Understanding the famous double-slit experiment of quantum physics is a very good reality check for our belief as humans that we understand or see reality “as it is”. This is scientifically impossible because you as the observer are affecting the reality you are observing. There is nothing “out there” independent of you as an observer to observe, and IMO all the great spiritual traditions teach this in one form or another.
Now this very interesting experiment in the link above “proves” that there is no observer independent reality. This is why if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound. However, this has to be understood in a larger context which many of the most advanced spiritual traditions also uphold. Everything is conscious or you might say everything is consciousness. Understood in this light we see that the ‘observer’ is everywhere.
Seen in this light we begin to see the truth in statements made in traditions like Buddhism that the true nature of reality is Emptiness. Or the Tantric world view that the root of everything is ultimately Awareness. As one of my teachers is fond of saying, there is only one thing going on, and your it!
-Douglas Johnson E-RYT 500, YACEP
