Spirituality and Mysticism

in this book.  But spirituality usually implies an orientation closer to the major religions, while mysticism is meant to imply the study and experience of nonphysical existence in all its forms, including phenomena like mind reading.  For lack of a better term, the word “mystic” is used here both for those on a more spiritual path and for those on a more “mystical” path.

 QUANTUM MECHANICS AS THE BRIDGE TO MYSTICISM

 If the nonphysical aspect of existence is to be of interest or use to us, then there must be some connection between our familiar physical world and the nonphysical world.  The all-important bridge between the two is found in quantum mechanics, the theory that physicists use to mathematically describe the physical universe.  (Rest assured that you will not need to understand anything about mathematics to read this book, nor do you need any prior knowledge of physics.)  Physicists have a high degree of confidence in quantum mechanics because it gives a highly accurate, wide-ranging, and unified description of nature.

 Quantum mechanics, however, has one astonishing “flaw.”  Although it is an accurate description of physical reality, its mathematics implies there are many versions of reality that exist simultaneously, rather than there being only the single reality that we actually perceive.  For example we will see in chapter 8 that the mathematics of quantum mechanics appears to allow Schrödinger’s cat to be both dead and alive at the same time.  To get around this “flaw,” most physicists assume that quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory of the physical universe and that it needs to be supplemented by the presumed existence of

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