Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00050)

>Yes, there's quite a lot about this around, now, tho' I haven't read much of
>it personally. It applies in one way at the quantum level, where it is
>related to the Uncertainty Principle, and in another way in large-scale
>complex systems where it's tied up with Chaos theory. Certainly, it knocks
>holes in the idea that karma is rigidly deterministic.

Why would quantum nondeterminism have anything to do with karma? Under 
quantum physics, events at the macroscopic scale are almost entirely 
deterministic. By the time we get to the human scale, all the randomness 
has become irrelevant, unless we go out of our way to make it relevant 
through sophisticated measurements. I suppose one could ask how the 
karmic fate of the cat in Schrodinger's Box could be deterministic, but 
this is an anomaly.

If there's one thing that reading Blavatsky and other nineteenth-century 
occultists should tech us, it's not to tie our spiritual ideas too 
closely to modern science. Her attempts to tie electricity to various 
spiritual phenomena must have seemed exciting and cutting-edge at the 
time, but they seem quaint and silly now. That is how our quantum 
mysticism will look in another century.

Tim Maroney