Steiner and Schrodinger's Equation

[Federica]

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.

Ouaah...
That's absolutely brilliant thanks for digging this up, Ashvin!
The basics of Anthroposophy are presented in such a perfectly limpid, simple way that even the most stubborn realist would have a hard time turning this down. Also a great idea, I think, to boldly refer to meditation in terms of "contemplative inquiry", elevating it to the level of necessity for scientists, and demystifying its persisting aura (in the eye of the average materialist) of mysticism, new age, etc. And it's noteworthy that the need for an ethical foundation for contemplative inquiry arises from within the work, in his view, rather than from an external code. Fantastic!

[Cleric K]

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.

This ‘splitting’ in the visualization is not a mistake. It is neither really ‘splitting’. You can think of it as if the two alternative histories of the same photon are visualized simultaneously.

In fact, the logic of the ‘quantum game’ (I use this in the wider sense) is very clear and not that complicated. All the complications come when we continuously try to fit that logic into our classical intuitions.

I’ll try to make this a little more accessible. I remember back in the day, CD-ROMs were just becoming widespread and computer games were already taking advantage of it. Those who were into computers at that time remember that the most widespread portable medium was the 3.5” floppy diskette. Its capacity was 1.44MB. In contrast, a CD-ROM’s capacity was an incredible 650MB. This allowed game developers to include much more graphical material in the game and especially video. Today it’s hard to appreciate this since we have youtube in our pocket but then to see motion video on a computer screen was something very exotic.

I remember one game that took full advantage of these storage possibilities and made a game that was entirely video based. It was called “A Fork In the Tale”.



Basically it’s a first-person video adventure where you get various clickable choices on the screen through which you decide how the story proceeds. In this way the story continuously branches into alternative scenarios (it’s said that there are 50 different game endings). That’s nothing exciting in itself – many games have had non-linear plots. But I thought about the fact that all these alternative paths must be filmed even though the player runs only through a single branch of this bifurcating tree.

Another example is the gamebooks which were very popular in my country in the nineties. These were books with numbered chapters where you start from 1 and after you read the story of the chapter some choice has to be made. For example “If you want to enter the forest turn to 34. If you want to go through the mountains go to 87.” The structure of these gamebooks could be represented graphically as branching tree (although, often branches could recombine or send you back):



Now it turns out that quantum mechanics is all about tracing all these possible branches that a system can transform through.

In classical mechanics we follow a single branch. In fact, we don’t think about it as a branch but simply as the arrow of time. Then we try to understand how at each frame along that arrow, objects affect each other through their central forces and thus transform into the next frame.

In quantum mechanics every possible interaction between elements is a different ‘fork in the tale’. Actually the web quantum game draws that forking tree for us in the upper right corner:



The above is the tree of the bomb experiment. The dot on the left is the branch leading to explosion. Then below we have the two other alternative branches – detection at the right or top.

The whole secret of learning to think quantum mechanically is to always keep in mind these alternative branches, these alternative possible paths through which the system can evolve.

For this reason, if we imagine that the photon splits at the first half-silvered mirror, we’re already misled. Nothing splits. There’s only one photon. The ‘splitting’ is in fact the visualization of the two possible branches in the tale that the photon can take. They are simply displayed simultaneously. This would be analogous to reading the gamebook and when you turn to chapter 34 to see also chapter 87 superimposed.

And now comes the really weird part. These alternative branches are not independent. They interfere. Actually, this is probably a point that may not have been sufficiently clarified in my previous posts. If we think in classical terms and imagine the photon as an apple, and we have only a classical arrow of time (no alternative branches), then we indeed imagine as if the apple is split in half at the half-mirror, the two halves fly on their own, then meet at the second mirror, collide there, merge again in a whole apple and because of some weird mathematics it can go only one of the ways. But this is not what interferes. The photon never splits. What interferes are the alternative possible histories of the photon.

Think how unintuitive from a classical perspective this is. Imagine that you’re going to the mall. You can go through the park or through the city square. You choose the former. You arrive at the mall and spontaneously decide to go to the store on the right to buy a new dress. Now most people would laugh if they are told that their possible alternative of going through the city square would arrive at the exact same moment at the mall and that the interference of these alternatives makes it 100% certain that you go to the store on the right, instead of another one.

Of course, I’m giving this picture only to amplify the QM example, I’m not saying that we should reason about our human actions in precisely this way. Yet spiritual perception shows that something similar indeed happens. Ashvin quoted how we have to be attentive for all the things that do not happen to us.

So it is crucial to understand that what interferes is not different photons. As a matter of fact, different photons are fully transparent to each other, they pass through each other. What interferes are the complex amplitudes assigned to the different branches that the whole system can take. If there’s a second photon in the system everything becomes more complicated. In the analogy, if you leave your home with a friend now there are 4 possible branches – 1/ you both go through the park 2/ you both go through the city square 3/ you go through the park, your friend through the square 4/ you go through the square, your friend through the park. Now all these branches have their corresponding complex amplitudes and can interfere. This hints at the reason why calculating quantum systems is feasible only for relatively simple configurations. Otherwise, as the elements increase, the possible ‘forks in the tale’ increase exponentially. This is why even with our supercomputers it is not presently possible to make a full simulation of a more complex molecule (let alone a whole cell).

Now if we understand this, we can think about Steiner and the Schrodinger equation. All these things that we described above, these branching alternatives were not at all thought about at the time Schrodinger wrote down the equation. He started much more modestly. De Broglie proposed the wave-particle dualism and Schrodinger came up with an equation through which it is possible to calculate the spectrum of that wave, so to speak (not unlike the way we can calculate the possible modes of vibration of a guitar string. The requirement that the string must be stationary at its end filters out only the compatible wavelengths/frequencies out of the infinitely many possible). Interference of alternative paths that a system can take is not something that was initially obvious from the equation in its original form. Even the interpretation of the squared modulus of the complex amplitude as probability came later by Max Born – Schrodinger didn’t know what those ‘waves’ which his equation described, really were.

With all this I want to show that there were many additional developments that led to the later understanding of quantum theory as a superposition of alternative branches of the tale. These things don’t just pop out if we put an imaginary coefficient in front of the diffusion equation. They are not even particularly obvious from the start. It is for this reason that I lean towards Steiner using the imaginary coefficient as a metaphor for a third quality in addition to positive and negative. Expecting that such an equation has the potential to become a model for interfering alternative branches of the tale is quite a long shot.

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…

Hopefully, the considerations above give another way of thinking about interference. Probably for you interference symbolizes conflict and opposition and that’s why you expect that at the higher levels everything is much more smoothed out. There’s no doubt that in the higher orders, the Cosmic metamorphoses are much more integrated and harmonized but we can still conceive of interference. It’s just that we don’t have to necessarily associate this with pain and conflict.

Think of it thus. Even in a much more harmonious state of existence, as long as there’s temporality, there’s still flow through a specific evolutionary tale. There are infinitely many other possible tales and in a certain sense they all exist simultaneously in the Eternal. Our tale could be experienced only if somehow analyzed out of the Eternal. In a sense, from our relative perspective it’s probability is high, while the probability of all the other tales is low.

Seen in this way, this interference is not to be seen as painful conflict but the Divine Technique through which the Eternal potential can be ‘delaminated’, so to speak, such that individual evolutionary tales can be experienced which lead back to the Eternal (where we can assume all the infinite potential integrates as an eternal simultaneous whole).

I realize that stated in this way it all sounds very abstract but I believe that thinking through these things can stimulate our higher Imagination when taken in the right way. There’s no doubt that in the far future we won’t be talking about interfering wavefunctions, potentials and alternative timelines. Then we’ll simply live intuitively through the spiritual reality, without trying to make a carbon copy in thoughts. But for the time being, at least in my personal experience, these lines of thought could be tremendously fruitful and in many ways act as scaffolds around which actual experiences could coalesce.

Now coming back to the experiment and its weirdness:

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
.

Once again, in the light of our present discussion, the weird part should be more clear too. First, non-locality in itself doesn’t draw the full picture. There could be non-locality also in a world that develops along a single time arrow. This simply means objects can affect each other at a distance, without propagating effects through space no faster than the speed of light. For example, when we generate a pair of entangled photons and send them in opposite directions light years away, and Alice measures one, this instantaneously affects the state of Bob’s photon. This is non-locality. But notice that we don’t really need to involve alternative branches here.

The reason Sabine finds the bomb experiment weird is because through its dramatic effect, it reminds us that these alternative branches can’t be easily ignored. It’s not that something simply passes its effects non-locally. It seems the Universe should somehow know that in one of the alternative paths an explosion is imminent. Here ‘know’ is used in the ordinary materialistic sense. It simply means that the alternative path is something real within the Universe.

It is weird because for the most part physicists have taken quantum mechanics as some statistical quirk (Einstein surely took that position). Our immediate sensory experience is that we traverse a single linear tale. Alternatives seem to exist only in our fantasy. Summing up the amplitudes of these alternatives is seen by many just as some strange statistical way of calculating probabilities. Even today few would readily conceive that these alternatives could be something real. But the bomb experiment places things in such a way that it seems that the exploding alternative is something real and it interferes with our alternative.

It is called weird because scientists are not entirely sure what to make out of it. Of course, all these theories are in the end just thoughts. They can’t ‘prove’ that there are indeed branches of reality. But still, at the present state of the theory it is difficult to interpret it in terms of a single timeline. And since most scientists, like Sabine, hold on to whatever is sensorily real (thus the single timeline) they won’t jump out and say “... thus alternative timelines are real.” Instead, they keep an indeterminate position and say “That’s weird.”

This reminds me of the time when we made a lucid dreaming metaphor. We said that that the path to lucidity can most easily be threaded if we pay attention to the contradictions. Then instead of simply accepting them as they are, we follow their threads which in themselves will lead us to higher synthesis. Now this QM example is more convoluted but nevertheless reminded me of this. It is as if the scientists encountered a dream contradiction, yet choose not to follow its threads. Instead they say “That’s weird” and continue dreaming on their way, gradually becoming numb to it.

Again, I’m not saying that this particular experiment should make us say “So alternative timelines are real!” In a way they are. But the whole matter is about in what way exactly. If we simply fantasize timelines in our intellect we won’t go too far either.
In any case, what Ashvin said, certainly holds true – that in this dream state we have grown numb not only to the mystery in scientific experiments but also in everything around us. Which reminds of something else. A wise clown once said “If magic is all we’ve ever known, then it’s easy to miss what really goes on.”

PS: I didn't address the more serious questions about the nature of light as spiritual experience. We'll have to continue with that in the future.

[AshvinP]

Which reminds of something else. A wise clown once said “If magic is all we’ve ever known, then it’s easy to miss what really goes on.”

"F*in magnets, how do they work??"

This is great!

[AshvinP]

With all this I want to show that there were many additional developments that led to the later understanding of quantum theory as a superposition of alternative branches of the tale. These things don’t just pop out if we put an imaginary coefficient in front of the diffusion equation. They are not even particularly obvious from the start. It is for this reason that I lean towards Steiner using the imaginary coefficient as a metaphor for a third quality in addition to positive and negative. Expecting that such an equation has the potential to become a model for interfering alternative branches of the tale is quite a long shot.

Cleric,

Your posts so far have been very illuminating on the nature of QM research and its metaphorical relation to spiritual reality, regardless of the above. I do want to return to it, though, because there is something that still nags me. I hope what follows can also find relevance to Federica's question about the spiritual nature of Light and its 'intervals'. 

What might this 'third quality' of the light-ether be and how might it relate, imaginatively/symbolically, to that distinct diffusion equation with the imaginary coefficient? I will admit this question mostly seems significant to me because it also was significant enough for the author of the originally linked paper to make seemingly coherent and balanced arguments (he even presented an alternative viewpoint on the Steiner equation suggesting it was Maxwell's equation) that it was indeed anticipating the intuition of the Schrodinger equation (and I would add, IF the latter was taken in its fuller, qualitative significance as a dim conceptual symbol for etheric or higher realities, in contrast to how Schrodinger himself would have understood it at the time).

Nothing I have come across so far really undermines those arguments, except some of your posts that make a compelling counter-argument that the intuitions are somewhat orthogonal to each other. Mostly I hear in your argument that people in the 1920s would not have really intuited from such equations that they could point to the "interfering alternative branches of the tale", since that intuition relied on a gradual progression of research for decades after. I am very much open to the possibility that you are correct and I am 'reading back' into the early developments of QM what I already know from that later research. But still, I would like to explore it a bit further.

Returning to the light-ether, perhaps the following excerpt is instructive:

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA165/En ... 02p01.html

Remembrance is this: the perception from the outer ether of inner etheric movements; the perception from the outer light-ether of movements in the inner light-body: that is, to remember.

Suppose, for example, that you see two men meet each other. Perhaps the one merely sees the face of the other, but because of this certain movements arise in his etheric body. Then he goes his way. The etheric body retains the tendency to repeat these movements if stirred to do so. Five days later these two men meet again. They perceive each other, the one whose light-body is stirred to make the same movements which it made when he saw the other's face before. This is expressed in his consciousness when he says: I have seen this face before. That is: consciousness perceives the inner movements of the light-ether from the light-ether. This is remembrance purely as an act of perception. We can say: in the external light one perceives the movements taking place in the inner light-body. But we do not see them as light movements. Why do we not see them thus in ordinary life? We do not see them as light movements, because this light-ether body is seated within the physical body, and therefore the movements of the light-ether impinge everywhere on the physical body. Through these impacts, the light movements of the etheric body are transformed into memory pictures. These light movements are not perceptible, it is only through what the memory presents to us through contact with the physical body that we are aware of them.

It seems to me that the faculty of memory directly corresponds to the quality of previous states of being consciously superimposed on our current state of being. From a strictly phenomenological perspective, that is basically how we experience memories, although we normally don't reflect on that experience enough to think about it in this way. And if we were to strengthen consciousness of our inner etheric movements (or even astral movements), we may even experience the 'alternative storylines' of our stream of becoming that have 'averaged out' or interfered to manifest as the linear stream of becoming that we are normally accustomed to. I would add that, even when we think through the decisions in our normal stream of becoming, we implicitly rely on the 'alternative storylines' to provide meaningful context for evaluating the value of those decisions - "if I had done it this way or that way, the result would have been much better or worse." In that sense, the alternative storylines are always present as background context for our thoughtful inquiries into the value of our decisions.

In my understanding (and correct me if I'm misunderstanding), Akashic clairvoyance can actually attain such an experience of superimposed storylines at the individual or collective scales. Likewise, it is my understanding that we experience a living panorama of superimposed states soon after crossing the threshold of physical death. This does not mean we already experience all the infinite possible streams of becoming superimposed, but simply a more holistic sense of our stream of becoming relative to when the latter is formatted by the physical sensory organism.

When the physical body is not there, that is when the body has passed through the gates of death, the ego and astral body are naturally at first far more intensely within the outer ether, till after a few days they leave the outer ether. The inner light-ether is then no longer stirred by impacts on the physical body to conceptions that are only possible in the physical body. Therefore the dead see everything that they have experienced, which the etheric body, now freed from the physical body and no longer restrained by it, throws off and allows to pass before it. During the first few days after death man sees everything pass before him; for the etheric has the tendency continually to repeat and to reproduce from within itself all those movements which the experiences of the physical body had at one time aroused in it. The man's whole life passes before him, set in motion by the vibrations of the ether body. It is seen projected as a mighty picture — one may say that all the etheric movements reflect, as in a panorama, the life just passed on earth.

If it were possible for us always so to control the physical body as we could make ourselves so independent of it — not letting it disturb us — that the etheric body also were set free, as can be done by certain meditations connected with the process described in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, it might be that even in life we might see, not the results of memory — not what arises through the impact of the etheric body on the physical body, but the actual swayings and movements of the etheric body itself. We should be then in the outer ether and look at the movements of our light-body.

So I think there are two questions that emerge for me from these considerations - (1) is there any possibility that Steiner was consciously trying to symbolize this particular quality of the light-ether with his equation in that lecture?, and if so, (2) does this quality overlap with the QM intuition of interfering alternative branches of the story that was unconsciously embedded into the Schrodinger equation, as it were, and brought out more consciously by later research?

[Federica]

From here we go to Part 2

*** (Cleric)

As simple as it is, it really underlies everything there is to abstract mathematics. It all boils down to identifying some attributes of the state (like our x,y,d) and then investigate how the state can be transformed by the possible operators. In the end it is really a thinking state. Basically we try to constrain the degrees of freedom of our imagination. For example, someone may decide to describe our state of being as (x,y,z,t,e) where we have three spatial coordinates, one time coordinate and 'e' for emotional state. It could take discrete values but more likely it would be a varying scale between sad and happy for example. Then one can think of different operators that transform that state in different ways.

All our foundational sciences have transformed into such abstract mathematics. QM for example, defines abstract space of states , where we have attributes like spin, magnetic moment and so on.





It is actually all very clear as soon as we give up trying to imagine what these numbers mean in reality When we look at the math itself it is in principle no different than our algebra, even if much more convoluted. In our algebra you can think of any combination (x,y,d) and that would be a valid state. From the above table you can also write down all (infinte) possible combinations (n,l,ml,ms). Then it is all about defining an additional attribute - the amplitude. Think of it as a clock arrow with length and direction. When you take all the infinite amplitudes for all possible states, you have the so called wavefunction. These arrows are determined through the Schrodinger equation, which is in principle not that different from the Fourier transform through which we find the needed arrows for drawing any curve we want. And now we come to point which no longer has any place in mathematics. The (squared) length of the arrows for each state is interpreted as the probability to find that system in that state upon measurement. The collapse itself is not part of the mathematics.

The peculiar thing about mathematical thinking is that even though we explore it in time by moving through our thinking states, the relations themselves are timeless. If you apply our identity operator today, the result will be the same also tomorrow. This allows us to think about the whole thinking space as something already present. For example, for our system we can ask questions like "Is there any pattern in strings of rules, which always return to the same state?" For instance, can we reach the same state if we have odd number of total turns <> in our string (no matter how many of each as long as the total is odd)? Now that's an example of pattern. Just by looking at a string, we may not be sure if it is identity operator but if we see odd number of turns we can be certain that it is not. This can usually be proved in some way by investigating what would happen if there's really an identity operator with odd turns. In most cases this leads to some contradiction which is taken as the proof that our assumption couldn't have been correct (thus its opposite must be true).

It is really this thinking in a more encompassing ways about the whole mathematical space that is more interesting. That's where it is also spoken about mathematical intuition. For example, in this case I just made up this odd rule. I'm not 100% sure that it's like that but on first glance, based on my overall feel for it, seems that it should be the case. So intuition in that sense shouldn't be taken as some magical faculty that is always right. It's really a sense of orientation in the thinking space of the rules. And by thinking space we shouldn't imagine metaphysical Platonic realms either. It's enough to focus on the concrete states and simply seek orientation for their transformations. My current understanding is that a vast majority of these abstract patterns, such as the Mandelbrot set, are something unique that can only be reached through following such abstract rules. It is of course a map of our thinking, but this particular kind of thinking is only possible when the spirit decoheres into intellect. In that sense, it's beautiful that we can explore such unique patterns of thinking. (if you're interested I can mention few words about how the Mandelbrot set is generated)

Now one important thing that very much interested mathematicians at the turn of the 20th century was to find such a mathematical system of states (mathematical objects) and rules which is so encompassing that it can capture consistently all known mathematics. Something like a unifying mathematical language from which all branches of mathematics are only more specific forms. I think the logic of this is much easier to grasp through Turing Machines.



The reason is because it's more easy to identify our thinking with the actions of the Turing machine. Then once again we can think more broadly about the patterns that these ideas exhibit. One such broad idea is that of the halting problem but maybe we can leave that for next time.

The important thing is that in the first half of the 20th century, through the work of Gödel, Church, Turing and others, we have practically reached the limits of thinking that seeks to grasp its state through some attributes and then explore how that state can transform through certain rules. The notion of universal Turing machine has been reached, which is such a machine capable of simulating any other conceivable Turing machine.





You may have heard of Conway's game of life (CGL). It is probably the most famous example of cellular automata. You have a rectangular grid (think pixels) where each pixels is either alive or dead (represented by the color). Every cell has 8 surrounding neighbors. At every frame of the simulation we go through every cell and its 8 neighbors and apply the following rules:

If a state is alive and has exactly 2 or 3 live neighbors, it stays alive.
If it is alive and has less than 2 or more than 3, then it dies (as if by loneliness or overcrowding )
If a dead cell has exactly 3 live neighbors it spontaneously comes to life.

You can experiment here:
https://conwaylife.com/

Hit the 'play' button and use the pencil tool to draw alive cells and see them transform by the rules.

Now the interesting thing is that these simple rules actually allow for a Universal Turing machine. For example, the following is a system that simulates CGL inside CGL



There are example where actual Turing machines are created. So the whole point is that as long as we have sufficient basic rules (Turing complete) we can mimic through them the behavior of any possible system and its operation as long as we find a way to encode it in our system.

The same thing holds also for the foundations of mathematics. In a way, we have reached understanding of what is possible with the kind of thinking that in one way or another seeks to describe its state as a combination of some attributes and then explores how the state transforms according to certain rules. Really, thinking is trying to model itself as a cellular automata. The interesting things happen when thinking begins not only to model some general thinking but when it tries to model its real time thinking. Then we come to the impossibility, where we feel as a dog chasing its tail. And here is of course the pinhole leading to higher order spiritual activity. But this requires that we let go of our desire to feel our thinking as the end result of computation. Actually, the problem is not that we see our thinking as an end result of something but that we insist on only representing that something within our thinking. As an analogy, if we take the CGL inside CGL and we imagine that the intellect is the simulated CGL, it feels it is impossible to be conscious within the foundational CGL. Instead, it tries to model a third level CGL that serves as the model of reality.

Ashvin,

Thanks again for sharing. I seem to be able to follow for the most part, but I guess it would be best that I don’t attempt to comment too much on this part for now, maybe until I become more familiar with these cognitive modes. To be honest, I find the CGL of CGL somewhat ominous, as a thinking space. Hard to say if it feels more subtly abyssal or more subtly claustrophobic, probably both at the same time


There’s maybe only one thing I'll add. Your very interesting references to Zajonc have made me curious. I've briefly browsed his internet material and noticed a short address written in 1995 called Quantum Computers and Human Thinking, that could fit here, if I am getting Cleric's last paragraph right, as a reference to quantum computers. It's been a heartening read (I’m picking the adjective from you, it really nails it). If only more physicists could be more like this, and less like that… I’m not going to quote much, since the whole thing is worthwhile, but these words about quantum computers seem appropriate here:

… [underlines not added] we see a fascinating attempt to grasp a new concept, to imagine a kind of thinking free of the mechanistic order imposed on it by matter. But instead of rising to living thinking as an inner personal accomplishment, we come to rely on abstract mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, mastered by experts who then create for us a surrogate. The quantum computer will do our thinking for us, not only the common sort of thinking associated with banking and communication, but even far more subtle kinds of thinking that require a holistic and intuitive approach. It will only be a counterfeit, but one that many will take for the real thing.

In addition to our world of senses, Rudolf Steiner spoke of both supersensible and subsensible worlds. That realm of the Supersensible nearest to us is the etheric, and is increasingly known to us in subtle and sometimes disturbing ways. The subsensible is a kind of mirror image of the supersensible, but instead of being ruled over by high gods, fallen spirits have dominion there. They offer us counterfeits of the supersensible. As the soul evolves from age to age, new potentials arise in us. As I see it, quantum computation offers us an external means of realizing what is or should be an inner soul development, one that leads to living thinking.

What distinguishes quantum computation from living thinking? Nothing outward. On the surface, it will be a perfect imitation. What is missing will be the moral dimension. Living thinking is not a formal manipulation of abstract objects or relationships, even quantum mechanical ones. Yes, the geometry in space and time may seem holistic in such theories, but they always lack one thing -- an interior. In a sense, quantum computers will be hollow.
…
Both the perception of the moral in the world, and the bringing of it into the world through appropriate and artistic technological innovation -- these both require the transformation of the self. As described by Rudolf Steiner and felt by one open to his own inner experience, the organ for living thinking is not made up of quantum switches at a temperature of absolute zero, but rather the real organ is that of the human heart. I do not mean the physical heart, but a living, luminous heart whose form is not only barely apparent, but whose “manufacture” rests in our hands. We can form it from out of the substance of our own etheric bodies, and send its rays, like the fire in the Greek eye or the sight of Ra, into our dark world.

This image of quantum computers as counterfeits of living thinking is stunning to me.
To be a little provocative, I could add that I’m glad he didn’t say that Steiner’s living thinking “anticipated” quantum computers. And maybe this characterization can also give a better idea of why I have reacted to your: “Steiner’s equation possibly anticipated Schrödinger’s”.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

Thanks again for sharing. I seem to be able to follow for the most part, but I guess it would be best that I don’t attempt to comment too much on this part for now, maybe until I become more familiar with these cognitive modes. To be honest, I find the CGL of CGL somewhat ominous, as a thinking space. Hard to say if it feels more subtly abyssal or more subtly claustrophobic, probably both at the same time


There’s maybe only one thing I'll add. Your very interesting references to Zajonc have made me curious. I've briefly browsed his internet material and noticed a short address written in 1995 called Quantum Computers and Human Thinking, that could fit here, if I am getting the last paragraph right, as a reference to quantum computers. It's been a heartening read (I’m picking the adjective from you, it really nails it). If only more physicists could be more like this, and less like that… I’m not going to quote much, since the whole thing is worthwhile, but these words about quantum computers seem appropriate here:

… [underlines not added] we see a fascinating attempt to grasp a new concept, to imagine a kind of thinking free of the mechanistic order imposed on it by matter. But instead of rising to living thinking as an inner personal accomplishment, we come to rely on abstract mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, mastered by experts who then create for us a surrogate. The quantum computer will do our thinking for us, not only the common sort of thinking associated with banking and communication, but even far more subtle kinds of thinking that require a holistic and intuitive approach. It will only be a counterfeit, but one that many will take for the real thing.

In addition to our world of senses, Rudolf Steiner spoke of both supersensible and subsensible worlds. That realm of the Supersensible nearest to us is the etheric, and is increasingly known to us in subtle and sometimes disturbing ways. The subsensible is a kind of mirror image of the supersensible, but instead of being ruled over by high gods, fallen spirits have dominion there. They offer us counterfeits of the supersensible. As the soul evolves from age to age, new potentials arise in us. As I see it, quantum computation offers us an external means of realizing what is or should be an inner soul development, one that leads to living thinking.

What distinguishes quantum computation from living thinking? Nothing outward. On the surface, it will be a perfect imitation. What is missing will be the moral dimension. Living thinking is not a formal manipulation of abstract objects or relationships, even quantum mechanical ones. Yes, the geometry in space and time may seem holistic in such theories, but they always lack one thing -- an interior. In a sense, quantum computers will be hollow.
…
Both the perception of the moral in the world, and the bringing of it into the world through appropriate and artistic technological innovation -- these both require the transformation of the self. As described by Rudolf Steiner and felt by one open to his own inner experience, the organ for living thinking is not made up of quantum switches at a temperature of absolute zero, but rather the real organ is that of the human heart. I do not mean the physical heart, but a living, luminous heart whose form is not only barely apparent, but whose “manufacture” rests in our hands. We can form it from out of the substance of our own etheric bodies, and send its rays, like the fire in the Greek eye or the sight of Ra, into our dark world.

This image of quantum computers as counterfeits of living thinking is stunning to me.
To be a little provocative, I could add that I’m glad he didn’t say that Steiner’s living thinking “anticipated” quantum computers. And maybe this characterization can also give a better idea of why I have reacted to your: “Steiner’s equation possibly anticipated Schrödinger’s”.

Federica,

Thanks for sharing the paper! Zajonc also has a great book on the historical progression of mathematics and science, with a particular focus on how the understanding of light phenomena has evolved with our thinking consciousness. It touches on the significance of a lot of different thinkers and systems, from ancient India, Persia, and Greece to the Middle Ages, the Modern era, and the 20th century. I just started reading it recently and I think you would find it really helpful and insightful as well.

I’m hoping to touch on some of the points from your previous post in response to this one. I doubt you will find any new ideas here but maybe it still help in some way. The quote from Zajonc holds a lot of keys for our understanding of abstract (including mathematical) thinking. Particularly, that the 'inventiveness' (in a negative sense) or 'arbitrariness' of our abstract thinking always results from our inner assumptions, which are in turn always bound up with moral disposition, rather than the concepts and logical patterns themselves. It is the same principle that we apply to the outer perceptual world – the lawful transformations of the perceptual spectrum always communicate to us something of the temporal depth structure through which they condensed - the "I" laws (that are essentially the inner moral dimension of physical laws), astral laws, and etheric laws - and it is only our one-sided assumptions that lead to rigid materialistic thinking and unwarranted conclusions.

Our normal thinking that takes its direction from transformations of the normal sensory spectrum – the metamorphosis of colors, sounds, etc. - unfolds through the physical-etheric body on the astral plane. When we get to geometrical thinking, we have already ascended to lines and shapes that are not drawn from the sense-perceptible spectrum. In the language of Steiner and Kurten, we could say it is thinking that has ascended from the astral to the rupa plane, where we have thought-archetypes that are not found on the sensory plane but can still be visualized. When we come to something like Newton’s calculus with differential equations, we now have thinking that has ascended to the arupa plane, where we begin to weave in formless concepts that cannot even be visualized. This whole process is an ascent from fragmented particulars to more universal archetypes of thinking. The new logical structures in which our thinking weaves convey to us something of the higher spirit regions.

Now the arbitrary part occurs when it is assumed that the simple shapes and quantities perceived through these modes of thinking are already reflecting the reality-itself that we can model with the equations. In other words, the meaningful qualitative dimension (temporally extended) of these thought-perceptions has been relegated to the ‘subjective inner life’ and deemed mostly irrelevant to the ‘objective’ reality. In the ancient Pythagorean school, in contrast, geometrical thinking was much more qualitative – the visualized shapes and even the numerical equations were pointing their nascent thinking faculty to deep spiritual processes and experiences. It was employed as a tool for initiation. Even at the time of Plato, it was said at the entrance of his academy, “let no one ignorant of geometry come under my roof” for that reason. It was intuitively understood that everything perceived-conceived in thinking was the lawful continuation of spiritual processes unfolding on the ‘same side’ as our first-person thinking perspective. That was so much the case that most people didn’t even experience thinking as an activity that belonged to them, but rather flowed through them from the universal Spirit and various nested intelligences (the muses, daemons, and so forth). Some of that lasted right into the Middle Ages, where there was still experiential consciousness of the higher angelic depth structure (Zajonc mentions Robert Grosseteste in this context).

Alas, human thinking was destined to voyage much more deeply into the physical spectrum in the modern era via the consciousness soul to reach the ground of its freedom, i.e. a realm of outer quantities that were completely isolated in our thinking from the 'inner life' of qualitative temporal structure. That is when the amoral and immoral tendencies could also seize hold and convince us to stop looking for anything deeper, anything more alive and intelligent within the quantitative realm. That way we can feel on top and in control of the manifest world, thoroughly infatuated with our own thought-creations. At any time, guided by our moral disposition of humility and reverence for the mysterious qualities of existence, we can stop assuming the quantities alone give us complete information and are instead the outermost circumference of a qualitative depth structure that flows through our thinking. We can realize that it is possible to consciously use the quantitative realm as a metaphorical tool, like the ancients did more instinctively, that assists us in growing with our spirit into the higher worlds, so that we experience the ideational perspectives that are responsible for the transformations in our thinking-perceptual states. That is the only logical path forward when reality is ideal and nondual. At any time, the counterfeits can be redeemed into the real deal, and we will be better off than we would have been if the counterfeits had never come into being.

So, coming back briefly to the question of whether Steiner anticipated Schrodinger’s equation, it should be clear that such anticipation would not mean Steiner suddenly adopted the quantitative-mechanical assumptions of modern physicists under the influence of amoral or immoral impulses, i.e. those impulses conditioned by our fragmented and selfish sensory existence. As we know, he spent a lot of time lecturing on exactly why and how those assumptions are ill-conceived and immoral. If the author of that paper from the OP is correct, then in my mind, it would mean that Steiner anticipated how the entire course of QM philosophy of ‘superimposed alternative storylines’ embedded in the Schrodinger equation would unfold. It would mean he somewhat redeemed that whole philosophy before it even began on the normal conceptual plane. But that’s still an open question for me.

[Federica]

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.

This ‘splitting’ in the visualization is not a mistake. It is neither really ‘splitting’. You can think of it as if the two alternative histories of the same photon are visualized simultaneously.

In fact, the logic of the ‘quantum game’ (I use this in the wider sense) is very clear and not that complicated. All the complications come when we continuously try to fit that logic into our classical intuitions.

I’ll try to make this a little more accessible. I remember back in the day, CD-ROMs were just becoming widespread and computer games were already taking advantage of it. Those who were into computers at that time remember that the most widespread portable medium was the 3.5” floppy diskette. Its capacity was 1.44MB. In contrast, a CD-ROM’s capacity was an incredible 650MB. This allowed game developers to include much more graphical material in the game and especially video. Today it’s hard to appreciate this since we have youtube in our pocket but then to see motion video on a computer screen was something very exotic.

I remember one game that took full advantage of these storage possibilities and made a game that was entirely video based. It was called “A Fork In the Tale”.



Basically it’s a first-person video adventure where you get various clickable choices on the screen through which you decide how the story proceeds. In this way the story continuously branches into alternative scenarios (it’s said that there are 50 different game endings). That’s nothing exciting in itself – many games have had non-linear plots. But I thought about the fact that all these alternative paths must be filmed even though the player runs only through a single branch of this bifurcating tree.

Another example is the gamebooks which were very popular in my country in the nineties. These were books with numbered chapters where you start from 1 and after you read the story of the chapter some choice has to be made. For example “If you want to enter the forest turn to 34. If you want to go through the mountains go to 87.” The structure of these gamebooks could be represented graphically as branching tree (although, often branches could recombine or send you back):



Now it turns out that quantum mechanics is all about tracing all these possible branches that a system can transform through.

In classical mechanics we follow a single branch. In fact, we don’t think about it as a branch but simply as the arrow of time. Then we try to understand how at each frame along that arrow, objects affect each other through their central forces and thus transform into the next frame.

In quantum mechanics every possible interaction between elements is a different ‘fork in the tale’. Actually the web quantum game draws that forking tree for us in the upper right corner:



The above is the tree of the bomb experiment. The dot on the left is the branch leading to explosion. Then below we have the two other alternative branches – detection at the right or top.

The whole secret of learning to think quantum mechanically is to always keep in mind these alternative branches, these alternative possible paths through which the system can evolve.

For this reason, if we imagine that the photon splits at the first half-silvered mirror, we’re already misled. Nothing splits. There’s only one photon. The ‘splitting’ is in fact the visualization of the two possible branches in the tale that the photon can take. They are simply displayed simultaneously. This would be analogous to reading the gamebook and when you turn to chapter 34 to see also chapter 87 superimposed.

And now comes the really weird part. These alternative branches are not independent. They interfere. Actually, this is probably a point that may not have been sufficiently clarified in my previous posts. If we think in classical terms and imagine the photon as an apple, and we have only a classical arrow of time (no alternative branches), then we indeed imagine as if the apple is split in half at the half-mirror, the two halves fly on their own, then meet at the second mirror, collide there, merge again in a whole apple and because of some weird mathematics it can go only one of the ways. But this is not what interferes. The photon never splits. What interferes are the alternative possible histories of the photon.

Think how unintuitive from a classical perspective this is. Imagine that you’re going to the mall. You can go through the park or through the city square. You choose the former. You arrive at the mall and spontaneously decide to go to the store on the right to buy a new dress. Now most people would laugh if they are told that their possible alternative of going through the city square would arrive at the exact same moment at the mall and that the interference of these alternatives makes it 100% certain that you go to the store on the right, instead of another one.

Of course, I’m giving this picture only to amplify the QM example, I’m not saying that we should reason about our human actions in precisely this way. Yet spiritual perception shows that something similar indeed happens. Ashvin quoted how we have to be attentive for all the things that do not happen to us.

So it is crucial to understand that what interferes is not different photons. As a matter of fact, different photons are fully transparent to each other, they pass through each other. What interferes are the complex amplitudes assigned to the different branches that the whole system can take. If there’s a second photon in the system everything becomes more complicated. In the analogy, if you leave your home with a friend now there are 4 possible branches – 1/ you both go through the park 2/ you both go through the city square 3/ you go through the park, your friend through the square 4/ you go through the square, your friend through the park. Now all these branches have their corresponding complex amplitudes and can interfere. This hints at the reason why calculating quantum systems is feasible only for relatively simple configurations. Otherwise, as the elements increase, the possible ‘forks in the tale’ increase exponentially. This is why even with our supercomputers it is not presently possible to make a full simulation of a more complex molecule (let alone a whole cell).

Now if we understand this, we can think about Steiner and the Schrodinger equation. All these things that we described above, these branching alternatives were not at all thought about at the time Schrodinger wrote down the equation. He started much more modestly. De Broglie proposed the wave-particle dualism and Schrodinger came up with an equation through which it is possible to calculate the spectrum of that wave, so to speak (not unlike the way we can calculate the possible modes of vibration of a guitar string. The requirement that the string must be stationary at its end filters out only the compatible wavelengths/frequencies out of the infinitely many possible). Interference of alternative paths that a system can take is not something that was initially obvious from the equation in its original form. Even the interpretation of the squared modulus of the complex amplitude as probability came later by Max Born – Schrodinger didn’t know what those ‘waves’ which his equation described, really were.

With all this I want to show that there were many additional developments that led to the later understanding of quantum theory as a superposition of alternative branches of the tale. These things don’t just pop out if we put an imaginary coefficient in front of the diffusion equation. They are not even particularly obvious from the start. It is for this reason that I lean towards Steiner using the imaginary coefficient as a metaphor for a third quality in addition to positive and negative. Expecting that such an equation has the potential to become a model for interfering alternative branches of the tale is quite a long shot.

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…

Hopefully, the considerations above give another way of thinking about interference. Probably for you interference symbolizes conflict and opposition and that’s why you expect that at the higher levels everything is much more smoothed out. There’s no doubt that in the higher orders, the Cosmic metamorphoses are much more integrated and harmonized but we can still conceive of interference. It’s just that we don’t have to necessarily associate this with pain and conflict.

Think of it thus. Even in a much more harmonious state of existence, as long as there’s temporality, there’s still flow through a specific evolutionary tale. There are infinitely many other possible tales and in a certain sense they all exist simultaneously in the Eternal. Our tale could be experienced only if somehow analyzed out of the Eternal. In a sense, from our relative perspective it’s probability is high, while the probability of all the other tales is low.

Seen in this way, this interference is not to be seen as painful conflict but the Divine Technique through which the Eternal potential can be ‘delaminated’, so to speak, such that individual evolutionary tales can be experienced which lead back to the Eternal (where we can assume all the infinite potential integrates as an eternal simultaneous whole).

I realize that stated in this way it all sounds very abstract but I believe that thinking through these things can stimulate our higher Imagination when taken in the right way. There’s no doubt that in the far future we won’t be talking about interfering wavefunctions, potentials and alternative timelines. Then we’ll simply live intuitively through the spiritual reality, without trying to make a carbon copy in thoughts. But for the time being, at least in my personal experience, these lines of thought could be tremendously fruitful and in many ways act as scaffolds around which actual experiences could coalesce.

Now coming back to the experiment and its weirdness:

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
.

Once again, in the light of our present discussion, the weird part should be more clear too. First, non-locality in itself doesn’t draw the full picture. There could be non-locality also in a world that develops along a single time arrow. This simply means objects can affect each other at a distance, without propagating effects through space no faster than the speed of light. For example, when we generate a pair of entangled photons and send them in opposite directions light years away, and Alice measures one, this instantaneously affects the state of Bob’s photon. This is non-locality. But notice that we don’t really need to involve alternative branches here.

The reason Sabine finds the bomb experiment weird is because through its dramatic effect, it reminds us that these alternative branches can’t be easily ignored. It’s not that something simply passes its effects non-locally. It seems the Universe should somehow know that in one of the alternative paths an explosion is imminent. Here ‘know’ is used in the ordinary materialistic sense. It simply means that the alternative path is something real within the Universe.

It is weird because for the most part physicists have taken quantum mechanics as some statistical quirk (Einstein surely took that position). Our immediate sensory experience is that we traverse a single linear tale. Alternatives seem to exist only in our fantasy. Summing up the amplitudes of these alternatives is seen by many just as some strange statistical way of calculating probabilities. Even today few would readily conceive that these alternatives could be something real. But the bomb experiment places things in such a way that it seems that the exploding alternative is something real and it interferes with our alternative.

It is called weird because scientists are not entirely sure what to make out of it. Of course, all these theories are in the end just thoughts. They can’t ‘prove’ that there are indeed branches of reality. But still, at the present state of the theory it is difficult to interpret it in terms of a single timeline. And since most scientists, like Sabine, hold on to whatever is sensorily real (thus the single timeline) they won’t jump out and say “... thus alternative timelines are real.” Instead, they keep an indeterminate position and say “That’s weird.”

This reminds me of the time when we made a lucid dreaming metaphor. We said that that the path to lucidity can most easily be threaded if we pay attention to the contradictions. Then instead of simply accepting them as they are, we follow their threads which in themselves will lead us to higher synthesis. Now this QM example is more convoluted but nevertheless reminded me of this. It is as if the scientists encountered a dream contradiction, yet choose not to follow its threads. Instead they say “That’s weird” and continue dreaming on their way, gradually becoming numb to it.

Again, I’m not saying that this particular experiment should make us say “So alternative timelines are real!” In a way they are. But the whole matter is about in what way exactly. If we simply fantasize timelines in our intellect we won’t go too far either.
In any case, what Ashvin said, certainly holds true – that in this dream state we have grown numb not only to the mystery in scientific experiments but also in everything around us. Which reminds of something else. A wise clown once said “If magic is all we’ve ever known, then it’s easy to miss what really goes on.”

PS: I didn't address the more serious questions about the nature of light as spiritual experience. We'll have to continue with that in the future.

***

Hopefully, the considerations above give another way of thinking about interference.

Thank you Cleric, yes the considerations help, though I must admit it’s still not completely clear. I did think that photons and beams interfered, not paths, because I understood that glasses shift photons and beams when they hit or traverse them, not that glasses shift probabilistic alternative paths. I thought that glasses, not only bombs, also acted as observers and that the specific quality of interference (destructive or not) was engendered by the “observation” as steered by the glasses, based on those visual cues for phase shifting. In other words, I understood that interference was connected with collapse.
What I am still not getting is: since paths interfere (are interrelated), not photons or beams, how can a specific configuration of glasses make the interference destructive or nondestructive? Because, that glasses shape a path only means something phenomenological when glasses have a chance to affect/observe photons and beams, correct? Or is it that the glass, an observer, can constrain the potentiality of interference itself? In which case it would be clearer from my perspective to say that the collapse, not the interference, is destructive or else.

Probably for you interference symbolizes conflict and opposition and that’s why you expect that at the higher levels everything is much more smoothed out.

I thought of interference as the process of interaction leading to collapse of spiritual light into physicality, like a connector between rupa and physical states. I was not seeing interference as conflictual or painful, at all, but just earthly, manifest, polarized in spacetime, since I thought its nature depended on phase shifts and angular combinations. I also had this in mind:

If we think in the context of relativity, it seems that for light the world of spacetime collapses into a point. It’s not even a point because a point implies an infinitesimal something in a large space but here we don’t have surrounding space. Everything is everywhere all at once. Our more familiar experience in space and time can be thought of as analysis of this simultaneous potential. It’s like the points A and B are pulled apart so that they are separated by spacetime intervals and can be experienced in their relative becoming.

If we reflect on this idea, even though it is very abstract, we can conceive of a possibility to seek this timeless unity by somehow bringing As and Bs closer together. When we communicate with a person, when we get together in space, we have the chance to exchange thoughts and feelings in real time. If the person is on Mars it will take some twenty minutes for their message to reach us, which already reflects a past state. We know that from our Earthly perspective it takes about eight minutes for light to reach us from the Sun. From the sunlight’s perspective it doesn’t take any time to travel. We can use this idea as a starting point for meditation.

For now, I have no intuition how interference pertains to spiritual light. I take note that it does. Surely I have to give it more reflection. I trust what you said, that “these lines of thought could be tremendously fruitful and in many ways act as scaffolds around which actual experiences could coalesce”, and that if progress is to be made, there is more chance along these lines. Thank you!

[Federica]

Federica,

Thanks for sharing the paper! Zajonc also has a great book on the historical progression of mathematics and science, with a particular focus on how the understanding of light phenomena has evolved with our thinking consciousness. It touches on the significance of a lot of different thinkers and systems, from ancient India, Persia, and Greece to the Middle Ages, the Modern era, and the 20th century. I just started reading it recently and I think you would find it really helpful and insightful as well.

I’m hoping to touch on some of the points from your previous post in response to this one. I doubt you will find any new ideas here but maybe it still help in some way. The quote from Zajonc holds a lot of keys for our understanding of abstract (including mathematical) thinking. Particularly, that the 'inventiveness' (in a negative sense) or 'arbitrariness' of our abstract thinking always results from our inner assumptions, which are in turn always bound up with moral disposition, rather than the concepts and logical patterns themselves. It is the same principle that we apply to the outer perceptual world – the lawful transformations of the perceptual spectrum always communicate to us something of the temporal depth structure through which they condensed - the "I" laws (that are essentially the inner moral dimension of physical laws), astral laws, and etheric laws - and it is only our one-sided assumptions that lead to rigid materialistic thinking and unwarranted conclusions.

Our normal thinking that takes its direction from transformations of the normal sensory spectrum – the metamorphosis of colors, sounds, etc. - unfolds through the physical-etheric body on the astral plane. When we get to geometrical thinking, we have already ascended to lines and shapes that are not drawn from the sense-perceptible spectrum. In the language of Steiner and Kurten, we could say it is thinking that has ascended from the astral to the rupa plane, where we have thought-archetypes that are not found on the sensory plane but can still be visualized. When we come to something like Newton’s calculus with differential equations, we now have thinking that has ascended to the arupa plane, where we begin to weave in formless concepts that cannot even be visualized. This whole process is an ascent from fragmented particulars to more universal archetypes of thinking. The new logical structures in which our thinking weaves convey to us something of the higher spirit regions.

Now the arbitrary part occurs when it is assumed that the simple shapes and quantities perceived through these modes of thinking are already reflecting the reality-itself that we can model with the equations. In other words, the meaningful qualitative dimension (temporally extended) of these thought-perceptions has been relegated to the ‘subjective inner life’ and deemed mostly irrelevant to the ‘objective’ reality. In the ancient Pythagorean school, in contrast, geometrical thinking was much more qualitative – the visualized shapes and even the numerical equations were pointing their nascent thinking faculty to deep spiritual processes and experiences. It was employed as a tool for initiation. Even at the time of Plato, it was said at the entrance of his academy, “let no one ignorant of geometry come under my roof” for that reason. It was intuitively understood that everything perceived-conceived in thinking was the lawful continuation of spiritual processes unfolding on the ‘same side’ as our first-person thinking perspective. That was so much the case that most people didn’t even experience thinking as an activity that belonged to them, but rather flowed through them from the universal Spirit and various nested intelligences (the muses, daemons, and so forth). Some of that lasted right into the Middle Ages, where there was still experiential consciousness of the higher angelic depth structure (Zajonc mentions Robert Grosseteste in this context).

Alas, human thinking was destined to voyage much more deeply into the physical spectrum in the modern era via the consciousness soul to reach the ground of its freedom, i.e. a realm of outer quantities that were completely isolated in our thinking from the 'inner life' of qualitative temporal structure. That is when the amoral and immoral tendencies could also seize hold and convince us to stop looking for anything deeper, anything more alive and intelligent within the quantitative realm. That way we can feel on top and in control of the manifest world, thoroughly infatuated with our own thought-creations. At any time, guided by our moral disposition of humility and reverence for the mysterious qualities of existence, we can stop assuming the quantities alone give us complete information and are instead the outermost circumference of a qualitative depth structure that flows through our thinking. We can realize that it is possible to consciously use the quantitative realm as a metaphorical tool, like the ancients did more instinctively, that assists us in growing with our spirit into the higher worlds, so that we experience the ideational perspectives that are responsible for the transformations in our thinking-perceptual states. That is the only logical path forward when reality is ideal and nondual. At any time, the counterfeits can be redeemed into the real deal, and we will be better off than we would have been if the counterfeits had never come into being.

So, coming back briefly to the question of whether Steiner anticipated Schrodinger’s equation, it should be clear that such anticipation would not mean Steiner suddenly adopted the quantitative-mechanical assumptions of modern physicists under the influence of amoral or immoral impulses, i.e. those impulses conditioned by our fragmented and selfish sensory existence. As we know, he spent a lot of time lecturing on exactly why and how those assumptions are ill-conceived and immoral. If the author of that paper from the OP is correct, then in my mind, it would mean that Steiner anticipated how the entire course of QM philosophy of ‘superimposed alternative storylines’ embedded in the Schrodinger equation would unfold. It would mean he somewhat redeemed that whole philosophy before it even began on the normal conceptual plane. But that’s still an open question for me.

Thanks for your comments and book highlights, Ashvin.
They are useful and I have ordered the book, just in case I will find time to read it!

PS. I haven't carefully read the article suggesting that Steiner anticipated qm, so I don't have an opinion on the following, but I wonder whether you think the author had a wish to prove the anticipation as a "selling argument" for Anthroposophy towards the scientific community or other cultural groups adverse to it?

[AshvinP]

PS. I haven't carefully read the article suggesting that Steiner anticipated qm, so I don't have an opinion on the following, but I wonder whether you think the author had a wish to prove the anticipation as a "selling argument" for Anthroposophy towards the scientific community or other cultural groups adverse to it?

That's certainly a possibility. As mentioned before, though, the author did present an alternate viewpoint that challenged his conclusion at the end of the article (which is only 5 pages long). Without further information, I am reluctant to let any opinions of possible motivations color my understanding of his argument.

[Federica]

Returning to the light-ether, perhaps the following excerpt is instructive:

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA165/En ... 02p01.html

Remembrance is this: the perception from the outer ether of inner etheric movements; the perception from the outer light-ether of movements in the inner light-body: that is, to remember.

Suppose, for example, that you see two men meet each other. Perhaps the one merely sees the face of the other, but because of this certain movements arise in his etheric body. Then he goes his way. The etheric body retains the tendency to repeat these movements if stirred to do so. Five days later these two men meet again. They perceive each other, the one whose light-body is stirred to make the same movements which it made when he saw the other's face before. This is expressed in his consciousness when he says: I have seen this face before. That is: consciousness perceives the inner movements of the light-ether from the light-ether. This is remembrance purely as an act of perception. We can say: in the external light one perceives the movements taking place in the inner light-body. But we do not see them as light movements. Why do we not see them thus in ordinary life? We do not see them as light movements, because this light-ether body is seated within the physical body, and therefore the movements of the light-ether impinge everywhere on the physical body. Through these impacts, the light movements of the etheric body are transformed into memory pictures. These light movements are not perceptible, it is only through what the memory presents to us through contact with the physical body that we are aware of them.

It seems to me that the faculty of memory directly corresponds to the quality of previous states of being consciously superimposed on our current state of being. From a strictly phenomenological perspective, that is basically how we experience memories (...)

Thanks for adding a reference to my questions on the nature of spiritual light, Ashvin.
I feel I'm somewhat behind on life ether, I haven't read the relevant lectures and I only have in mind Cleric's posts, so I'm not yet able to connect those dots, but I have a note on the nature of memory as you have described it.

I can't see how the underlined statement connects with the preceding quote, as well as with the way memory has been often characterized here, that is as the only constraint to the flow of becoming, that can only be experienced as coherent flow when the first-person perspective understands every time-frame as self-similarly linked to the previously experienced ones, that are embedded, or nested, in the subsequent ones as memory. How do you go from vertically nested succession of events to horizontal alternative storylines in the characterization of memory? It seems to me that memory is the opposite of superposition of states of being. And Steiner's quote speaks of the event of remembrance, not of the faculty of memory. He speaks of how an event triggers a specific remembrance of a past event. Aren't these two different things? (Despite that in English memory means both the faculty and the specific thought image occasionally recalled).
Superposition has to be horizontal, right? And when we recall a past event, and bring it all the way to the now, from the past, I wouldn't say the current event and the past one are superimposed, since they are not alternative storylines. They are both realized parts of our becoming, they have both collapsed in our karma, and are vertically related. Alternative superimposed storylines stand with each other, or interfere, in a quite different way: they express potential, as it seems to me. Could you say more about why you see memory as superimposed states?