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Lenten Rose, photo
on taken 3/30/14
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More
than ever I want to see
in
these blossoms at dawn
the
god’s face.
Matsuo Bashō in The
Essential Haiku
(Robert Haas, Ed. & Trans., p. 37)
While
the term quantum consciousness has recent provenance (e.g., the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been tracking it for the past decade, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/
), its roots go back much
further than the century-old scientific explorations of Einstein, Heisenberg,
Bohr, and others. Still, this work in quantum physics has importantly advanced
the presence of this kind of knowing into our collective consciousness. Quantum consciousness distinctively
contributes to contemporary meaning-making because it resonates with and
validates our vital need to come to terms with living in multiplicity and in
making commitments within uncertainty.
I believe even young children turn off
schooling when their authority figures carry an outmoded consciousness. A
learner’s lie detector goes off when a teacher or a text fails to resonate with
the tenor of today’s reality. We are now living in a quantum age. Like the
child who saw through the lie of the emperor’s new clothing, 21st century
learners recognize, even if they cannot articulate, the fake in the old
epistemologies and in so-called research that sounds presumptuous because it
does not acknowledge the uncertainty and indeterminacy that has now been
clearly pronounced in quantum study.
The
Age of Reason may have advanced civilization beyond manipulations of
superstition, but educators still stuck in logical analysis risk losing the
breath of creativity, the validation of feeling, the inner affirmation of intuition,
and the joy of holistic apprehension. Underdressed educators include teachers
who still assert that nonfiction is true and fiction is false, as well as those
who are unaware of the Common Core silliness about rebalancing the distribution
on this dead division. Such practices need illumination.
The
long, though shadowy, presence of quantum multiplicity can be traced in the
work of the artist, of poets like Bashō shown above who wrote in Japan in late
1600s, in the classic court jester whose role was to temper the conscience of
power, and also in science. As a prime example, Darwin modeled multiplicity as
he recorded levels of thought ranging from public reports on his voyage on the
Beagle to his secret journals that reflected private thinking. As portrayed by Peter Sis in a format
accessible to young as well as older learners, Darwin’s work and very life
would have been threatened if his edge of consciousness had been published too
soon; his evolutionary knowing required multiple levels: public, private,
secret.
In contrast with Darwin’s need to hide
the multiple levels, quantum physicist Richard Feynman openly acknowledges the
degree of uncertainty that characterizes cutting-edge work in science: “laws
are guessed laws; they are extrapolations into the unknown” (p. 24 in The
Meaning of It All). I think I might have believed more in science if my teachers
could have admitted how Darwin explored and how Feynman embraced doubt because
then science could have resonated with the deep knowing I had inside. When
researchers claim the certainty of pseudo-science and teachers proclaim
exploration as absolute truth, the curtain around the Wiz of Oz goes
transparent and would-be learners grow more cynical.
As
a literacy educator, I don’t want to study quantum physics much; but I contend
that quantum consciousness needs to be advanced, particularly within the
teaching profession at large. Reviewing basic psychology and philosophy with a
quantum perspective makes a good start. For example, Robert Ornstein in The
Psychology of Consciousness interweaves Idries Shah’s accounts of Nasruddin
with the tricky tangle around personal consciousness. Problems often ensue if
we think and act in the illusion that personal constructions must align with
external reality in producing a single truth. Multiplicity allows space for
variation, paradox, contradiction, and doubt. Ornstein also threads William
James into the conversation blending educational psychology with philosophy and
showing again the roots of multiple-layered consciousness.
In relation to literacy education, the work of Robert Bly has been
invaluable to me. Perhaps most obviously connected
with changing consciousness is his News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness. Bly
offers further development related to quantum consciousness through his translations
and his account of the process of translating (Eight Stages of Translation).
These reveal how poets and poems are crossing levels of knowing. In an
interview, Bly tells of the movement of consciousness: “by trying to translate something like that [Tranströmer],
the poems come deep inside you, the images come deep inside you. . .You feel
yourself, because of the work you've done on the image, invaded by the image.
You feel that it has become a part of your house like someone who's moved into
your house, and your house is changed then. Your house has changed because
these images have come in. So that's the way I feel about translation. It's a
blessing.” This
movement is also evident in Bly’s Leaping Poetry and in his more recent work
with the ghazal.
In
the past few years and related to this arena of literacy education, a few of us
have begun mucking about into quantum storytelling. David Boje has been forging the way in his writing, with blacksmithing,
in hosting a conference, and in co-editing a volume soon to be available: Being Quantum: Storytelling and Ontology in
the Age of Antenarrative.
In
a course I’ve developed titled “Good Stories: Teaching Narratives for Peace
& Justice,” we practice holding multiple levels of engagement with the
story and experience it in multiple modes: oral, print, & digital. Our
work/play with narrative and in constructing digital media links to Bryan Boyd’s
On the Origin of Stories: Evolution,
Cognition, & Fiction. I especially choose Boyd’s text because he builds
the link between science and narrative.
In our work/play with narrative, a major step in our
engagement is Amplification.
The purpose of amplification is to nurture the garden of leaps. As we engage with
our developing capacity for quantum consciousness, we hold and negotiate
multiple levels of knowing. Connections spark across levels with potential both
to light up insight as well as to burn destructively.
Robert
Hass, cited at the beginning of these comments, points to one danger: “I think it was DH Lawrence who said that the soul can get to
heaven in one leap but that, if it does, it leaves a demon in its place” (p.
xv). Earlier on that page, Haas remarks on multiplicity and the relationship
between Zen and haiku. “Zen provided people training in how to stand aside and
leave the meaning-making activity of the ego to its own devices. Not resisting
it, but seeing it as another phenomenal thing, like bush warblers and snow
fall, though more intimate to us. Trying to find this quality in every haiku,
however, romanticizes them and the culture they came from. It tends to make one
rush to their mysteriousness and silence.” From this multiplicity involved in an objectivity that is
also subjectivity, Haas builds to the conjecture he attributed to Lawrence of
making the soul leap that leaves an earth devil.
Quantum
consciousness, like haiku, offers leaps; but, like the alchemy noted in Boje’s
video, it works best in tempered handling, like a blacksmith who knows the
elements and loves the matter, the tools, the process, and, of course, the art
produced. Quantum consciousness has a dangerous side in the rush, perhaps like
Icarus lusting for the sun, like the premature leap of lovers, not yet tempered
for the demands of Love. But power
always carries risk; and knowing the danger, we’re better prepared to engage
the fire within quantum consciousness that tempers us to meet the challenges of
advancing peace and justice.
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