second. The two beams that go upwards at the upper half-mirror (not drawn on the above illustration but they would be the reflected upper beam and the part of lower beam that passes through) are out of phase thus they interfere destructively. They become out of phase because passing through the half-mirror (not reflecting) shifts phase with 90°. It is as if the wave is slowed down while it passes through the glass. Here's a visual cue about what phases mean.



On the other hand, reflecting at the surface (without entering the glass, this holds for both half- and full silvered mirrors) shifts the phase 180°. If we count the reflections/refractions, for the upper beam we have 180° at the first half-mirror (because it is only reflected), 180° at the full mirror in the upper-left and 180° at the other half-mirror. So we have 180° + 180° + 180° = 360° + 180°. But 360° is full rotation so it brings the phase to its initial state and is the same as 0° - not shifted at all. Thus effectively, the upper beam arrives at the upper detector at 180° phase.

The lower beam passes through the lower half-mirror getting shifted 90° as it passes through the glass, then it is shifted 180° in the mirror down right and finally shifts another 90° while passing through the glass of the upper half-mirror. Thus we have 90° + 180° + 90° = 360° or effectively that beam doesn't have phase shift. The final result is that the beams are 180° out of phase and thus they interfere destructively.

Analogously, for the right detector. For the upper beam we have 180° + 180° + 90° (since it passes through the glass of the upper right half-mirror). The final phase shift is 90°. The lower beam has 90° + 180° + 180° so it is also at 90° phase. That's why both beams are in phase at the right detector.

Now all this is understandable through the reasoning above but there's one problem. The above reasoning would suggest that the detector at the right should receive only 50% of the initial power of the laser. Let's follow it again: the first half-mirror splits the beam in two each carrying 50% of the initial power (thus the two split beams are dimmer). If we think about the two split beams separately, they are once gain split at the upper half-mirror, so they become even dimmer (25%). If we now take again the two initially split beams together, it seems that we have 2x25% that go up and 2x25% that go right. Those that go up are out of phase and annihilate each other. What goes right is in phase so adds up to 25% + 25% = 50%. So we should be left only with the 50% energy that goes right, right? Yet the experiments show otherwise. The whole 100% of the power goes right. This is already quite difficult to comprehend classically. It certainly doesn't make sense if we imagine it with water waves. It's like the energy of the waves that annihilate each other is magically transferred to the other waves that interfere constructively.

But things become even more strange when the intensity of the laser is lowered to such an extent that only individual packets of energy (photons) are emitted at a time. This is what really shatters our classical intuition. If we imagine a photon as some energy ball that travels along one or the other path, there could be no notion of interference (there's nothing to interfere with). Photons would have to land in either of the two detectors with 50% chance.

So if we reason classically with waves, it seems that we should find 50% powered laser in the right detector (the other 50% energy are lost in the beams that go up and annihilate themselves). If we reason classically through particles sent one by one we should see each particle arriving at one of the detectors with 50% chance (no energy is lost in this case). But in reality, neither of this is observer experimentally. No matter if we have beams or emit photons one by one, in all cases 100% of the energy is received at the detector on the right. As said, this is somewhat disturbing when we think about continuous beams but it is downright illogical when thinking about individual particles. If photons are balls that travel through one or another path, what prevents a single photon to ever land in the upper detector?

If we contemplate something like the above and allow it to work its way to its full consequences, we should realize how much of our classical intuition (based on throwing apples, for example) is not valid in these domains. The above setup is effectively similar to the double-slit experiment for which Richard Feynman said:

"a phenomenon which is impossible […] to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics].

In the light of all the above, I agree that Sabine got it somewhat upside-down. She takes for a clear fact that if there are no barriers, light should go 100% in the right detector. Then she thinks how when a barrier is placed, 25% of the time a photon will be detected in the upper detector. This isn't weird if we think classically. It's what is to be expected if there was no quantum mechanics but only photons flying as apples.

So to summarize. Let's say that we don't know if there's a barrier at the upper beam. If we think classically, when we emit photons one by one we can imagine them as apples flying through specific paths. If we receive a photon at the upper detector this doesn't really tell us anything about whether there's a barrier on the path. In the photons-as-apples world (thrown one by one, thus no interference effects) we can always expect some photon to be detected at the upper detector. If there's barrier we'll receive only 50% of the photons that go through the non-barriered path and which are further split to 25%-25% by the upper half mirror. Half of the time we'll receive nothing at the detectors because it would have been absorbed by the barrier/triggered the bomb. If there's no barrier, then we'll always detect something at one of the detectors with 50% chance. Thus in a classical world we can know that there's a barrier only if we don't receive anything at the detectors (thus the bomb must have been triggered).

The weirdness comes when we already know that these photons act according to quantum rules (confirmed experimentally, not simply a floating theory). Then we know that without barrier we have 100% at the right detector.

If we ever detect something at the upper detector and we hold on to our quantum understanding then we know, it is guaranteed, that there's a barrier. This is the weirdness. That a photon arriving at the upper detector is only possible if there is something which could have absorbed the photon, although it didn't (in this particular case).

So in a nutshell, the bomb experiment is somewhat convoluted because it presents as a mystery something which appears as such only when we have already gotten used to the initial mystery (of which Feynman speaks) and the 100% going right. When we have become numb to that initial mystery and have accepted is as a matter of fact, then in the bomb experiment it simply reemerges in a more dramatic form and we forget that it is no more mysterious than the first mystery that we have gotten numb to. But it is essentially the same fundamental mystery of which Feynman speaks. And of course, it only looks like a mystery because for a long time we've become used only to thrown apples that fly in specific paths. We have forgotten that, for example, in the astral world there could be 'two churches in the same place'.

Cleric, thank you so much for all the patient clarifications in your post!
Now I see how I hadn’t fully understood the ins and outs of the experiment. Is it possible that the simulator disregards the case of single photons, since even at the lowest photon intensity, the beam splitter still splits the ‘discrete’ amount of light into two ‘things’ that end up interfering (which might be the reason why they call it “waves” mode, not “photons” mode)?




In this connection, on the planar intellectual-perceptual plane, I wonder if a photon can be technically split? In the simulator they make it split and they make it interfere with itself at the other edge of the box, if I am getting it right. But with google I don’t find answers that sound clear-cut for my level of understanding of these things.

Now trying to seize your suggestion and unmask the ingrained "flying apples" understanding of light, I consider your post the segue to these earlier episodes you wrote on the true nature of light: part one, part two. One could say that part one is relatively ‘easy’. But part two then… There you say:

If we understand all this we can begin using our thoughts in the proper way – as pointers to higher lucidity. If we simply stare at a source of light, a filter and a detector, it will be nearly impossible to approach the reality of light. It would be better to take our own inner experience of color as one pole and then try to think of the ways this experience is agitated. As the other pole, there’s no better choice but to think of the Sun. So we have our very simple experimental setup. We experience color sensations and think about the true nature of the Sun.

I have tried to integrate the above, and all that follows, as carefully as I could, and to meditate on expanding the now to 8 minutes (or simply on expanding the now between the two poles). I am unable to find an orientation that tells me whether or not I'm on the right track. With the Caduceus, there's the interference of Scaligero's thought of the white and black snakes, Lucifer and Ahriman, and I cant’t realize the symbolism you indicated (the interconnectedness of physical and spiritual). I am little more mobile focusing on what you called "Solar intervals", where I try to ask what an interval is, out of space and out of time, beyond the Earthly “spacetime intervals”. This leads me to rather obvious ideas, such as uninterrupted wisdom, uninterrupted love, and uninterrupted becoming - in the sense of smooth gradients of each, that I can aspire to realize.

These qualities of continuous wisdom, continuous love, and intentional becoming, that we’re called to abandon ourselves into, appear like the opposite of interference? It makes me wonder if interference - and those angular wave shifts that shape interference, as you explained - are what light has to do on the Earthly plane, in order to bridge duality, to keep the space-time fabric of physicality coherent? And that maybe at the core of the Solar Being, the thought of interference loses all reality. If this is meaningful, the true nature of light may have nothing of the quality of interference, which is only the self-reflection of Earthly nature in the encompassing smoothness and unity of light.

From this perspective, in the true nature of light, intervals are the qualitative, unbroken Christ impulses of wisdom, love and karma/becoming. Could the Earthly phenomenon of light be seen as the one pole we start from, the one edge of the bridge that allows us to aspire to connect with those divine qualities? In this sense, light could be understood as an ever-present helping hand that comes down to our entangled state and guides us up, orthogonally, towards the Sun state. Attuning oneself to this State would mean letting oneself be attracted to the eternal qualities of the “Solar intervals”, sacrificing the filters of the intellectual craving (thinking), the egoism (feeling) and the comforting/infantilizing hand of ineluctability/destiny (will). Not sure if there’s anything worth recycling from these musings…


Now coming back to the experiment and its weirdness:

If we ever detect something at the upper detector and we hold on to our quantum understanding then we know, it is guaranteed, that there's a barrier. This is the weirdness. That a photon arriving at the upper detector is only possible if there is something which could have absorbed the photon, although it didn't (in this particular case).

I would say that the weirdness you highlight here is only real if, after holding onto the quantum understanding, as you say, the quantum physicist abandons it the moment she tries to interpret the results. I mean, if the scenario without bomb - 100% of energy coming to the detector on the right - is not weird (since one has gotten used to QM), then the fact that the photon’s point of reception tells something about the path it did not take should also not be weird. It’s only weird from a Newtonian perspective, correct? But as long as one is expecting non-locality, as a Q-physicist, why be shocked by a photon not behaving like an apple? In this sense, it seems to me that there's only one weirdness, and this is non-locality. The wave function itself is the weirdness, that is, the possibility of interference, the fact that in the absence of a bomb, all the light goes to the right detector.

What to say about this weirdness? Trying to become as aware as possible of the classical gestures that shape photons into flying apples, maybe one could say that the idea of photon intensity, or quantity of light, only serves our intellectual thought alignments, while spiritual light can’t be broken into intervals, only our Earthly thoughts about light can. Interference - probabilistic manifestation - would then be more like the nature of spacetime manifestation, once pervaded by light, rather than the true nature of light itself?

I realize this is not the beginning of an explanation of how all light ends in the right detector… Cleric, I know these attempts are probably well off track and funny, but my hope is that you will acknowledge the effort and write chapter three on the understanding of light
.

[Federica]

Federica,

The way you are characterizing it here, I think the 'disagreement' turns out to be entirely a semantic issue. If I had said he was "dimly conceptualizing that there is a lawful force at work, not identical to known physical laws, to account for the phenomena of life, which esoteric science has already discovered as the 'etheric forces'", you would probably agree. As it happens, I use the phrase "probing the etheric forces" to mean practically the same thing. I agree with you that the intuition is still cemented in the planar intellect, but perhaps that it had loosened some for Schrodinger to encompass a more mysterious element.

I think that, like the QM scientists in Cleric's last post who get accustomed to the Feynman mystery, we can often forget the sheer mysteriousness of this 'etheric force' once we get accustomed to it through spiritual science. We could ask ourselves, before encountering spiritual science, did we have any concrete intuition, that could be expressed in clear and lucid concepts, that the basic phenomena of life should be explained through a lawful (not supernatural or miraculous) mechanism that is entirely unknown to physical science? Schrodinger did and that is a remarkable thing. From the standpoint of spiritual science and the concrete evolution of consciousness, however, it's not so remarkable, because we understand exactly why Schrodinger and many other thinkers were inspired by these concrete intuitions at this particular time. We know that it all relates back to events on the spiritual plane at the end of the 19th century that planted the seeds for imaginative cognition.

As we can see from many of Steiner's lectures, a thinker who weaves entirely in sense-free mathematical reasoning and becomes somewhat conscious that the phenomena he is exploring are also related to the forces responsible for that same reasoning, is already on the way to consciously probing the etheric forces. I think it's clear that Schrodinger was not all the way there, but I would say that he made it further than Levin (to the best of my knowledge of what Levin thinks) because, unlike the latter, he had the intuition that this 'order-from-order principle' must be related to what the ancients experienced as a spiritual reality, the realm of Divinities that is associated with our inner life of moral values which, in turn, make us in the 'image of God'. We can see that from the 'subjective' epilogue that he adds at the end of the book.

The way you are characterizing it here, I think the 'disagreement' turns out to be entirely a semantic issue.

I'm glad it is so, Ashvin!

We could ask ourselves, before encountering spiritual science, did we have any concrete intuition, that could be expressed in clear and lucid concepts, that the basic phenomena of life should be explained through a lawful (not supernatural or miraculous) mechanism that is entirely unknown to physical science? Schrodinger did and that is a remarkable thing.

The answer for my part is, absolutely not and I trust the impression you have gained from the book. As said, I haven’t read it. From the last quote you've shared, I find the indigo in particular to confirm your impression:

the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).

[AshvinP]

This interview with Zajonc nicely complements what Cleric wrote previously about the difference in our intuitive understanding of how reality behaves between the classical worldview of physics (the 'photons-as-apples world') and the quantum mechanical one. Particularly the fact that the latter reintroduces the role of the thinking observer as an integral aspect of research and experimentation. It leads us to confront our own lawful participation in structuring the phenomenal world we observe and study. The interview also discusses the need for an ethical foundation for new creative faculties that can be explored through mathematical scientific reasoning.

[Federica]

In other words, the essence of mathematical thinking at the spiritual level seems to be connected with articulation of reality through unity of being in relation to the existence of separate units, while mathematical declination in the decohered world manifests as counting, adding, and other forms of interaction among units, in multiplicity and in worldly transformation in time. Maybe mathematical thinking can be seen as a scaffolding that conveys spiritual hierarchical organization to the level of intellectual thinking and thought-images and mediates between the two?

Federica,

It is probably useful to first start with the question, what is thinking in general? As you know, thinking activity contains both a separating and an integrating function - it is the portal through which unified spiritual processes separate into distinct concepts-percepts for isolated analysis and also the portal through which those distinct concept-percepts are reintegrated into laws, archetypes, and principles, with the benefit of the new relationships discerned from the unique decohered perspective.

Mathematical thinking is a subset of this general thinking in which, as Cleric says, the rules or logic by which thinking transforms is explored. In that sense, it only becomes possible in its abstract modern form when thinking is able to observe itself (consciousness soul) and thereby formalize and predict its own activity. So here we are already lifting out from thinking governed only by the transformation of sense-perceptions to a more sense-free thinking, where concepts arrive from supersensible realms. But if we start with certain intuitive spatialized assumptions about the rules through which states of being can transform, then our mathematical thinking will be constrained to that spatial domain. If our intuitions can loosen from such rigid constraints, however, our mathematical thinking can become more imaginative and explore the transformation of states of being in time, independent of space (or in 'hyper-dimensional' space).

But, to be clear, this can only go so far as long we remain trying to model our thinking states using those same thinking states. Eventually, we need to surrender to the experience of the thinking activity itself, to intuitively sense the qualitative depth structure that animates our current states. Then our quantitative mathematical thinking is brought to a higher level from which it can really awaken to what it was always doing.

Ashvin,

Thanks for all these adds! I will comment on the second part separately. Here I would remain on the first part and make sure I really get it. Yes sure, mathematical thinking is a subset of thinking.

Mathematical thinking is a subset of this general thinking in which, as Cleric says, the rules or logic by which thinking transforms is explored. In that sense, it only becomes possible in its abstract modern form when thinking is able to observe itself (consciousness soul) and thereby formalize and predict its own activity. So here we are already lifting out from thinking governed only by the transformation of sense-perceptions to a more sense-free thinking, where concepts arrive from supersensible realms.

Mm. In relation to the indigo, I’ve read the first part again, and I believe I understand that, yes, concepts may arrive from supersensible realms (although they could also come from perceptions) but most importantly, in abstract math the rules of transformation of states are invented, which is why they are predictable. In themselves, they constitute the state, in abstraction from the larger thinking context in which they are imagined to take place.

But if we start with certain intuitive spatialized assumptions about the rules through which states of being can transform...

I understood that these intuitive assumptions, rather than about the rules of transformation (those are free and creative, like in a new algebra) but about a general thinking background that shapes the functioning of the arbitrary rules?

But, to be clear, this can only go so far as long we remain trying to model our thinking states using those same thinking states. Eventually, we need to surrender to the experience of the thinking activity itself, to intuitively sense the qualitative depth structure that animates our current states. Then our quantitative mathematical thinking is brought to a higher level from which it can really awaken to what it was always doing.

This would be what Cleric called pure math, where we need to do the opposite than in abstract math. We submit to, not only higher concepts, but also higher rules of transformation that are entirely external to our activity. So we put our invention on pause and enter the experience of a completely given reality of (higher) thinking gestures. I was attempting to express that in terms of scaffolding.

Then our quantitative mathematical thinking is brought to a higher level from which it can really awaken to what it was always doing.

Abstract mathematics was always doing that same experience of higher landscape, but unconsciously, because focused on creating new worlds, as if out of pure creativity, in reality under constraint. In other words, from abstract to pure, the focus of the will is elevated, from the rules of transformation to the activity itself of ruling transformation, where the objective reality of mathematical relations, needs to be recognized.

Is there anything we can say about the interaction of mathematical thinking with feeling?

I think the first step is to simply get a living feel for what is being discussed. So when Cleric says - "Imagine we take two baskets of apples and third empty one... What we have performed with our will is practically an operation which we can call addition." - we should actually live through this experience in our imagination. We usually take for granted that simply interpreting the meaning of the words is sufficient to understand the essence of what is being referred to, and then we start deriving conclusions from that surface meaning. Especially when it seems like such a simple set of observations and mathematical things we learned in grade school. But instead, we can assume the opposite - we have little idea what these words are pointing to and therefore we need to carefully live through each step, like we are curious school children learning about these things for the first time. We should trust that the lived through experiences themselves will become our teacher when the time is right, which could be the next minute, the next day, or the next week. Their deeper meaning will shine through when we are able to release our need to grasp at that deeper meaning.

Yes, needed reminder to remain vigilant of laziness...