The Uncertainty Principal

There can only be one reason why we want certainty in life -- to gain security.  This is also something that most left-brainers who are more inclined towards logic and reasoning would hold onto dearly.  After all, seeing is believing for them.  Now that science is catching up with spirituality, perhaps we can step into the void and see how science can shed light on this, well at least in a layman's way.

In quantum physics, the Uncertainty Principal was discovered by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927.  It states that the position and the velocity of an object cannot be measured precisely at the same time, even in theory.  An accurate measurement of one observable involves a relatively large uncertainty in the measurement of the other.  This completely nullifies the concept of exact position and exact velocity.  However, our ordinary experiences does not illustrate any clue to this as the uncertainties implies by this principal for ordinary objects are too small and minute to be observed.  This principal was derived from the fact that everything in the universe behaves both like a particle and a wave at the same time, and arises out of what is happening in the realm of subatomic dimension.  So I presume that for ordinary human beings this principal is not something that you can validate when someone cut your queue while you are paying at the supermarket.

Scientific jargons aside, since exactness can never be obtained in a subtle sense, what does it tell us about our mundane life?  What relevance does this have on the resistance that we often face day-to-day?  Well, this uncertainty seems to be so negligible that we have been blinded by the truth.  Electrons, or rather, any universal phenomena simply do not permit us to acquire knowledge of details beyond a certain level of approximation.  Yet, we spend most time in our lives insisting on knowing and knowing more.  The gravitation towards conclusions creates the loss of the presence when our mental resources are all invested in our search.  And if we cannot know the "not-knowable", we often live in fear and disillusion.

Treat the Uncertainty Principal as an invitation from the cosmos to accept and embrace the not-knowing.  After all, it is always easier to say "I don't know" when you really can't or not allowed to know.