Subject-Object Duality and States of Consciousness: A Quantum Mechanical Approach

Abstract

A phenomenological approach using the states of spin-like observables is developed to understand the nature of consciousness and the totality of experience. The three states of consciousness are taken to form the triplet of eigenstates of a spin-one entity and are derived as the triplet resulting from the composition of two spins by treating the subject and the object as interacting two-state, spin-half systems with external and internal projections. The state of deep sleep is analysed in the light of this phenomenological approach and a novel understanding of the status of the individual consciousness in this state is obtained. The resulting fourth state i.e. the singlet state, is interpreted to correspond to the superconscious state of intuitive experience and is justified by invoking the concept of the universal consciousness as the underlying source of all individual states of experience. It is proposed that the individual experiences result from the operations of four individualizing observables which project out the individual from the universal. The one-to-one correspondence between the individual and the universal states of experience is brought out and their identity in the fourth state is established by showing that all individualizing quantum numbers become zero in this state leaving no trace of any individuality.

Quantum Zeno Effect in Sleep Disorders and Treatment by the Anti-Zeno Effect

“…That the phenomena in the planes of the physical and the psychical have a lot of parallels and that they can be described by very similar methods was realized long ago by Pauli and Jung (Pauli and Jung, 2008). It has also been proposed recently by the present author (Pradhan, 2010) that the three states of consciousness, viz. waking, dreaming and sleep, experienced daily may be described by the composition of two spin-like quantum mechanical observables characterizing the subject and the object.…”

“…The 'experience basis' (Pradhan, 2010) derived by treating subject-object duality in terms of quantum mechanical composition of a pair of spinlike observables yields the four states of consciousness as follows:…”

The Interplay of Order and Disorder in the Dynamical Evolution of Physical and Biological Systems

“…Relativity and quantum field theory have been dealt with employing a dualistic viewpoint [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

“…Rise of definite knowledge itself is an act of bringing order in the psyche that was, prior to measurement, having a larger entropy due to lack of information, and it is consciousness that does it [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. Consciousness alone can bring order in a universe moving towards ever greater disorder and entropy.…”

The Problem of Conscious Observation in Relativistic Description

“…These are some of the questions that we would expect a practicing scientist to skeptically ask following the objective science paradigm. Interestingly enough, there can be perfectly acceptable scientific answers to all of these and within the framework of quantum theory some of these have already been addressed in the literature (Pradhan, 2010).…”