Quantum Mysticism: The fuzzy embrace of science and religion

"History abounds with religious enthusiasts who have read spiritual portent into the arrangement of the planets, the vacuum of space, electromagnetic waves and the big bang. But no scientific discovery has proved so ripe for spiritual projection as the theories of quantum physics, replete with their quixotic qualities of uncertainty, simultaneity and parallelism. A new film, What the #$*! Do We Know!, opening June 18, abandons itself entirely to the ecstasies of quantum mysticism, finding in this aleatory description of nature the key to spiritual transformation. As one of the film’s characters gushes early in the proceedings, “The moment we acknowledge the quantum self, we say that somebody has become enlightened. . . .
What we find down the rabbit hole is a universe “liberated” from the materialism of classical physics, a realm that one expert describes as a place where “we have to accept that everything around us — chairs, tables, everything — is just possible movements of consciousness.” From there it is a mere bunny hop to the proposition that each of us, with the right consciousness, can “infect the quantum field” and create reality for ourselves. “We are here to be creators. We are here to infiltrate space with ideas and mansions of thought,” another of the experts announces near the end of the film. By acknowledging consciousness as “the ground of all being,” the message of quantum physics, we are told, is that we can all become “like the great avatars of history — Jesus and Buddha.” ”