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This is another characteristic of a Master. Whatever he does, he does with the enthusiasm of doing it for the first time. This is the source of his unlimited energy. Every lesson that he teaches (or learns) is a first lesson. Every dance that he dances, he dances for the first time. It is always new, personal, and alive.
A “quantum” is a quantity of something, a specific amount. “Mechanics” is the study of motion. Therefore, “quantum mechanics” is the study of the motion of quantities. Quantum theory says that nature comes in bits and pieces (quanta), and quantum mechanics is the study of this phenomenon.
The idea that we do not understand something until we have a picture of it in our heads is a by-product of the Newtonian way of looking at the world. If we want to get past Newton, we have to get past that.
Quantum mechanics is based upon the idea of minimal knowledge of future phenomena (we are limited to knowing probabilities) but it leads to the possibility that our reality is what we choose to make it.
The new physics, quantum mechanics, tells us clearly that it is not possible to observe reality without changing it. If we observe a certain particle collision experiment, not only do we have no way of proving that the result would have been the same if we had not been watching it, all that we know indicates that it would not have been the same, because the result that we got was affected by the fact that we were looking for it.
According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way round.
Quantum mechanics views subatomic particles as “tendencies to exist” or “tendencies to happen.” How strong these tendencies are is expressed in terms of probabilities. A subatomic particle is a “quantum,” which means a quantity of something. What that something is, however, is a matter of speculation. Many physicists feel that it is not meaningful even to pose the question. It may be that the search for the ultimate “stuff” of the universe is a crusade for an illusion. At the subatomic level, mass and energy change unceasingly into each other.
Quantum mechanics also used statistics, but there is a very big difference between quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics. In quantum mechanics, there is no way to predict individual events. This is the startling lesson that experiments in the subatomic realm have taught us.
Some biologists believe that a single plant cell carries within it the capability to reproduce the entire plant. Similarly, the philosophical implication of quantum mechanics is that all of the things in our universe (including us) that appear to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.
