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Quantum mysticism is the claim that the laws of quantum mechanics incorporate mystical ideas similar to those found in certain religious traditions or New Age beliefs. It is descended from the measurement problem – the seemingly special role which observers play in quantum mechanics. The related term quantum quackery has been used pejoratively by skeptics to discount claims that quantum theory might support mystical beliefs,¹ while quantum mysticism has been used as a more neutral description of ideas that blend the ideas of eastern mysticism and quantum physics.²

History

In many mystical traditions, the conscious mind is seen as a separate entity, existing in a realm not described by physical law. Some people claim that this idea gains support from the description of the physical world provided by quantum mechanics ⁸.

The reason is that quantum mechanics requires interpretation before it describes the experience of an observer. While particles and fields are described by a wavefunction, the results of observations are described by classical information which tells you the result. The information about observations is not in the wavefunction, but is additional random data. The wavefunction only gives the probability of getting different outcomes, and the wavefunction only turns into a probability when it is measured⁹.

The nature of observation has often been a point of contention in quantum mechanics¹⁰, because quantum mechanics describes the experiences of observers with different numbers than it uses to describe material objects. With the exception of Louis DeBroglie and Albert Einstein, who believed that quantum mechanics was a statistical approximation to a deeper reality which is deterministic, most of the founders of quantum mechanics believed that this problem is purely philosophical. Eugene Wigner went further, and explicitly identified it as a quantum version of the mind/body problem ¹¹.

Mind/body problem in Newtonian mechanics

Within Newtonian mechanics, the question of consciousness does not seem as obviously mysterious, because the content of a mind might be identified with the position and velocity of the atoms of the brain. Knowing the state of the atoms determines the future, so in a verificationalist sense it determines all measurable aspects of conscious behavior¹². But even in a Newtonian universe, there are philosophical doubts. The atoms which constitute the brain do not stay the same, and in certain contrived thought experiments, the identification of mind and brain can become confused.

For example, when a conscious Newtonian observer is duplicated, by copying all the atoms relative positions and velocities, it is not obvious which way the stream of conscious experience for the observer will go. If the consciousness only goes one way, the duplicate will be left a philosophical zombie, without a consciousness of its own. But if the consciousness goes both ways, both observers start off in the same state, so that the subjective experience of the consciousness after the split requires an extra bit of information to describe--- the bit which tells you which path the consciousness will take. The value of this bit is subjectively very important for the duplicated--- it predicts the future--- but this bit is not in the positions and velocities of the atoms ¹³.

Observation in quantum mechanics

Unlike classical mechanics, in quantum mechanics, there is no naive way of identifying the true state of the world, in particular, the state of observers is indefinite. The quantum mechanical wavefunction spreads out describing an ever larger superposition of different worlds. An observer observing a superposition can be described by a superposition of different observers seeing different things, but in actual experience, an observer never feels a superposition, but always feels that one of the outcomes has occurred with certainty. This apparent conflict between a wavefunction description and classical experience is called the problem of observation, and it was apparent to the early founders of quantum mechanics. Each one had a different opinion about the resolution:

Albert Einstein, and with him Louis DeBroglie and later David Bohm, believed that quantum mechanics was incomplete, that the wavefunction was only a statistical description of a deeper structure which was deterministic. He saw quantum mechanics as analogous to statistical mechanics, and the wavefunction just a peculiar statistical device for observers who are ignorant of the values of the hidden variables underneath. This point of view makes the extra information not at all mysterious--- the results of observations are simply revealing the values of the hidden variables. Much later, John Bell realized that this point of view requires a nonlocality, leading most physicists to lose interest in the idea¹⁴.

Niels Bohr believed that quantum mechanics was a complete description of nature, but that it was simply a language ill suited to describing the world of everyday experience, and that in the human realm experiences were described by classical mechanics and by probability. This point of view, the Copenhagen interpretation, was shared by Max Born and Werner Heisenberg and became the standard view. It requires a demarcation line, a boundary, above which an object would cease to be quantum and would start to be classical. Bohr never specified this line precisely, since he believed that it was not a question of physics, but of pure philosophy. Von Neumann, in his analysis of measurements, interpreted the demarcation line as the point where wave-function collapse occurs, and he showed that within quantum mechanics, the point of collapse is largely arbitrary, past the first incoherent interaction with a complex enough object ¹⁵.

Eugene Wigner reformulated the Schrodinger's cat using a conscious observer, Wigner's friend. He concluded that the demarcation line which Bohr refused to specify was at the point of conscious experience. Wigner's position was that the wavefunction collapses because consciousness observes it, placing a non-scientific layer at the foundation of quantum mechanics, a non-scientific layer which could be interpreted as mystical, since it treats conscious observation as a separate ingredient.

Decoherence and modern interpretations

The physical aspects of the interpretation of quantum mechanics were clarified by Hugh Everett III, who proposed an entirely mechanistic interpretation. In Everett's description, the whole universe is an enormous wavefunction, describing a dizzying multiplying possibility of worlds. In this formalism, observers were to be treated as computers or as any other measuring device, their memories written out on magnetic tape ¹⁶. To understand their experiences, you would focus on the answer which these observers would give to questions asked by an external observer. Everett believed that this line of reasoning showed that any interpretational problems in quantum mechanics were entirely philosophical, because he could show that there was no conflict between deterministic evolution of the wavefunction with the subjective randomness experienced by the observers, when analyzed using the theory itself ¹⁷.

Since the physical description in Everett's picture is the deterministic wavefunction, the issue of interpretation is only relevant when analyzing the experience of an observer. The answer to the question "what does this observer see?" is only ambiguous to the extent that the specification of the observer is imprecise. An observer's state is a particular high dimensional projection of the wavefunction, but not all parts of the wavefunction describe a single observer – only those parts which describe a consistent past of memories. In Everett's picture, the interpretation is a clarification, it tells you which observer you are examining. But the description of the observer is now a major chunk of the description of the world--- it includes a lot of extra information not present in the original wavefunction¹⁸.

This extra information includes most observable parameters in our universe. For example, if the universe started out perfectly homogeneous and isotropic, the universal wavefunction would still be homogeneous and isotropic. But for any observer, the description would be irregular describing a different pattern of galaxies, stars and planets. The information which specifies the observer specifies the positions of all those stars, the distance to Jupiter, the location of the moon in its orbit, the contents of today's newspaper, etc. None of this is in the universal wavefunction, that object is only a quantum superposition of all possible worlds. Most of the nontrivial information is in the history of past random events.

Everett's approach has been elaborated into a field of study called decoherence, which attempts to identify the way in which a classical world is embedded into quantum mechanics when the systems become large ¹⁹.

Mystical interpretations

The description of the observer in decoherence approaches, as in the Copenhagen approach, always involves extra information, the information which specifies the outcome of all the random events in the past. This information answers the question "which observer?" in many-worlds, and correspondingly answers the question "what outcomes of past measurements?" in Copenhagen.

The presence of large amounts of additional information has been interpreted as a possibly mystical component associated with consciousness, since it is data which is associated with the observer, not with the matter from which the observer is built. Since this includes most information about the universe, considering the quantum mechanical description to be complete leads to a very jarring reevaluation of the nature of the observer ²⁰ .

Consciousness causes collapse

This interpretation attributes the process of wave function collapse (directly, indirectly, or even partially) to consciousness itself. However, it is not explained by this theory which things have sufficient consciousness to collapse the wave function ("Was the wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some highly qualified measurer - with a PhD?"²²). It is also not clear whether measuring devices might also be considered conscious.

Consciousness causes collapse can be seen as an interpretation of the Wigner's friend thought experiment by asserting that collapse occurs at the first "conscious" observer.

Recent study of quantum decoherence casts new light onto the problem by reducing the emphasis on the "macroscopic observer" originally introduced in the language of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. Modern scientific discourse has evolved to try to quantify how quantum systems decohere due to their interactions with the surroundings. This provides a unified view which treats neighboring quantum systems, thermal baths and the measurement apparatus on the same footing. Although decoherence shows that there is no measurable contradiction between quantum mechanics and the classical world, decoherence is not a philosophy and it does not claim to give a resolution to the philosophical aspects of the problem of measurement.

Popularization

These counterintuitive aspects of quantum physics were popularized in the 1970s with Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, in which he explores the parallels between quantum physics and principles in Eastern mystical teachings. This was taken up in the 1980s by Hindutva pseudoscience, which extrapolated on the statements of Vivekananda, claiming that "the conclusions of modern science are the very conclusions the Vedanta reached ages ago"²³. It conflated concepts from physics like gravitation, electricity, magnetism and other forces with the mystical Vedantic notion of Prana²⁴²⁵.

Similarly, the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!? made controversial use of ideas about quantum mechanics, among other sciences, in a New Age context.

Theories of quantum mind have given rise to concepts like quantum meditation, positing a scientific basis for meditation practices not supported by mainstream science.²⁶ Among these is quantum healing, which claims that through quantum mechanical effects, the mind can heal the body. Quantum healing invokes quantum entanglement and the observer effect to argue that the consciousness of a healer could impact the body of another person. There are several contemporary new-age practices in this category, including Matrix Energetics, Quantum-Touch, and Quantum Energetics.

Rejections by physicists and mystics

Several of the founders of quantum physics were interested in the link between quantum mechanics and mysticism, including Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Eugene Wigner and Erwin Schrödinger. They felt that quantum mechanics required a subtle reexamining of the role of conscious experience in the physical world.

Unlike them, the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington rejected the notion that mysticism and physics had anything more than a metaphorical relationship.²⁷ Eddington explained the temptation and why he felt it should be avoided: "We should suspect an intention to reduce God to a system of differential equations. That fiasco at any rate must be avoided. However much the ramifications of physics may be extended by further scientific discovery, they cannot from their very nature [impinge upon] the background in which they have their being."²⁸.

Responding to results of violations of Bell's inequality, results which cast doubt on hidden-variable interpretations, physicist Heinz Pagels explicitly rejected any link between the supernatural phenomenon often associated with mysticism and quantum mechanics, writing:

Likewise some mystics doubt that quantum physics and mysticism describe the same realm. Tom Huston, in a review on the quantum mystical film What the Bleep Do We Know!? for What is Enlightenment? Magazine wrote:

Parodies

In 1998 Deepak Chopra was awarded the parody Ig Nobel Prize in physics for "his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness."³⁰. He received this 'honour' for such writing as:

Quantum philosophy

In addition to mystical adaptations of quantum theory, postmodern/poststructuralist thinkers have been criticised for pseudoscientific references to quantum mechanics. An example was in the Sokal Affair of 1996, where Alan Sokal published a tongue-in-cheek paper entitled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity (which refers to quantum gravity, an extension of quantum theory) in the postmodernist journal Social Text. The editors' acceptance of the nonsensical article earned them the 1996 parody Ig Nobel Prize. Sokal, with Jean Bricmont, went on to make a serious critique of the use of science by postmodern thinkers in their book Fashionable Nonsense.

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