-
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, on the experience of seeing Earth from
orbit.
"'Sacred'
is what happens to questions when we can no longer stand to seek an
answer."
-
George Murray, Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms (2010)
While
the nature of numinous reality has been roughly ascertained by spiritual
initiates over many millennia, concentrating on portions that are measurable by
established metrics is preferable, for both practical and philosophical
reasons.
By
its very nature, numinous reality defies definition. Compounding this
difficulty, conventional scientific method - that is, the established protocol
of observation, measurement and experimentation established in 17th century
Europe - has proven itself to be wholly inadequate to the task of revealing
reliable truths about the metaphysical.
In
fact, the word 'metaphysical' - beyond
physical - puts any subject it defines outside the purview of credible
inquiry, empirical or otherwise.
(In
the context of this writing, the word 'metaphysical' is used unchangeably with
'spiritual' or 'numinous' to indicate an understanding of the world which is
not grounded exclusively in material physicality.)
(In
addition, it should be made plain that this essay is not intended to address
so-called 'spiritual' behaviors like 'compassion' or 'kindness', certainly
among the most noble traits demonstrated by the human animal.)
(Likewise,
the idea of metaphysical 'consciousness' [or 'awareness'] is not explored in-depth
here. By the estimation of the writer, this concept is better left as a subject
for future exposition.)
For
hundreds of generations, humans have clung to metaphysical beliefs, and taken
consolation in assumptions about invisible realities - realities they have
invented themselves or inherited from others.
Even
in the earliest years of the 21st century, faith in objective truth - whether
embodied by deities, or represented by a political, legal, cultural, religious
or scientific system - is still the default mode for most people.
Beliefs
based around these sorts of objective truths are the epistemological equivalent
of believing that the sun revolves around the Earth. They represent the last -
and most deeply entrenched - vestiges of prehistoric instinctual reasoning in modern
humans.
This
instinctual reasoning has been well-documented by scientists who have studied
young children and their receptivity to explanations that evoke design or
purpose. Based on these findings, it is sensible to conjecture that humans of
any age are amenable to perceiving agency in the world, that - in effect - we cannot help but believe.
Some
researchers have used this data to argue for the existence of deity (and by
extension, an objective truth), claiming that - in the words of 17th century French
philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) - "there is a God-shaped vacuum in
the heart of everyman".
Or,
in layman's terms, since it has been demonstrated that humans are predisposed
to believe in gods, logically, they must exist, because we were created this
way.
Propositions
of this sort are - and always have been - quite common. They must be accepted
on faith, and for the majority of humans in the 21st century, lacking this
faith is perceived as a character flaw.
Even
atheists - who would generally scoff at being compared to the
religiously-minded - succumb to Pascal's 'God-shaped vacuum', choosing to
satisfy the need to believe with scientism,
aesthetics, hedonism, activism, nihilism, or what-have-you.
(To
be clear, in the context of this essay, objective truths - whether espoused by
atheists in the form of scientism or by believers in
political/religious/cultural ideologies - are equally fallacious.)
(Personal
truth - the abstraction of one human being's experience in the world - or consensual truth - a
consolidation of two or more personal truths - is neither conclusive or
absolute, and must be always evaluated with great care, depending on context,
the perceiver(s), and what is being perceived.)
It is with cautious, thorough scientific experimentation and documentation that researchers have theorized the primacy of belief in the formation of humans' understanding of the world.
With
this information in mind, attention can be turned to a subject that has
traditionally been regarded as an important locus of human belief, and a source
of both numinous reality and metaphysical agency in the world: The existence of
soul.
In
keeping with the themes disclosed at the outset of this essay, imagining a idea
of soul relevant in the 21st century is quite challenging.
The
temptation to conceptualize 'soul' according to ancient wisdom traditions or
new age vapidity is pervasive in this era, as is the tendency to reject the
notion altogether.
Foundational
to the concept of soul proposed by this exposition is the insight offered by
the English poet, artist and mystic William Blake (1757-1827).
In
his seminal poetic work 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell', Blake states that,
"Man has no Body [sic] distinct from his Soul [sic] for that calld [sic]
Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses [sic]. the [sic] chief
inlets of Soul in this age."
Of
principal interest here is not the inference that the soul does not reside in
the body - like the heart or some other internal organ - but that the human
body is inside of soul.
Even
more radical is the poet's proposition that the body is the part of the soul discerned by the five senses - a
statement which, if accepted literally, suggests that the soul's existence can
be revealed and studied by adopting a different understanding of what our
physical bodies actually are.
The
second tier in the concept of soul proposed here comes from the emerging field
of quantum computing, a system of information processing that utilizes atomic
and subatomic particles to perform complex mathematical operations.
Quantum
mechanics - the foundational basis of quantum computing - was once characterized as a theory of limits,
a descriptor which connoted a view of world in which human observation was
unavoidably uncertain and where randomness pervaded all natural phenomenon.
In
the early part of the 20th century, this conceit was embraced by the logical
positivists, a philosophical school which stressed an epistemology of
sensory-based empiricism coupled with mathematical and linguistic rigor.
Perhaps
the most well-known expression of this "theory of limits" is Werner
Heisenberg's (1901-1976) uncertainty principal, which set a daunting
restriction on quantum mechanics' capacity to describe and control physical
phenomenon.
Essentially,
the uncertainty principal posits that the more an observer knows about one
"sharp" property of a particle - such as its position - the less can
be known about another "sharp" property, for example, its velocity.
While
this conceit held sway for much of the last century, today physicists routinely
encode information in individual atoms or elementary particles with tremendous
precision, despite the restriction placed by the uncertainty principal.
It
is this particular notion that is relevant to the re-imagining of soul.
Digital technology stores information using bits, a physical system in which values have either a yes or no / true or false / 0 or 1 value. In classical computers, the presence or absence of a charge on the plates of a capacitor can represent a bit.
But
in quantum computers, qubits - quantum bits - can assume values between and including 0 or 1, permitting a level of functionality that
would be impossible with digital tech.
This functionality is accomplished by making direct use of phenomena like quantum superposition, where elementary particles can take on a range of different values simultaneously.
By
utilizing such observables, physicists have shown that problems predicted by
uncertainty can be overcome by following a simple rule of thumb: If some
particle properties are hard to make sharp, do not attempt to store information
in those properties; use other properties instead.
To
briefly review, with these elements in mind, a) the human proclivity towards
belief, b) the body as part of the soul and c) the use of quantum superposition
to store information, a picture of the numinous reality represented by soul
begins to take shape.
Imagine
soul as a field of energy - both continuous (analogue) and discreet (digital) -
comprised of particles and waves the same way light is. Yet, unlike light, the
soul is both temporal and atemporal, operating inside and outside of space-time.
While
metaphysical by definition, the soul's "sharp" property - the physical body -
is measurable, but of limited use to
store numinous information. To wit, as Blake suggested, the body is just
"a portion of soul discerned by the five senses."
However
the body's other physical properties - like particles described by quantum
superposition - exist in all
theoretically possible states and are therefore accessible to store numinous information. More importantly, the states can be creatively conceptualized by human imagination, and by thoughtful reasoning.
Re-imagining
the soul could begin with an inventory of genetic data inherited at the moment
of conception. This will include not only parental heritage, but the condensed
history of the species, expressed chemically.
Lists
of foods, drinks and other ingestible substances consumed by the progenitor
during gestation might be tallied; then the same thing could be done for the
offspring as well, insofar as they can be determined. The origins of these
consumables should be considered also, since what we put into ourselves,
becomes us.
Devise
an algorithm to discern the residual lasting effects of these consumables
within the body, but also what is released by the body, both in terms of
scatological waste, cellular decay, and quantum leakage.
Consider
breath, how many breaths are taken in a lifetime. Consider how the body is
sustained by breathing, and what that implies for the concept of soul.
Disintegration
of the body - the soul's "sharp" property - upon death ends the human
experience of temporally-based sense input and expression.
So
the body disintegrates. But as a part of soul, it continues to exist in any one
of theoretically possible states, and is gradually reintegrated into the surrounding
environment, in the form of molecular constituents, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous.
For
at its most basic state, the body - whether living or dead - is energy, and
energy can be neither created or destroyed. The soul - in the context of this
writing - is an expression of that same energy.
Eventually,
like the body, the Earth will disintegrate and return to the stars, where the
entirety of matter in the observable universe had its origin. Yet for soul,
existing both temporally and atemporally, this is only the final (or the
first?) of the all the theoretically possible states for the body.
If
this new idea of soul sounds uncannily like an old concept - that the whole
physical universe is a "sharp" property, existing in one of innumerable
theoretically possible states, and that it is only part of a much wider field
of energy - then the desire of this essay's author has been satisfied.
We
live in a remarkable historical period, one that demands that we throw off the self-imposed
shackles of antiquated beliefs and superstition, for our own sake and the sake
of the species.
It
is a time that demands a re-conceptualization of soul - not as some abstract
notion that remains elusive and indefinable, accessible to only mystics, messiahs and
metaphysicians - but as something that surrounds us all the time, and that is
available to anyone willing to make the effort to imagine it is there.
(2013)
(2013)
