This article explores whether the ‘law of attraction’ introduced in The Secret is scientifically possible through the theories of quantum physics. Focusing on David Spring’s theories, it explains the scientific basis for the claim that the mind can create reality and discusses its feasibility.
Opening remarks
Do you remember The Secret, the book that was a long-running bestseller for Kyobo Books in South Korea during 2007 and 2008? It was a book about a ‘secret’ that was said to get you everything, whether it was money or beauty. The secret was the Law of Attraction, which was described as a great and precise natural law that the entire universe relies on. At its core, it means ‘like attracts like,’ but it also means that whatever you think about in your mind is what you manifest.
The idea that our minds and bodies are interconnected, and that our states of mind can create our physical reality, is a remarkable claim. There’s a scientific backing to it that’s too important to dismiss as mere self-help book claims. What makes The Secret more than just a hopeful message, and what makes it a bestseller, is that quantum physics provides a powerful scientific backing for its claims. Whether or not you accept this secret as true can dramatically change the way you view your life and the world around you. But to make such a decision, you need to think carefully, based on sufficient evidence. Let’s take a look at the specific testimony of quantum physics to see if the belief is reasonable.
The testimony of quantum physics
The state of quantum physics
Quantum physics is the study of the behaviour of particles in the microscopic world of nature. Its main concern is the ‘particle-wave duality’ of matter. If we liken matter to a coin, its face is a ‘particle’ with a fixed shape, and its reverse is a ‘wave’ that scatters through space. The idea that these two opposing properties form a single entity was initially counterintuitive and difficult to accept.
In 1925, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger came up with a mathematical interpretation of the particle-wave duality of the electron. Schrödinger described the properties of particles and waves through the wave equation, and German physicist Max Born interpreted the wave function obtained from that equation as a function of the probability of a particle being detected. This revolutionised physics and led to quantum physics becoming an important pillar of modern science.
However, this interpretation of probability led to a paradox known as ‘Schrödinger’s cat’, where a particle could either be present or absent depending on observation, which was one of the things that made quantum physics so difficult to understand.
David Spring’s quantum physics
David Spring, a professor at Princeton University in the US, delved deeper into the issue. He argued that the imaginary part of the wavefunction was not just a mathematical element, but had important physical implications. Spring divided the world into two realities: the everyday reality, the physical world that we can sense, and the extraordinary reality, the world of waves that we cannot directly perceive with our senses.
He saw the wave function as playing an important role in bridging these two worlds. In particular, Spring argued that the vacuum of the universe is not empty space, but is filled with active information called the ‘superquantum potential.’ This active information is a huge wave field that moves with a purpose, and everything in the universe is localised by the interference of these waves. This is connected to the material reality we perceive, and the human mind interacts with the universe as part of this information.
Spring’s theory was not mere speculation, and helped to explain phenomena such as the ‘Casimir force’ and ‘Ram travelling’, which had been difficult to explain scientifically. Furthermore, his theory supported the idea that the human mind is connected to the universe, and that the power of the mind can alter reality.
Quantum physics and secrets
These discoveries in quantum physics provide the scientific background that explains the ‘law of attraction’ claimed in The Secret. The idea is that our minds, like radio towers, emit waves with a specific frequency, and that these waves interact with the matter around them – for example, a happy person sends out waves that match their happiness, and the material environment that responds to those waves is attracted.
The placebo effect is also explained by this principle: if a person gets better despite ingesting a substance that has no specific medicinal properties, it’s because their belief that they will get well sends out waves with a frequency associated with that belief, and the cells that respond to those waves resonate.
The Grand Theory of Quantum Physics
However, David Spring’s quantum theory does have one great assumption: that the ‘active information’ that underlies all derivative waves is the source of the human mind. Spring also referred to this active information as ‘transcendental consciousness’, a view that sees the source of matter and mind as the same, ultimately connected to God as the autonomous entity of the universe.
Scientifically, it’s still just a hypothesis, but it’s the best explanation for many phenomena, so it’s worth accepting. Just as we cannot directly see the existence of a black hole, but we can tell its existence by its effects, the active information postulated as God reveals its existence through various phenomena in the universe.
Closing remarks
Quantum physics shows that our minds actually have the power to create our surroundings. This means that we can change the trajectory of our life to any extent depending on what kind of mind we have. It means that our health depends not on what medication we take, but on what kind of mind we have, and that our success is determined by our ‘positive beliefs’, not our abilities.
All of this may sound like the hype of a simple self-help book, but if we can put it into practice, backed by scientific evidence, we can be more positive and creative in our own lives. The day will come when this power of the mind will be recognised as scientific knowledge, and many people will hopefully live as creators of their own lives.
