Are we all Part of the Same Entity? (Part One)

Very common to NDE accounts is the deep conviction that everything is connected. There is no separation between things and the illusion of such is a construct of the human mind. This will  likely sound familiar to anyone acquainted with Buddhist teachings and general accounts of people claiming to have had transcendental experiences.

It may also sound familiar to anyone who has studied quantum physics. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon of the quantum world which is predicted by quantum theory and has been exhaustively demonstrated by scientific experiments to be a feature of our reality. This aspect of quantum mechanics has been fiercely tested by physicists specifically because it demonstrates a curious and counter intuitive quantum property called non-locality. Quantum entanglement is the phenomena whereby two spatially separated quantum objects (very small things) act in unison with each other over arbitrarily large distances. One  entangled object correlates it's quantum properties with the other entangled object's quantum properties  - and in zero time! If say the spin of an entangled electron is suddenly flipped the spin of it’s entangled partner will flip also and at exactly the same time irrespective of the distance separating them (a slight simplification since quantum properties such as spin don’t actually exist until observed. The observation of the spin state of one particle will immediately create the property of spin on it's entangled partner, and in such a way that they will be appropriately correlated). And in theory the distance between entangled particles could  span the entire universe.
                This leaves no room to suppose any sort of physical signal could be travelling between them to tip off one particle that it must change one of it's properties in accordance with it's entangled partner. Special relativity strictly forbids any signal travelling faster than the speed of light, so that rules any form of signalling out. The connection between them isn't simply the conventional sort of cause and effect connection we suppose normally to exist in the world but has a much deeper significance. Moreover all particles in the universe are entangled with all other particles in the universe. Simply put everything is connected!

           Quantum entanglement has begun to be used in a range of technological applications such as quantum information theory, quantum cryptography, quantum computing and super dense coding. Stealth radar is one of the more recent applications currently being considered. Also quantum teleportation has been demonstrated in laboratories for some time now. The basic point is that quantum entanglement is definitely a real effect. We are exploiting it in all the technologies mentioned above.           

A more dramatic example of non-locality is exhibited by the quantum wavefunction itself. The waves with which we are normally familiar are regions of localized disturbances, where one localized disturbance can only impact other regions of the same wave by the usual time dependant causal relationships. Cause and effect apply in the usual sense. There is nothing spooky going on. The quantum wavefunction on the other hand is intrinsically holistic in nature and can spread out over arbitrarily large distances whilst still retaining it's non-local nature.

I hope to say much more about the wavefunction and quantum mechanics in general in future posts.