Why Quantum Reality Is Your Reality.

The notion that quantum reality is your reality looms as a rich and enticing possibility. Until very recently, the very prospect was all but unthinkable, however. In everyday life there appears to be no reason to pay attention to the quantum field, the finest level of creation inhabited by subatomic particles and fundamental forces. In the century or more after physics was overturned by the quantum revolution, a Chinese wall existed between the strange behavior of quanta and the events we experience in the larger world of tangible physical objects.

The dictum that “never the twain shall meet” held good for decades. Technically, that was due in large part because Einstein’s theory of relativity, which explains physics on this side of the wall, couldn’t be reconciled with quantum mechanics, the prevailing explanation for things that happen on the other side of the wall. Even now the two theories each correct in its own domain, don’t fit together. That schism is of concern to physicists, but it only reinforces our habit of not thinking about quantum reality, since it is so minuscule and far from our everyday experience.

What brings the quantum world suddenly closer to everyone’s life is a major rethink. Instead of seeing quantum behavior as stranger than strange, it dovetails into something no one can do without: consciousness.

Here we need to take a somewhat more technical look, although it doesn’t need to be daunting. Among the chief features of quantum reality are the following:

• Superposition. A subatomic particle like an electron or photon exists as a cloud of possibilities, known as superposition, before it is measured, at which point it appears in a precise location in time and space.
• Uncertainty. Until it is measured, anything you want to know about a subatomic particle is uncertain, meaning that there is only a mathematical probability about it.
• Entanglement. A pair of subatomic particles behaves as mirrors of one another. When any measurement is made of one partner, the other will display the opposite behavior. The two particles are entangled, and somehow they communicate instantaneously with each other, even at distances of many light years. This defies Einstein’s principle that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. 
• Nonlocality. Tied into all of the above is how the quantum field behaves as a whole. Every location responds instantaneously to every other, which means that no event is truly local or isolated. It is embedded into an over-arching reality, which is nonlocal.

Quantum reality has remained on its side of the wall because none of these features applies to the large-scale physical world. A beach ball, oak tree, cloud, or water droplet all appear to our perception as isolated, securely located, detached from one another, and above all, visible and tangible. This seems reasonable if you consider only the world “out there.” Switch your gaze to the subjective world “in here,” and suddenly the picture undergoes a radical change.

Your next thought, and every thought you’ve ever had, behaves much more like an electron than a beach ball. It is uncertain, in that no one’s next thought can be predicted. There is a probability that you will have a certain thought, but that’s all. Any single thought requires myriad brain cells to act simultaneously, in communication with one another. Your thoughts are entangled with your mind, which serves as the overarching reality in which thinking, feeling, and sensing occur.

If this sounds arcane, at the most basic level you are indisputably woven into the quantum field. Every cell in your body creates its own electrical field, and electricity occurs at the quantum level. Your body’s entire electrical field, sometimes known as the biofield, connects you to some rich and unknown possibilities. The electrical impulses inside your brain aren’t random. There’s not a crackling storm of microscopic lightning in your brain but an organized process. Somehow, the brain’s electrical impulses know what they are doing. When you want to have a thought, words appear in your head; you don’t hear static or the white noise that random frequencies would generate. To imagine the mystery behind this, think of living in a house where electricity flows through the wiring and decides to operate all your appliances any way it wants to.

That’s an impossibility when it comes to household electricity, but as you read this sentence, the words mean something because the biofield flickers with meaningful activity. Now expand the picture. Not just individual cells or clumps of cells, not even whole organs like the heart and brain, but your entire body is held together by meaningful activity. Every cell knows what it is meant to do. 

It has even been proposed that the biofield is actually an electrome, a totality like your genome. Your genome is an encyclopedia of the knowledge contained in all 20,000 to 25,000 genes in the human body. Geneticists are constantly delving into the information coded in human DNA, but it would be impossible to approach your electrome the same way. Genes can be viewed under a microscope. Electrical impulse are invisible ripples or fluctuations in the biofield. Genes are stable—the ones you were born with remain fixed for a lifetime—but electrical impulses are in constant flux. No two seconds of your life so far have contained the same map of activity in your electrome.

There is no viable physical explanation for how electrical impulses or the atoms and molecules in brain cells became conscious. This is a huge stumbling block for physics, chemistry, and biology. Therefore, more scientists are beginning to accept that consciousness must be inherent in creation, there for the beginning along with gravity and spacetime. This is the opening that brings quantum reality in everyday life. 

The next step is to fully enfold the human mind and body into quantum reality, which is beginning to happen in new fields like quantum biology and quantum metabolism. This could lead to medical breakthroughs. Major diseases, including lifestyle disorders like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, along with the effects of aging, could be traceable to distortions in quantum interactions inside our cells.  The quantum field itself knows no disease, aging, or death. This field is our source, and the theory is that there might be ways to prevent or heal distortions at the finest level, where they should be the most treatable.

So far we are talking about enticing possibilities rather than full-fledged achievements. But everyone should know that the “real” reality we occupy as humans is quantum. We are connected to the very source of creation in every dimension: physical, mental, and spiritual. One consciousness rules them all. With that knowledge in hand, a new vison of possibilities will unfold. 

DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, FRCP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation.  Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 91st book, Total Meditation: Practices in Living the Awakened Life  explores and reinterprets the physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual benefits that the practice of meditation can bring.  For the last thirty years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution. His latest book,  Living in the Light co-authored with Sarah Platt-Finger. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” www.deepakchopra.com