Quantum Sex

Picture this: A physicist crawls into bed with her new lover. After a tender kiss, our hapless heroine (perhaps tipped off by a coy grin and a penetrating stare), senses the aura of an inquiring mind. "What's up?" she asks. Just as predicted, the eagerly whispered inquiry suddenly bubbles up: "So, you're a physicist, right? Can you show me what it's like to have quantum sex?"

Physicists cringe when non-scientists use the word 'quantum.' Many find it excruciating to see this important scientific term appear in such phrases as "quantum consciousness", "quantum healing", and "quantum self" – so one can only imagine the deep shades of red their faces will turn once the term "quantum sex" finds its way into their bedrooms.

So what is quantum sex? At the moment this expression has no roots in our language. It is simply not a term that people are using yet – but they will. It's inevitable. The "new" erotic paradigm is already in the air. Once the term hits the beer halls and blogs, "quantum sexuality" will refer not to a pariticular type of sexual pleaure, but to the significance of sexual experience – the meaning of sex, relative to the "big picture" – big, as in the origins of the cosmos and role of human consciousness within it.

Scientifically, quantum physics is among our most successful scientific theories. The motivation for investigating quantum scale phenomena (a.k.a. the atomic or subatomic realm) is to understand the fundamental forces and principles that account for the nature of existence as we know it. Thus it is no wonder that people turn to quantum physics for insights into humanity's role in the universe. To make a long, complicated story exceedingly short and simplistic: what intrigues us about quantum physics is that it seemingly discredits the idea that our world is ultimately composed of simple, purely objective, independent, determinate, substantial globs of stuff.

Quantum theory forces us to think of the fundamental elements of reality in terms of complex, interdependent, unpredictable processes. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is.

Quantum theory does not tell us that the world depends on human consciousness; it does not imply that we can directly change reality just by thinking about it in some magical way; it does not advise us to throw away our calculators and row merrily down the stream because life is but a dream. Virtually no credible scientist or philosopher seriously says this sort of thing. What it does tell us is that the world as we know it – a world of solid objects that exist whether any of us happens to be looking at them or not – emerges from a realm of reality in which there are no "solid objects" of the everyday sort. When you break the world down into smaller and smaller bits of stuff, you don't end up with just really tiny bits of stuff. No, you end up with…well, something completely different.

The mathematical structure of quantum theory is reasonably straight-forward, but the speculative implications of the theory for our psychological and spiritual interests tend to drive people off the deep end. Thus a warning must be issued: from a scientific perspective everything you are about to hear about "quantum sex" could be wrong.

But, for better or worse, philosophers and mystics of all stripes are drawing inspiration from speculative interpretations of quantum physics, and in so doing they are influencing the future history of humanity. These speculations go beyond science, but they don't necessarily contradict science. In other words, the mystics could be wrong, but then again, they could be right. At this point science is just not in a position to say.

One major mental block to fully comprehending quantum sexuality – or what we might call the "quantum-erotic paradigm" – is the traditional western conception of the world as a collection of "things out there." In philosophical terms the components of this broad worldview are variously referred to in terms of dichotomies or dualisms: self/other, self/world, subject/object, and mind/body. Average folks have probably heard various obscure quotes from mystics claiming the "Oneness" of the world, or the "interdependence of all things."

The trouble with "interdependence" is that most people understand this idea only from the perspective of the traditional subject/object dichotomy – yet it is precisely this dichotomy that is denied by the mystical claim of Oneness!

Now, of course there are "things" of some sort in the world, and of course there is a sense in which one can meaningfully talk about "this thing" in contrast to "that thing." There is an important sense in which you are not your chair. If you are feeling lazy, it does not follow that your chair is feeling lazy. But, nevertheless, there is a far deeper connection between "you" and "your chair" than you ordinarily imagination. According to this deeper connection, it is no mere accident that this chair happens to be your chair at this moment in time. Philosophers refer to words like "this", "your", "me", "here", "now" and so on as indexicals. An indexical is a word for which the meaning depends on the context, such as who is talking, what is being pointed to, and so on.

In a way that is notoriously difficult (perhaps impossible) to explain in ordinary language, you and your chair are said to share a common essence. But what can that possibly mean? For a very crude analogy, one can think of whirlpools in a river. Each whirlpool has its own place in the river, and is thus a "countable object," but if you think about it deeply, you will see that a whirlpool is not an object in quite the ordinary way that we think of substantial objects. A whirlpool is a process – a "way of moving" – for the water that composes the river. The difference between one whirlpool and another is not a difference of "objective essence." Indeed the two whirlpools share an "essence" (the river itself) and differ only in where, when, and how this essence happens to be moving. Also notice that a whirlpool is "intrinsically dynamic" which is to say that, for a whirlpool, stillness is non-being. If you are like a whirlpool, then you are a dynamic process – you are not a "thing that moves" so much as you are a "way of moving." Your chair may not seem to be doing much, but it, too, is a process; its apparent stillness is deceptive. As two processes "composed of a single essence," you and your chair share a certain level of being, and on this level of being you exist as distinct "things in the world" only so long as you do not come to rest. (This doesn't mean you should fear taking a nap! The "stillness" referred to here is much deeper than a mere lack of observable motion.)

If you are essentially a “world-process” analogous to the way that a whirlpool is a “river-process,” then you, as an "individual self” are a fleeting moment of experience; you are not a particular substantial being that survives from one moment to the next. You feel like a substantial being who survives over time because in each moment of experience you inherit the history of an on-going process, but there is no “objectively real” individual self that survives from moment to moment living at the center of your experiences. If there is a “self” at all – if there is any sort of “being” that survives from one moment to the next, then this “being” (or “Being”?) is nothing other than the world itself, and at this level of being there is no essential distinction between you and your chair and all other worldly beings. You are essentially the world’s experience of a particular “way of swirling around."

When you look at what you perceive to be objects “out there in the world,” you are, in fact, the world itself perceiving itself in a particular way. When you look at your chair and say “that’s not me” you are somewhat like the dog who growls at his own reflection in the mirror. The chair, however, is not just a reflection of yourself; it is in some sense "actually you" – not you in the individual-ego sense, but you in the World-process sense. You and the chair are different swirlings of a single essence. In ordinary experience one simply fails to recognize the self-referential nature of the experience.

On the worldview we’ve been discussing, every element of every experience is, in some deep way, a potential glimpse into the true nature of Being. You are, as it were, “the river itself” believing itself to be nothing other than this one little whirlpool. According to the "new" quantum-inspired paradigm, you are “the world itself” and as such you are like a person with multiple personality disorder; you see these other people as “not me” but this act of “objectification” or “other-making” is really an act of illusion-making. The crux of the illusion is a form of selective attention or amnesia by which you ignore or forget all but a tiny portion of your total being, and end up thinking that your life is bounded by a particular little string of memories.

The bottom line is that each of us is far more – and in some ways far less – than we generally imagine ourselves to be. We are less because we are not the substantial ego-self that we imagine ourselves to be (the ego does not survive from one moment to the next); we are more because the indexical "me, here, now" is a universal aspect of every experience – which means that the core of our experienced "sense of self" is omnipresent and "non-temporal."

Physical theories do not talk about feelings. Science in general is completely at a loss when it comes to questions about what philosophers call "qualia" – the feelings of conscious experience. There is something it is like for you to be the person that you are (physical feelings in your arms and legs, emotional feelings, and so on), but there is presumably nothing it is like for your chair to be the chair that it is (it has no feelings in its arms and legs, and it never needs a therapist to help sort out its unruly emotions). This important difference between you and your chair can be summed up thusly: You experience qualia; your chair presumably does not.

Science cannot tell us much of anything about why you experience qualia, and your chair does not. For the most part, science does not even try.

Quantum theory does not tell us about qualia, but it does inspire some philosophical musings about qualia. If qualia exist (which is to say, if qualia interact with the physical world in any causally important way), then they, too, ought to play a role in the interdependence of all things. Your feelings are qualitative; your feelings exist. Interdependence is a two-way street. If two entities – let's call them X and Y – are interdependent, then X depends on Y, and Y depends on X. Furthermore, dependence is not mere "connection." If X depends on Y, then X would not be what it is, without Y. If your pocket watch is connected to you by a chain, your pocket watch could be essentially the same pocket watch even if the chain broke and the watch is laying in the grass a mile behind you. Your dreams, however, are not just connected to you, they depend on you; a dream just isn't your dream unless you dream it. Quantum phenomena are not just interconnected, they are interdependent. If your feelings are part of the grand of interdependence of all things, then your feelings depend on the world, and the world (oddly enough) must in some sense depend on your feelings. Your feelings don't create the world, and the world does not create your feelings. Rather, the world and your feelings arise together in a way that we simply cannot comprehend in terms of our usual ways of thinking about the world. Perhaps the best we can do is to consider something like an event and properties of the event. Take walking, for example: when you walk, you necessarily walk "in a certain way." You walk quickly or slowly in one direction or another. You walk with strident determination, or aimlessly, or with hesitation. Your act of walking and the way you walk are interdependent aspects of reality – they are not exactly the same, but neither can exist without the other. Your qualitative experiences are the world's way of being, somewhat like walking slowly is a way of walking. (See page 9 of here for more on the Buddhist "Middle Way" philosophy of Nagarjuna.)

The world is a verb, and your experiences are the way this verb is manifest.

Now, finally, let's talk about sex. One key concept, if one is to understand quantum sex, is the idea that sex is not a shameful or sinful activity. Erotic feelings are not "the devil's work," and they are not mere distractions from supposedly more dignified spiritual pursuits. Over centuries of western civilization sex has suffered a very bad rap, but to understand quantum sex we must somehow put all of this history out of one's mind and focus on an entirely new way of thinking about those "those funny feelings in our naughty parts."

According to the "new" (i.e., ancient) quantum-erotic paradigm, sex is not just a form of recreation, it is re-creational in a profoundly meaningful way.

The quantum-erotic paradigm suggests that our erotic desires are not just random fun feelings. Sexual desire is among the most powerful human emotions – ranking right up there with fear of death and love of chocolate. Sex is "social glue" that brings us together, and often dupes us into making long term social commitments that we might otherwise never consider. Sex is the means by which you were created, and it is the means by which you, in turn, can create new life. Now translate this from the level of yourself as an individual to the level of "you" as the "World-Process" (or "Being Itself") and you will begin to get the picture being drawn by those who advocate the quantum-erotic paradigm. As a biological individual, your existence began with an orgasm, and now, as an adult, your potential for orgasm is a potential for the creation of new life. But according to quantum sex, there is even more going on than you realize.

When you have an orgasm, you are tuning in to the origins of Cosmos Itself.

One implications of the quantum-erotic paradigm is that we are encouraged to take our psychological states -- our "feelings" -- more seriously. Two people in love sometimes feel as though their lives are merging. There can be a deep and powerful feeling that this union was in some sense "meant to be." Lovers tend to feel as though there simply has to be something more than blind chance and chemicals at work. For the lover, the world seems more alive -- more meaningful and more magical. The magical qualities of love arise because love is a fundamentally mystical, spiritual experience. In the quantum-erotic paradigm we might no longer need to discount these feelings as "merely psychological." Some of these feelings could be cracks in the metaphysical wall of amnesia – the wall that keeps us from truly understanding the full nature of our being. As C.G. Jung and other have suggested, every moment of experience is a moment in which vast unconscious aspects of your Being struggle toward consciousness. Your desires are intrinsically meaningful because they are signposts pointing to spiritual revelation.

Quantum physics, strictly speaking, is just as abstract and mechanistic as any theory in science has ever been. But unlike Newtonian physics, which struck the popular mind as being rather "cold" and dehumanizing, quantum physics, to the chagrin of many scientists, strikes the moderately informed layperson as a less mechanistic, less reductionist, more spiritually intriguing world view. In the old paradigm, erotic feelings were "only in the mind." The only tangible aspects of sexuality -- aside from an awful lot of rather silly-looking behavior -- were procreation and disease. Throughout much of human history people took this line of thinking so far as to say that engaging in sexual activity for any purposes other than procreation was a kind of wasteful (and sinful) diversion of energy. Erotic feelings experienced in any context other than procreation with a spouse were thought to have been instilled in us by the devil.

No one who embraces the old paradigm would be comfortable with the idea that erotic feelings might be a fundamental aspect of nature, but according to the quantum-erotic paradigm, erotic desire is foundational to Being Itself.

As suggested earlier, there are ancient roots for this "new" paradigm. Tantra is a mystical form of spirituality according to which the universe is regarded as "divine play." It is actually a complex, wide-ranging spiritual tradition, but the average westerner just knows it, if at all, because of the reputation earned by Tantric sex. The Tantric scriptures specify that sex has three distinct purposes—procreation, pleasure, and liberation. The "liberation" referred to is the liberation from ignorance – specifically, liberation from the illusions that lead us to believe that we are isolated, individual, accidents of nature. Recently, some folks have set for themselves the task of combining the ancient insights of Tantric meditative and ritualistic practices with the modern insights of quantum physics. These are the roots of what I've been referring to as the quantum-erotic paradigm.

Nick Herbert, the author of such popular books as Quantum Reality and Elemental Mind, has taken an interest in "quantum Tantra." Here is a blurb from his website:

Tantra begins with the surprising claim that sex is not only holy, but that it is in some sense a direct participation in the creation of the world, an event which Western science and religion assert to have happened in the far distant past. Tantrikas also claim that the universe results from the playful union of two divine beings and that this divine union can be directly experienced in the sexual act.

So what does all of this mean for the average person seeking erotic love? What might "quantum sex" actually feel like? This is hard to say, given the mystical nature of it all. In some sense a "quantum orgasm" might not feel much different than the "standard issue" big O. What could change radically down the line, however, is the cultural context of sex.

Imagine a world in which the majority of people are not ashamed by, or embarrassed about, their sexuality. Imagine a world in which erotic diversity does not automatically mean perversity. Imagine a world in which one's spiritual life includes a celebration of erotic desire. This is the sort of erotic spirituality that advocates of the quantum-erotic paradigm suggest could be in our future.

Quantum sex is sex understood in the context of a heightened awareness of, and deep appreciation for, the mystery and magic of the qualitative Way of Being. It is more than a simple physical interconnection of body parts – it is the intrinsically dynamic complex birth process of Being Itself rooted in the omnipresent here and the eternal now experienced in terms of an egoless I.

For more info:
Quantum tic tac toe

The Mystery of Consciousness by Steven Pinker

Quantum Philosophy by John Horgan

Quantum Philosophy Theories (Brief overviews of theories by David Deutsch, Michel Bitbol, Abner Shimony, Roland Omnès, Roberto Torretti, Gregory J. Chaitin, Roger Penrose, John G. Cramer, Carlo Rovelli, Henry Stapp, David Albert, Bernard d'Espagnat, Giancarlo Ghirardi, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Lee Smolin, and many more.)

Physics and Five Problems in the Philosophy of Mind

Buddhism and Quantum Physics

The Myth of Quantum Consciousness

Quantum Quackery

How to Add Quantum Tantra Into Your Sex Life