How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
—Plato
The two fundamental characteristics of the Gnostic view that the material world was created by the demiurge and the archons are that: a) it is a prison, and b) that the archons keep humans enslaved by deluding them into thinking that the material world is real when it is, in fact, according to the Gnostics, an illusion. Whereas the previous chapter dealt with the world-as-prison, this chapter turns to the concept of the world-as-illusion.
In The Matrix Morpheus asks Neo if he had ever had a dream that he was sure was real. He questions Neo further by adding that, if he were unable to wake from that dream, how would he be able to distinguish between the dream world and the world of our normal waking state, that is, the world which we assume to be the “real” world. On the same topic, the British medical doctor Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) claimed that dreams appear real, and, for all intents and purposes, might be considered real, for as long as they last, and that we could say no more about the waking state of consensual, so-called reality. Similarly, the Gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi Library make it clear that this world is an illusion that we have been deceived into taking for reality. For example, The Treatise on Resurrection cautions against thinking that the resurrection is an illusion given that the goal of the Gnostic is to be released from the fetters of matter. It declares that it is this world, rather than resurrection from it, that is the illusion; an illusion in which the rich have become poor, or, in the words of The Gospel of Thomas, the richness of spirit has become trapped in the poverty of the material world. Elsewhere, the notion of being asleep is a recurring trope of the Gnostic texts, used to describe the deluded state of mistaking this world for reality. In The Reality of the Rulers, the archons cause a deep sleep (i.e., ignorance) to fall upon the first human before he is cast down into the material realm. Subsequently, humanity is asleep and ignorant of its entrapment in matter. When humans sleep, they dream, and The Revelation of Adam occurs while he is asleep, that is, it comes to him in a dream, and it encourages him to awaken from the “sleep of death” (Meyer, 2007, p. 344). As Einstein’s oft-quoted aphorism points out, reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. For the Gnostics, this world is a shadowy phantasm, about which the archons keep us perpetually in the dark. We are controlled by the archons because they control the false reality we are living in. However, according to the Gnostics, the archons are effectively powerless and their power over us exists only to the extent that they can deceive us into thinking that the false reality is actually real.
This notion is powerfully representing in the spoon-bending scene in The Matrix in which Neo encounters a boy with a shaved head who appears like a Buddhist monk. Lying in front of the boy are a number of bent spoons and he currently holds another which he is bending through the power of thought. He hands a straight spoon to Neo with the implied suggestion that he should try to bend it with his mind. As Neo takes the spoon, the boy tells him that he should not try to bend the spoon because that is impossible. Rather, he should simply try to realise the truth. “What truth?” asks Neo. The boy replies that there is no spoon, and it is not the spoon that bends, but only oneself that bends. Neo then turns his attention to the spoon, which now mirrors the whole room. As he stares at it, it starts to bend. This suggests that when we realise the truth and “bend”, that is, transform in the light of the realised truth and awaken to the illusion of the prison world, then we are no longer at its mercy. It will no longer control us; we will have control over it. When we realise that this world is an illusion, we transcend its limitations and become co-creators of it.
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Despite regular denials, Jung was given to frequent speculative excursions into metaphysics, but those speculations never seemed to have led him to believe that there was anything other than an objective physical reality to our world. He was very much grounded in the world and any world-as-illusion hypothesis was not something that would appear to have preoccupied him to any great extent, not in his public writings anyway. Nevertheless, he did explore the relationship between psyche and what we experience as physical reality, and nowhere more so than in his theoretical construct known as synchronicity.
Generally described as an “acausal connecting principle”, the term synchronicity refers to the phenomenon of the meaningful coincidence— or near coincidence—of two events: one an event in the outside world, and the other an inner psychological state of mind. In Jung’s view, when an inner psychological event, involving an unconscious image—coming into consciousness, either directly or indirectly via a dream image, an idea, or premonition—coincides with an outer situation with the same (or very similar) content, then a synchronicity is said to occur. Crucially, the events are not connected causally, but only through their shared, inherent meaning, without which the two events are merely coincidental. Synchronicity is predicated on a “psychically relative space-time continuum” linking psyche with the material world as two different, but inextricably related, aspects of the same fundamental thing, in which the non-psychic and the psychic can behave like one another without any causal connection between them (Sharp, 2010). Psyche and matter are one and the same thing, and their essence is energy. Although the inner and outer events of an instance of synchronicity might be phenomenologically distinct, their synchronicity is an expression, imbued with meaning, of their fundamental indivisibility.
The factor connecting psyche and matter is archetypal. At the heart of synchronistic events are the transcendent, unknowable—yet capable of being experienced indirectly—aspects of the archetypes, which Jung considers to be founded on a psychoid base. He describes (1962) psychoid as a soul-like, quasi-psychic, foundation that is only partially psychic, and quite possibly has an entirely different nature which he, tentatively, speculates might be spiritual. Although he had few, if any, qualms about making metaphysical assertions in writing that remained private during his lifetime—as The Red Book and the Seven Sermons attest—Jung was ever cautious about such statements in his public works. Nevertheless, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, one of his final public works, he does suggest that we have good reason to suppose the existence of an uncomprehended absolute reality (ibid.). Synchronicity might then be considered to be the observation of an ordered wholeness within the collective psyche in which a particular instance of synchronicity is the dual expression of archetypal activity emanating from the psychoid dimension of the psyche. The two synchronistic events are expressions of a moment, and that moment is an archetypal fluctuation occurring within, and issuing from, the depths of the collective unconscious. Jung is positing a unified reality, an unus mundus (Latin for “one world”), underpinning all experience, yet he does not appear to suggest that physical phenomena are anything but real.
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In The Matrix Morpheus instructs Neo that what he takes for reality is actually occurring inside a computer program, a “neuralinteractive” simulation which is the Matrix itself. Within the simulation, Neo’s self-concept is not real either; it is merely a “residual self-image”, a mental projection of a digitised identity. There are echoes here of Meister Eckhart, with a Gnostic twist. Eckhart claimed that when the Soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of herself and then steps into it. In the Gnostic tradition, the demiurge, accompanied by his archons, is the blind, ignorant, dark abyss of the shadow of the Soul. He wanted to create a world modelled on the image of the incorruptible, Pleromic harmony. However, he was ignorant (and arrogant) and lacked the true power of the Light of the Pleroma. The result was the corrupt, chaotic world into which we have been cast and held deluded into thinking is real. Similarly, the architects of the Matrix have projected a computer-generated dream world in which humanity is trapped. Until we realise our predicament, attain gnosis, and find a way out, we are nothing more than individual, virus-ridden, archon-controlled, software programs running within the operating system of the Matrix. Informed of his predicament, and in a tone that betrays his incredulity and difficulty in accepting the truth, Neo asks if the world he perceives is not, in fact, real. Morpheus responds rhetorically, “What is real? How do you define real?” Given his acosmic metaphysics (i.e., the universe is an illusion), it is no surprise that these same questions are ones that preoccupied PKD for most of his writing career. Indeed, these questions held an endless fascination for him and in his writing he would repeatedly revisit the theme of the true nature of our world, and whether the empirical or phenomenal world, which we generally consider as “reality”, was, in any way, real. In his short stories and novels he frequently wrote about counterfeit worlds, alternative realities, and what he described as “pluriform pseudoworlds” (1977). PKD (2011) himself counts a total of twenty-one novels and short stories in which the theme of real vs. fake world featured.
In PKD’s view, “… someone is causing us to see a universe that doesn’t exist. Who is that someone? … Satan [i.e., the demiurge]” (2008, p. 199). Elsewhere he stated that concealed beneath our ever-changing, phenomenal world, there was an eternal, unchanging, absolute reality (1978). He felt that this Black Iron Prison world, ruled by the Empire, is a counterfeit world superimposed over a deeper reality (2011, loc. 5688). However, to say that it is counterfeit is misleading, because there is no world actually there (loc. 6720). Reiterating the world-as-illusion theme in The Divine Invasion (2008), he describes this world, which he terms the lower realm, as the result of “transparent pictures permutating at immense velocity” (p. 65). In the novel, these pictures are archetypal forms from outer space which have been projected into the lower realm to become “reality”. This idea of a world that is not substantively real, but only appears as such, echoes Einstein who claimed that, with regard to matter, we had all been wrong. What we consider to be matter (i.e., physical reality) is simply energy whose vibration has been lowered to the extent that it can be perceived by the senses. For Einstein, there is no matter; it has no objective reality. For PKD, our world is a mere phantasm, a fallen world, into which we have been thrown, enslaved by an evil entity that “projects data contoured to resemble a world” (2011, loc. 6720). Writing in his Tractates, PKD declares that the phenomenal world that we take for granted, and consider to be “reality”, does not, in fact, exist. Its reality could not be confirmed and he considered it to be a hypostasis of information processed by the One Mind (i.e., the Pleroma) (2001). The essence of the universe is information. It is not three-dimensional, indeed, it is outside space and time altogether. In other words, for PKD, this world is like The Matrix, and nothing more than the (mis-)interpretation of an underlying reality of which the essence is simply information.
However, despite his lifelong obsession with the quest to understand the nature of reality, PKD felt he never really got to the bottom of it. In a speech delivered in 1978, towards the end of his life, he acknowledges that he was unable to work it out. He recalls being asked by a student who wanted a pithy one-sentence definition of reality for a philosophy class paper, to which PKD could only respond with: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away” (1978). After a lifetime devoted to exploring that topic he felt unable to define reality any more coherently. Yet, can there be a more accurate definition of reality? Nevertheless, he felt that as long as we are here, and continue to be deluded into thinking the BIP is real, we have to contend with it. With his inimitable wit PKD breaks off from an entry in his Exegesis one day by noting that he has to go as “a lot of publicans and sinners, tax collectors and other riffraff abound” (2011, loc. 1467), and, with some forbearance it would appear, he has to deal with them. Echoing the sentiment of Ellis, this delusional world is “real” for PKD—and us—as long as it lasts, and while we are here we have to deal with it, tax collectors and riff-raff and all. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and all that.
Regarding the concept of the world-as-illusion, PKD adds one fundamental insight that, depending on one’s point of view, either enhances, or departs from, the metaphysics of the ancient Gnostics. For the Gnostics, this illusory prison world was purely the work of the archons. However, for PKD (2011), we humans are co-creators, along with the Empire— PKD’s counterpart to the archons—in creating the BIP dream world. In his Exegesis, he claims that we are “forgetful cosmocrators” (loc. 15114) who have become imprisoned in a universe of our own making without realising it. Alternatively, he describes our illusory world as a mass hallucination, along with the opinion that we need to overcome the false notion that hallucination can only be personal (loc. 6899). In the Tractates, he states that we hypostatise the information we are fed into the phenomenal world (2001), although he does not mention the source from which we are fed this information. Elsewhere, he claims that “[W]e built this world, this space-time matrix” (ibid., p. 196). If this is so then, from the perspective of the Gnostic tradition, we are the archons since the archons created this world.
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Within the domains of science and philosophy, the idea that our world is a holographic projection has been around since 1997 when it was first proposed by the physicist Juan Maldacena. However, although they might not have referred to it as such, the concept of the universe as a hologram, or otherwise illusory, has probably been known to mystics and wisdom traditions since time immemorial. For example, the idea of there being no inherent reality to the universe and that it is brought into existence by conscious observation extends back thousands of years to Vedic philosophy (Rosenblum & Kuttner, 2012, loc. 3239). One who subscribed to the holographic view of the universe was PKD, whose multifarious cosmogony includes a creator God who employs an artificial satellite he calls VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System) to project a hologram which we mistakenly take to be reality (2008).
A hologram (from the Greek words holos, meaning “whole”, and gramma, meaning “message”), is a three-dimensional image of an object encoded on a two-dimensional surface. Simple examples of unsophisticated and less than impressive holograms can be found in the security feature on a credit card or driving licence. The physics of holography is beyond the scope of this work, but simply stated, a hologram is, typically, created by splitting a laser beam into two identical beams. One beam, known as the object beam, is directed at the object, and the reflected light is redirected at the two-dimensional surface which will capture the hologram. The other beam, the reference beam, is directed onto the two-dimensional surface. It is the interference pattern resulting from the interaction of these two beams that is recorded onto the two-dimensional surface. Later, when the interference pattern on the two-dimensional surface is illuminated using a light source, a three-dimensional image of the object is produced. A hologram has some significant features. If a holographic image is viewed from different directions, it presents a three-dimensional image of the original object from different perspectives. Another fascinating property is that, unlike a normal image, for example, a photograph, which when cut in half yields only two separate pieces of the original image, a hologram, when cut in half, yields two holograms, each of which contains the whole of the original image. This holds true no matter how many pieces the hologram is cut into; the smallest piece of the hologram contains the entire image. Furthermore, if a piece of the original hologram is split, then each of its pieces also contain the whole of the original image.
In short, the theory that the universe is a hologram contends that the universe that we perceive is a three-dimensional image, in effect, an illusion, generated from information. Subscribing to this view, PKD asserts that what we mistake for reality is, in fact, the illusion of a projected hologram (2011, loc. 12926). He likens the Pleroma to a titanic hologram (loc. 7192). Similarly, in the Tractates Cryptica Scriptura, he states that the phenomenal world does not exist, but is, instead, simply “a hypostasis of the information processed by the Mind” (2001, p. 261). For PKD, the hermetic dictum, “as above, so below”, refers to the idea that the universe is a hologram, but that the author lacked the term (pp. 257–258). In Eugnostos the Blessed of the Nag Hammadi Library it states that the Forefather “sees himself within himself as a mirror, and his image appears as Father by himself, Parent by himself, and reflection, because he reflects unconceived first existence” (Meyer, 2007, p. 277). Similarly, we might think that Eugnostos likens creation to be a mirror of the Pleroma because he lacked the word for a hologram. In his Exegesis, PKD states that his idea that the universe is a hologram is not original but is merely an updated description of the images flashed on the walls of Plato’s cave. Like the prisoners in the cave who mistake the shadows cast on the cave wall for reality, we, likewise, mistake our holographic universe as being real. According to PKD, this holographic universe is a “spurious satanic interpolation … constituting a prison which shuts out information that … would reveal our true situation” (2011, loc. 6462, emphasis in original). In Gnostic terms, the fundamental nature of the fullness of the Pleroma is energetic information, and the archons have distorted this underlying information to project the illusory world in which we are imprisoned. In PKD’s view, our holographic universe is generated by the interaction of two hyper-universes in the same way that a regular hologram is created by the interference pattern of two laser beams (ibid., loc. 6480). In this holographic view—contrary to his earlier view that the Black Iron Prison and the Palm Tree Garden were two dipolar universes distinct from ours, one worse, one better—neither the Black Iron Prison nor the Palm Tree Garden is identical with our universe. Rather, he felt that our world is better considered as the holographic composite of the two, with each of them functioning as one of the two laser sources required to generate the hologram (loc. 6489). Rather than equating the Palm Tree Garden with the Pleroma, the superior upper world, and the Black Iron Prison with the universe, or the inferior created world, it would be more accurate to regard the PTG and the BIP as forming a pair of opposites within the fullness of the Pleroma, which, as The Gospel of Philip suggests, are brothers which need to be reconciled and dissolved into one another in order to effect a return to the realm of light. This schema echoes the view of the Christian mystic Jacob Boehme who also believed in three worlds. First, the divine realm, an angelic paradise, and, second, an opposing dark world of fire and wrath. Both of these worlds are invisible, beyond the perception of the senses. The third is our world, which results from an eternal struggle between the two invisible worlds (Lachman, 2015).
The Gnostic idea of the world as an illusion, and PKD’s notion of a holographic universe, finds an echo in the work of Kastrup (2011, 2015), who describes himself as a proponent of the philosophy known as monistic idealism (2011). Monistic idealism asserts that consciousness, rather than matter, is the ground of all being, much like Eckhart’s concept of the Godhead. Well disposed to idealism was the British astrophysicist, Sir James Jeans (1877–1946), who felt that the material universe was a derivative of consciousness, rather than consciousness being a derivative of matter, and suggested that the universe should be regarded as a great thought rather than a great machine. Kastrup (2016) asserts that, given the latest findings in the field of quantum physics, the only worldview that can explain the experimental data is idealism, a view, he claims, which has been “presented symbolically in many creation myths from across cultures and history.” The creation myth of the Gnostics—less the malevolence of the archons—would appear to be one of them. Opposed to what he describes as a “vicious, insidious stigmergy” (Kastrup, 2015, loc. 3279) aimed at the maintenance of the perspective of materialism, Kastrup’s view is that consciousness is the only carrier of reality of which we can be certain (loc. 289). He claims all reality is excitations in the One Mind of consciousness, which he refers to as mind-at-large. Metaphorically, he describes the ground of all reality, mind-at-large, as a stream of transpersonal experiences in which our personal consciousness is simply a localisation, or a whirlpool, within the stream. (Personally, my whirlpool feels more like an emotional and mental maelstrom at times, so the analogy works for me.) All experience is the movement, or excitation, of water, and mind-at-large is the matrix in which whirlpools (individual consciousness), as localised patterns of water flow, consist of nothing but the stream’s water (transpersonal consciousness) (loc. 338). This concept evokes the image of our individuality captured in the swirl pattern of our fingerprints. Our illusion of a personal identity, separated from the mind-at-large, is a result of this localisation (loc. 297). In an alternative analogy, Kastrup (2015) describes mind-at-large as suffering from dissociative identity disorder in which we are its “alters” (loc. 388). Dissociative identity disorder is a psychological condition in which a person has two or more distinct and persistent dissociated personalities, often referred to as alters (alternate personality). A person with this condition experiences an involuntary switching between alters, each of which has its own separate identity, characteristics, and behaviour. According to Kastrup, we are each an individual, dissociated personality within mind-at-large. In short, reality is grounded in a transpersonal dimension of consciousness in which we are what Kastrup describes as dissociated complexes, or alters (2015, loc. 436).
Kastrup (ibid.) maintains that, as an individual dissociated complex, we can only have a second-person perspective of an experience in mind-at-large. An original experience in mind-at-large, a ripple in the stream, reverberates within in an individual whirlpool (i.e., one of us), and our second-person perspective of the original experience is an amplification of the reverberation. These amplified, reverberating mental contents “end up obfuscating all other mental contents outside the whirlpool” (loc. 768). Like a TV set can only pick up the channel it is currently tuned into, an individual whirlpool only experiences the mind-at-large ripples that are currently reverberating within it in any given moment.
Kastrup (ibid.) goes on to explain consensus reality as “the shared second-person perspective of mental activity unfolding in a collective, obfuscated segment of consciousness” (loc. 419). Presumably, it is obfuscated only in terms of the first-person perspective. He claims that, since we all appear to share the same reality, the “particular storyline” being amplified by one whirlpool must always be the same as the storylines being amplified by all other whirlpools (loc. 964). He admits that exactly how this synchronisation happens “is an open question” (loc. 964), but it is by no means implausible given that all whirlpools are ultimately the same stream, mind-at-large. He describes this shared story (consensus reality), emerging from the obfuscated dimension of the collective psyche, as the dream of mind-at-large. Each one of us is a dissociated alter of mind-at-large partaking in the collective dream (loc. 2654): “Our individual psyches unite at a deep, obfuscated level, and the dream of consensus reality is imagined at that unified level” (loc. 2662). In an earlier work titled Dreamed Up Reality: Diving into the Mind to Uncover the Astonishing Hidden Tale of Nature, Kastrup (2011) also postulates that reality is the dream of what he refers to as the Source—which can reasonably be assumed to be identical with mind-at-large. He suggests that there is “… no distinction between the process of perceiving and the process of conceiving … its creation is a perception mirror of the Source’s conception potential. Therefore, the idea of strong objectivity may be an illusion of our realm of reality” (loc. 1061). Patently, Kastrup, like the Gnostics and PKD, sees our world as a dream-like illusion.
There is, of course, also a clear parallel between Kastrup’s (ibid.) view of a transpersonal form of consciousness, mind-at-large, in which we are individual, dissociated alters, and Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, which is the ground of individual consciousness, and from which our ego minds have become dissociated. The dissociated alters of mind-at-large (i.e., us) can also be likened to the Jungian concept of a complex within the individual psyche. In Jungian psychology, a complex is an emotionally charged cluster of ideas and/or images which accumulate around a particular archetype within the psyche. When a complex is constellated—activated due to some external situation—the result is an emotional response accompanied by physical symptoms or psychic disturbances. Invariably, complexes act with such a degree of autonomy that they can be considered as nodal points within the psyche, or splintered-off parts of the psyche that act according to their own will and laws, which, more often than not, is contrary to the habitual attitude of consciousness (Sharp, 2010). In the same way that a complex is a splintered-off part of the individual psyche, Kastrup’s alter (or whirlpool) is a splintered-off part of the One Mind of consciousness. In other words, a complex is to the individual psyche what the alter is to One Mind. If that is so, then a complex is within an individual’s psyche, which itself is a complex (alter) within One Mind; a complex within a complex.
Kastrup (2011) regards consciousness as a non-local field phenomenon in which the experiences of every conscious entity (whirlpool) within it “survive ad infinitum … as permanent experiences, or qualia” (loc. 345). (A qualia is an individual instance of subjective, conscious experience.) He also refers to thought patterns that form the underlying building blocks of everything ever experienced (loc. 1243). The correspondences with Jung’s collective unconscious and the archetypes are obvious and one could argue that, in essence, Kastrup’s mind-at-large is the collective unconscious, and his thought patterns are the archetypes. Indeed, he makes the connection that the collective unconscious is “somewhat related to the idea of a universal memory of qualia” (loc. 411). Quite clearly Kastrup’s theories dovetail nicely with both those of Jung and PKD. Indeed, Kastrup’s worldview would appear to sit somewhere between those of Jung and PKD, thus providing a perspective that helps to reconcile some of the differences between Jung and PKD.
A vociferous opponent of the materialist worldview, Kastrup (2016) claims that the latest experimental results in the field of quantum physics have demonstrated that the idea that there is a universe “out there”, independent of our minds, is now untenable. Developments in quantum physics are increasingly giving support to the idea that there is no universe independent of consciousness, and that our world is an illusion or, at the very least, nowhere near as substantial as we have generally been led to believe.
Considered to date back to 1900, quantum theory now forms the theoretical basis of much of modern physics. Physicists Rosenblum and Kuttner (2012) note that quantum theory, coming after classical physics—which is now known to present a worldview that is fundamentally flawed—ought to be seen as encompassing classical physics, as a special case, rather than replacing it. Whereas classical physics does an adequate job of explaining the nature of objects larger than molecules, it is merely a very good approximation of their behaviour, and struggles to explain phenomena at the atomic and subatomic levels. In other words, classical physics only works satisfactorily in a finite band on the spectrum of existence. On the other hand, quantum theory perfectly explains quantum phenomena, but, so far at least, cannot explain the world of larger objects. This is perhaps due to limitations in the observing technology, rather any flaws in the theory (ibid.). Nevertheless, one third of the US economy is dependent on products based on quantum mechanics (loc. 98), with a great deal of modern technology now based on quantum principles (loc. 239), for example, lasers, transistors, and magnetic resonance imaging or MRI (loc. 1483). Further-more, unlike its flawed predecessor, since its inception over a century ago, quantum theory has, so far, withstood the test of time. Rosenblum and Kuttner (2012) claim that it is the most “battle-tested” theory in science, with no predictions based on its principles ever having been demonstrated to be wrong (loc. 940). In short, as far as has been demonstrated to date, quantum theory is correct, whereas classical physics is an approximation only (loc. 533).
Quantum theory would appear to insist that the physical world that we experience is fundamentally dependent on our observation of it, and, most likely, our conscious observation of it. It appears to be leading to the inevitable conclusion that the act of observing an object to be in a particular place actually causes it to be there. Its existence becomes an actuality only upon its conscious observation, thus seemingly denying any physical reality to our world independent of our observation of it (loc. 260).
Quantum experiments have demonstrated that small particles—although, in theory, any objects—exhibit a wave-particle duality. Depending on the choice of experiment, a small object—for example, photon or atom—can be shown either: a) to exist as a particle at a particular location, or b) to appear as a waveform spread out over a large area, but not both simultaneously. Whereas the particle’s waviness can be dispersed over an extremely wide area, when an observer looks in a given spot within that area, either the particle will be found there immediately, or it will not (loc. 1337). Thus, the act of observation of a waveform potentially converts an analogue phenomenon into a binary proposition in which, if the particle was found, caused something to come into existence. Extrapolating on this idea, we might consider the Pleroma to be analogue and the created world to be binary: the poles of the opposites within the Pleroma can oscillate instantaneously such that the male is not male, and the female is not female, whereas the created world, brought into existence through conscious observation, is binary in that it requires the tension between the differentiated opposites to spark creation into existence. Rosenblum and Kuttner (2012) stress that a potential particle’s waviness in a particular area represents the probability of finding it in that location, and not the probability of it actually being there. It is the act of finding the particle in that spot, through observation, that actually causes it to be there. This, they say, is the tricky essence of what they refer to as the “quantum enigma” (loc. 1354). In quantum theory, it would appear that you can have your particle cake, and eat it too, just not at the same time. To some extent, it is not a case of wave or particle; it is a case of both wave and particle: the two states simply cannot be observed simultaneously. The ancient Gnostics would have loved quantum physics.
Rosenblum and Kuttner (2012) continue that whereas the act of observing a particle into existence in a particular location is a subjective experience for an observer, its quantum probability waviness, or wavefunction, is objective in that it is the same for everyone. Therefore, the quantum description for the phenomenon requires no particle in addition to the wavefunction of the particle such that the waveform of the particle is, objectively, synonymous with the particle itself (loc. 1381). There is no actual objectivity to the particle’s existence (loc. 1765). Furthermore, the particle simultaneously “exists” everywhere covered by the waveform, until its observation in a particular location causes it to exist in that location (loc. 1892). Only the waveform, and not the particle, has any physical reality, objectively speaking (loc. 1765). Concentrating the waviness into a particular location, through conscious observation, causes the particle to come into existence (loc. 1785), but only for those observing. In short, the waveform is objective, the particle is subjective. A particle has no objective existence. In response to the well-known koan, “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make any sound?” quantum physics would appear to answer with a resounding, “No! Not unless there is a conscious observer.” If there is no conscious observer, then not only does the falling tree not make any sound, there is no tree and no forest either. However, the Pleroma, PKD’s One Mind, and Kastrup’s mind-at-large can be regarded as conscious observers with an infinite capacity to dream anything into existence, independent of any human observers. So, does the falling tree make any sound? God heard it before it even existed. If—or perhaps, when—quantum principles scale up to larger objects, then there are no actual people either! We would exist only as human waveforms, and only come into existence when we are observed. Once again, extrapolating speculatively on this idea, perhaps we are waveforms in the collective unconscious, and only fall under the illusion of a separate self when we observe our particular waveform, or, in Kastrup’s terminology, the act of observation of a particular ripple-set within mind-at-large brings a whirlpool into existence. The unconscious is, almost invariably, symbolised by water, and this seems all the more appropriate given quantum physics findings regarding the waveform nature of reality.
The fact that unobserved objects are mere probabilities and that nothing is actually real until it is observed into existence, raises the possibility that we live in a dream world. However, Rosenblum and Kuttner (2012) do not go this far, but, instead, maintain that observation creates an objective reality that is the same for everyone else (loc. 1809). However, this appears to equate “objective” with physical concreteness. A shared illusion, although not actually concrete, is, to some degree at least, objective. Quantum theory does not appear to preclude the idea that our perception of an objective concrete reality is, in fact, an illusion. We can speculate this from the findings of quantum physics, we simply cannot prove it … not yet anyway.
To date, quantum effects have only been demonstrated for small objects; however, if quantum theory holds for any size of object, then larger objects, houses, cars, people, do not actually exist until they are observed. Rosenblum and Kuttner (2012) contend that we never see this “… craziness with big things. For all practical purposes, big things are always being looked at” (loc. 2112). Really? Who is looking at the tree deep in the forest in the middle of the night? Does it cease to exist when the sun goes down and we cannot see it? Einstein, for one, did not like the idea that the moon might cease to exist when he was not looking at it (loc. 2323). The notion is, no doubt, disconcerting for most people. So, if large objects are continually being observed, who is the observer? It certainly is not human, not for all objects in our world. Perhaps the persistent illusion of our world is because One Mind, or the Pleroma—or the archons perhaps—or mind-at-large, is always observing it, or the computer that runs the Matrix is always online.
Rosenblum and Kuttner (2012) suggest that the implication of quantum theory that is perhaps the hardest to accept is the notion that not only does the act of observation create present reality, but it “also creates a past appropriate to that reality” (loc. 2302); in other words, the chain of events leading up to a given reality do not exist until that reality is observed into existence. The conclusion is that, through conscious observation, we are able to create a history “backward in time” (loc. 2302, emphasis in original). This lends some credence to PKD’s claim that a great secret, known only by a few, including St. Paul, the Gnostic Simon Magus, Boehme, and Bruno, is the fact that “we are moving backward in time” (2001, p. 258). PKD appears increasingly percipient.
Another curious property of the quantum world is the principle of entanglement. Entanglement is the phenomenon in which, once entangled, particles remain connected to one another so that actions performed on one immediately affect the other, no matter the distance separating them: a phenomenon that so unsettled Einstein that he described it as spooky action at a distance. For example, if two particles are entangled, then when the polarisation of one twin is observed (thus causing it to have polarisation), the polarisation of the other twin is set immediately, regardless of the distance between the particles (Rosenblum & Kuttner, 2012, loc. 3453). Any two objects that have ever interacted with one another remain forever entangled, leading Rosenblum and Kuttner to conclude that there is a “mysterious universal connectedness” (loc. 2821) to our world that extends beyond the mere physical. At the psychological level, this connectedness might be none other than Jung’s collective unconscious, and at the metaphysical, or spiritual, or Jung’s psychoid level, this would correlate with the Pleroma that interpenetrates all that is.
Noting that quantum theory has implications far beyond what we consider to be the physical realm—the domain of science—Rosenblum and Kuttner caution against non-physicists incorporating quantum ideas to support their thinking in other domains, suggesting that those who do so be clear that their ideas are “merely suggested” (loc. 2861) by quantum physics, rather than being derived from it. Nevertheless—as far as this non-physicist is concerned—quantum theory does appear to be making less than subtle suggestions that our so-called reality is an illusion, and that consciousness alone brings this illusory reality into existence. Rosenblum and Kuttner note that there is no way to interpret the findings of quantum physics without encountering consciousness, but they acknowledge that, whereas most interpretations “accept the encounter [they] offer a rationale for avoiding a relationship” (loc. 2931). In other words, the world of science generally consigns what is often referred to as the “hard problem of consciousness” to the too-hard basket. In the meantime, we are dependent on the mystics and sages, indeed, the science fiction authors, of the world, unconstrained by the limits of science, to explore the nature of ultimate reality.