Rupert Spira in conversation with Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

Shantena Augusto Sabbadini is a theoretical physicist specialising in quantum theory. He has also studied and translated the Chinese classics, including the Tao Te Ching. 

A talk Rupert gave earlier in the conference led Shantena to recognise that the primary experience is consciousness, whereas he had previously thought consciousness and matter to be two sides of one coin. In quantum theory, reality is described in terms of the non-temporal, non-spatial quantum state. The quantum state contains all possibilities. Experience appears to be localised when, through a specific observation process, the quantum state collapses to manifest a specific possibility. Physics teaches that time is a relative concept. The ‘quantum eraser’ experiment leads to the startling conclusion that if you destroy information about an event then all the original possibilities inherent in the quantum state return.

Rupert sees clear parallels with his own approach to describing reality. He uses a dream analogy to illustrate how the inside self and the outside world are co-created, and how space and time are imaginary limits that consciousness superimposes on itself in order to bring manifestation into apparent existence. Experience appears through thought and perception, but all that is really present is single, formless consciousness.

Shantena contributes two quotations from Lao Tse that illustrate the ideas discussed:
‘Naming is the mother of ten thousand things’.
‘These two (naming and no-name, and desire and desirelessness) arise together, but we call them different names. Holding them together is the gate of wonder’.