The Oracle’s Library explores the significance of thoughts. The root of all alchemy is derived from the power of a thought. The old hermetic beliefs once revolved around the idea that thoughts prompt manifestation in the material world. And we are constantly influencing the physical realm through the continuous stream of our own conscious thoughts. All that we think or wish upon becomes our conscious attempt to influence future outcomes. The connection in alchemy is as subtle as that—thoughts become a reality.
Collapsing Probability and Schrödinger’s Cat
When we compare this idea to our own perception of the thing in question within the world of quantum physics, we find a similar concept. That is, waves pronounce themselves as particles in random locations relative to the viewers perspective. This variation in ‘appearances’ is all due to the presence of the observer—the paradigm of existence that is actively influencing what is being viewed, simply by assessing it with the eyes. With Schrödinger’s cat, we know that the cat inside the box has the potential to be dead from poison or alive (and ready to jump at your face once you open that lid, because he’s real angry you put him in that box!).
But, since the lid is still on the box, probability tells us that Mr. Kitty can be both alive and dead. So both states of being become the cats superposition at a quantum level. The two outcomes must exist if both are probable—therefore, our own observation when we lift the box to look inside is the element that collapses probabilities to make for the final outcome—the great reveal of Mr. Kitty’s fate.
Conscious Intention and Manifestation
In another way, humanity influences the current reality each day with only a thought. A basic way to understand this concept is by viewing a time-line of human history that consists of all things ever invented by peoples of the past.
When we take the sum of all human invention—all created art, architecture and technologies, all words ever spoken and all books ever written—we begin to see how thoughts shape the exterior reality. The wheel, the alphabet, the umbrella and the cell phone are all a product of one bold human’s thought. “I shall invent the umbrella!” They must have declared. It took a conscious attempt to visualize these inventions and a strong will to manifest them into reality. With each idea, we manipulate the material world around us and fashion our own paradigm of existence.
The Infinite Multiverse
Another way that alchemy crosses paths with the world of quantum physics is through the idea of microcosm within macrocosm.
To the alchemist, the quintessence was within all substance. Or the probability for all possible things was present within a quantity so small that it could be found within a grain of sand. The probability for all things possible must exist within that tiny speck of sand–the outcomes need only a corresponding catalyst to bring each possibility about. Similarly, the quantum level has taken us into a world at the most minute level of existence. After the discovery of an excess of ‘dark matter’ present in the universe, we have since asked how this ‘stuff’ inside space threw off the numbers where nothing but the void should exist. Now, we are closer to that answer in understanding that space is not such an empty place after-all, but it is more like a fabric filled of particles with quantum properties at work—systems of microcosm within the greater macrocosm. For more about the microcosm of the universe, check out Humanity’s Fixation with the Fourth Dimension.
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