Perhaps, in part, because I have balanced use of the right and left sides of my brain (I am an artist with a science degree), I’m always on the lookout for places where science mingles interestingly with art, philosophy, and spirituality. Quantum mechanics and the art of manifestation is one such place, and the combination has everything to do with empowerment.

From The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, by Gary Zukav, first published in 1979:

“Contrary to Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics tells us that our knowledge of what governs events on the subatomic level is not nearly what we assumed it would be. It tells us that we cannot predict subatomic phenomena with any certainty. We can only predict their probabilities.

“Philosophically, however, the implications of quantum mechanics are psychedelic. Not only do we influence our reality, but in some degree, we actually create it. Because it is the nature of things that we can know either the momentum of a particle or its position, but not both, we must choose which of these two properties we want to determine. Metaphysically, this is very close to saying that we create certain properties because we choose to measure those properties. Said another way, it is possible that we create something that has position, for example, like a particle, because we are intent on determining position and it is impossible to determine position without having some thing occupying the position that we want to determine.

“Quantum physicists ponder questions like, ‘Did a particle with momentum exist before we conducted an experiment to measure its momentum?’; ‘Did a particle with position exist before we conducted an experiment to measure its position?’; ‘and ‘Did any particles exist at all before we thought about them and measured them?’ ‘Did we create the particles that we are experimenting with?‘ Incredible as it sounds, this is a possibility that many physicists recognize.

“John Wheeler, a well-known physicist at Princeton, wrote:

May the universe in some strange sense be ‘brought into being’ by the participation of those who participate? The vital act is the act of participation. ‘Participator’ is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the term ‘observer’ of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It can’t be done, quantum mechanics says.

“The languages of eastern mystics and western physicists are becoming very similar.”

From Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther and Jerry Hicks (with Abraham), published in 2004:

“You were born knowing that you are the creator of your own reality, and although that desire to do so pulsed within you in a powerful way, when you began to integrate into your society, you began to accept much of the same picture that others held of the way your life should unfold. But still, within you today lives the knowledge that you are the creator of your own life experience, that absolute freedom exists as the basis of your true experience, and that ultimately the creation of your life experience is absolutely and only up to you.”

Flickr photo: DSCN7711, by mikefats.

Related reading: Cage or Gate?, Conversations Between Me and U