Superposition

Superposition is a term from quantum physics that is used to describe a particle’s position when fired through a slotted barrier in the famous double-slit experiment. In this experiment the particle acts like a wave until it is measured (observed), “the wave function collapses” and the particle is then found in one place.

I was reading “On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory” and came across these lines: “Before one measures the particle’s position there is no sense in even asking where it is. It does not have a definite position, only potential positions described by a probability wave that encodes the likelihood that the particle, if it were examined, would be found here or there.”

But this is the one that really struck me: “…[Richard] Feynman’s understanding of the double-slit was that individual electrons follow not one but every (emphasis mine) possible path from the gun to the screen. One path takes the electron through the left slit, another through the right, and yet another might take it first through the right, back out through the left, into a U-turn, and through the left slit once more. Every single possible path – aka history – of the electron, no matter how absurd, must be considered, Feynman advanced, and all those paths contribute to what we see on the screen…the electron does anything it likes. It just goes in any direction at any speed, forward or backward in time…”

What this brought to mind is my experiences of perspectives. Lately I have imagined my perspectives like slots on a roulette wheel, where my attention will bounce here and there but ultimately land somewhere relatively firm. I can often hear what the slots at the last two bounces or so have to say, and take them into consideration after the marble is secure in its landing spot. I can then do a conscious assessment to see if that is the best of the options presented. But the landing spot does seem to be a preferred location somehow, and much too often it is secure there without consideration of any others.

Is it possible that my awareness of a particular circumstance is in a kind of superposition containing all possible perspectives, just like the electron? I have said before that focused attention generates energy, which thus creates a gravitational pull, however small. I imagine that a lifetime of directing my attention, initiated by others and/or my own choices, generates gravitational preferences that act like the observer (measurement) function in the double-slit example. It may not constrict the perspective to a single point, as with the electron, but it often seems to, at least initially. At a minimum, repeated attention over time must surely narrow the possible landing sites that result in my “having” a particular perspective.

I have often thought that all of my practices, explorations and interactions with fellow explorers over these many decades were loosening the grip of the enculturation and narrowing processes. So, I love the feel that all of this is moving my awareness towards a kind of inherent superposition, such that until a state is reached where a perspective is observed by my conscious attention, “there is no sense in even asking where it is.” This also makes every perspective’s landing spot less securely held, in the knowing that those “possible paths” were, and are still, available, even though “unobserved.” The more options that my attention does become aware of, the freer I am to travel in consciousness in a more unencumbered way, sampling a multitude of perspectives before choosing one…if that is necessary.