Quantum Mysticism

For many scientists, however, the embrace of the New Age is almost as irksome as is the hostility of the fundamentalists. At least the latter can be challenged on the battlefields of empirical evidence. But how does one fight a befuddled and besotted lover? Along with the Stanford physicist, one of the film’s most prominent voices is J.Z. Knight, a Yelm, Washington, mystic who channels an 11,000-year-old spirit named Ramtha. At one point, Knight/Ramtha tells us that quantum physics is the only science that can explain “how a mustard seed is the size of heaven,” an endorsement that will surely leave most physicists quivering.

The problem here is not just that the science itself is never explained in a meaningful way, but that we have no idea at any point whether physicists actually say what we are being told they say, or if this is simply Ramtha’s take on quantum mechanics. Rather than dispel confusion, the film encourages it. Fred Alan Wolf, one of the actual physicists, tells us that “the trick in life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery.” Later, he adds, “If you study this science long enough and deeply enough, and you don’t come out feeling wacko about it, then you haven’t understood a thing.” Which appears to be the aim.

Quantum mysterions may embrace science in principle, but they have little more interest than creationists in learning about it in practice. Under their adoring gaze, the mathematical formalisms of quantum mechanics, which make concrete predictions accurate to dozens of decimal places and which underlie the technologies of microchips and lasers, are stripped of all empirical content and reduced to a set of syrupy nostrums. At the same time, quantum mysticism promotes a vision of spiritual satisfaction achieved not by the hard transformative work of ritual or study, but by the mechanism of consumer choice. In the infinite sea of possibility here promoted, nothing is real except what you choose to accept. Which is not that far from the creationist position — there, too, empirical evidence is brushed aside and reality becomes what you’d like it to be.