While the music plays softly in the background, I begin reading my dear friend Pat Riviere-Seel’s new book, Because I Did Not Drown, which arrived this afternoon. It is a consummate collection of personal essays and poetry. Due to issues with my eyes in the past few years, I took to listening almost exclusively to audiobooks. Pat’s is the first printed book I’ve read in a long while.

Malt’s music prolongs the feeling of the solstice celebration and calibration, of new beginnings, higher frequencies, of visions of what is becoming possible within our selves, and even in our broken world. It complements what I’m reading.

I feel the solid smoothness of Pat’s book in my hands, slowly turn pages filled with living words of beauty, sadness, wonder, courage that fill my heart. I believe that authenticity is as powerful a gift as love. The depth and honesty of her offerings inspire me to want to write. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. There are words rumbling inside me. I don’t yet know what they’re trying to say. I gently mark my page and close the book. I go to my desk to find a notebook and pen and wait to see what comes.

A Memory Resurfaces

A few days later, visiting with my friend Pat on Zoom, somehow the story came out about something I was asked to write in a Wisdom Healing Qigong mentorship program I participated in a few years back. Although I’m no longer regularly involved with the Wisdom Healing Qigong community that I was part of for almost ten years, I still do online practice several times a week. In 2023 I was invited to join a year long Mentorship program with my teacher Master Mingtong Gu. It was called The Living Tao, an intense and intimate platform in which we explored the deepest parts of ourselves through the lens of teachings in the Tao Te Ching expansively presented by Mingtong. With honesty and courage, we laughed, cried, expanded our hearts, and shared our truest selves with our supportive family of participants.

Near the beginning of the mentorship, Mingtong had asked for volunteers for various projects he had in mind to do down the road. One request was for editing. Since I had done editing for the The Chi Center for a couple of years, I again offered my services. A little later, I got a private slack message from Mingtong with a rather odd request. He asked if I had time to write a 500 word essay about the Tao and quantum physics. I must admit I was a little taken aback. I would have to do some research. It was before AI. I think Google was just beginning to test AI integration into its search engine. I told Mingtong I would get back to him shortly. Why was he asking me to write this? Part of me thought it might be a kind of audition for some writing he had in mind.

Anyway, I said I would do it, and so I did. I had a fascination with quantum physics. It was a subject I had approached before in my writing, and maybe Mingtong knew that. But how much could I say in 500 words about something as grand as quantum physics and spirituality? 

It turned out that maybe it was sort of an audition, because after I sent the essay to him, he proposed a project. It turned out, however, to mostly be transcribing and organizing and editing tons of information from a previous mentorship, not at all the kind of writing or editing I had any interest in taking on. I explained, and, of course, he understood.

When I told Pat the story of the essay, she asked to read it. Only one close friend in the mentorship had ever read it before, and I didn’t share my communication with Mingtong with anyone else. When I heard back from Pat, I was surprised to find that she actually found it both understandable and meaningful to her. So I decided to offer it here to you dear readers. As always, take what you can use and toss the rest:

The Tao Te Ching and Quantum Physics

I’ve been exploring the idea of a relationship between The Tao and Quantum Physics. My journey is spiritual, not scientific, but Quantum Physics, the little I can wrap my brain around, intrigues me. Especially since, in some ways, it seems to begin to bridge the gap between science and spirituality.

Up until the end of the 19th century, physical theories describing the Universe were based on the same set of rules: The Universe is local (at the effect of the speed of light), real (exists independently of any observer), and predictable (has a determinate future).

Then came Quantum Physics, which applies mathematical calculations to the behavior of matter and energy on the tiniest scales possible. Unlike previous physical suppositions, Quantum Physics is counterintuitive, consistently bizarre, and deals in probabilities. Upon exploring both Quantum Physics and The Tao, I discovered that there are things they share.

Here are some surprising concepts found in Quantum Physics that seem to begin to point to a more spiritual perspective of the Universe.

— The Observer Effect has shown that the thoughts and beliefs of the observer or experimenter affect the outcome of the experiment.
— In The Tao, we see that we create from formlessness into form and back to formlessness through our thoughts, beliefs, and expectations. We are never separate from our creations.

— Entanglement suggests that a fundamental and profound interconnectedness exists throughout the universe.
— The Tao is the fundamental, interconnectedness of everything that exists in all Universes.

— Quantum Superposition states that until someone measures or observes particular particles, they possess the potential to be in various states at the same time. Simply put, it recognizes that anything is possible.
— The Tao is the limitless, vast emptiness/darkness/formlessness that contains the possibility of all things.

There are Truths in The Tao, however, a freedom to The Tao, that I don’t believe Quantum Physics, as a “science,” will ever be able to come to terms with.

— The Tao begins and ends with the I don’t know.
— Quantum Physics has a need to know, and will continue to formulate mathematical hypotheses to explain the behavior of nano particles, without considering that there is no mathematical calculation that can define from where the nano particles, themselves, arise.

— The Tao begins in vastness, the undefinable inner source of All That Is.
— Quantum Physics begins from what’s outwardly visible, making its way inward to the more and more miniscule and invisible, needing to name everything along the way, not realizing it’s heading toward the unnameable.

— The Tao has no need to define or measure anything. In fact, it can’t be defined or measured.
— Quantum Physics uses numbers invented by humans, applying them to what is beyond human calculation. Numbers may reach to infinity, but can there ever be an infinite number large enough to explain The Tao?

We are all on a search, even if not consciously. At some point, we are faced with the ultimate contemplation, the unanswerable questions — Who am I? What is Tao? Quantum physicists are on the same search. They want to find a Unified Field Theory, a mathematical “equation an inch long that defines the mind of God.” But If God means Tao, the undefinable Source of all Being, the unnameable Essence of All That Is, in my humble opinion, they will never find it through science.