[asteram]

Quantum

Quantum breathing. Quantum pause. These phrases sound rather advanced and esoteric to us moderns only because of the association of the word "quantum" over the past century with the term "quantum physics". The terms are not really esoteric.

Quantum (plural quanta) comes from the Latin base quantus meaning "how much". The Random House Unabridged second edition gives the first meaning of quantum as "quantity or amount" and definition 2 is "a particular amount". That is really all a quantum is, a fixed, specific, or particular amount. A pound, an ounce, or a kilogram are each a quantum, as is a minute or an hour. The term need not be even that exact: one apple is a quantum; a dozen eggs is a quantum, a lifetime is a quantum.

The association with mysterious and advanced physics came about in the early 1900s when scientists studying atomic structure discovered that energy came in packets of an exact size, a particular amount. In Bohr's atomic model, called the planetary model, electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom like planets orbit the sun, and they orbit at specific distances from the nucleus. The scientists discovered that when an electron lost energy and dropped to a lower orbit closer to the nucleus it emitted a photon, and that the photon was an exact quantity of energy, no more, no less. One does not encounter half of a photon. They called this specific amount of energy a quantum or quantum packet of energy.

I'm bringing this up because I think that the association with quantum physics might be too complex an association to make with the breathing and perception exercises that James has suggested in the Camelot interview. It appears to me that in the quantum breathing exercise there are four quanta or specific stages involved, each of them a quantum of three, four, or five "beats". For example: Breathe in to a count of four, hold in to a count of four, breathe out to a count of four, hold out to a count of four, repeated three times and then followed by a quantum of unspecified length, a pause, to observe the thoughts that drift up into consciousness. All together the three sets of breathing plus the pause make another quantum of four. Very simple: a certain amount of breaths, a certain amount of repetitions, a certain amount of pauses. Quantum breathing.

James also suggests breaking ones day up into quanta of experience, for example the time between waking up and sitting down for breakfast, in which one washes up and brushes their teeth, combs their hair, gets dressed etc. Of course each of these can be further broken up into quanta. He suggests the duration of a phone call as a quantum amount. Reading and answering an email would be another example. Note that none of these consist of any fixed duration, or necessarily any exact repetition, but they can be perceived as and broken up into quanta.

So far I have little idea what the purpose is behind "quantizing" one's day in this way, but it occurs to me that it does increase awareness of the intervals and actions, and those intervals are not regulated by the measurements of "clock time", nor even the movements of the sun, stars, daylight or night time. These quanta are solely subjective; for instance "brushing ones teeth" is a quantum but in no ordinary way is it a measure of time, rather it is a quantum of experience. As the goal seems to be to get the attention of the core entity, perhaps this is closer to the way the entity measures experience.