Verschränkung

My son is writing a research paper on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (his choice).  This morning, he veered slightly off-topic and read some information about quantum physics and Schrödinger's cat.  He brought up a few things that confused him over lunch.  As a former physics teacher, I relished the ensuing discussion.  

For those of you who didn’t spend their free time in college tweaking lasers for fun or salivating over Patrick Stewart in reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation(“tea, earl grey, hot”); allow me to explain. 

Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment: 

poor kitty!

A cat is in a steel box, along with a Geiger counter, a mildly radioactive substance, and a flask of poisonous acid.  The substances are rigged such that if the radioactive substance emits a particle that is registered by the counter, a hammer will strike the flask, and the acid will be released, thus killing the cat.  If left alone for an hour, one cannot be sure whether the cat is alive or dead, so without looking in the box, one might say that the cat is both equally dead and alive.  It is indeterminate until one opens the box, which changes the reality to either dead or alive.  (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat )

 It sounds ridiculous, but is supposed to be an analogy for quantum molecular structure.  The theory is based on the idea that nothing actually changes until it is observed in some form.

Jacob asked me what I thought about the unobservability of substances, if I thought they could co-exist in two separate states.  And it was strange; after all these years of wondering about that poor dead/alive cat, I finally figured it out.  This whole thought experiment, this whole theory is based on one premise:  That there is such a thing as being unobservable.  The cat can never be both dead and alive because he is always observed by God.  It’s a flawed experiment because it assumes privacy where there is none. 

Then it struck me:  There is no alone.  There is never any privacy.  It’s a little freaky.  Yes, always being with God is supposed to make me feel safe and secure.  But sometimes I just feel creeped out.  When I was in college, I had my own bona-fide stalker.  He’d call me up, tell me what I was wearing, where I went, who I’d talked to, what I’d eaten for lunch.  It was scary.  I don’t like being watched.

But being watched or observed and being together are two separate things.  God is not a mere observer, a “peeping tom” into my life.  He’s here with me because I am His creation.  He’s interested in me.  He wants to be part of my life, and is only waiting for my invitation.  He wants my thoughts, desires, and actions to synchronize with His, but He will not force.

So I wonder:  Do I want to be alone when I feel like I want to be alone?  Or is it some latent desire to commune with my Father, away from distractions?  I’m not sure that I want to share my thoughts.  But I’m not sharing them with a stalker, a regular human, or even a “good” person.  I’m sharing them with Perfection.  Perfection that wants the best for me.  That knows the best for me.  That already knows my thoughts anyway.

Schrödinger coined the term “Verschränkung”, meaning “entanglement” to describe his thought experiment.  The cat was tangled between two states of being.  But perhaps there is a different type of “Verschränkung”; becoming so bound up in my Father as He is in me, that I no longer feel observed, I become entangled in Him.