After finishing Part One, I felt quite pleased with myself. I had explained Schrödinger’s Cat without abusing it, spiritualising it, or forcing it to wear a tiny mystical hat it never asked for. The cat had been allowed to remain a cat. A metaphorical one, but still.

And then something niggled.

I realised that I had been very disciplined. Almost suspiciously so. The kind of disciplined that suggests a faint, unconscious desire to be approved of by all the atheists in my life who can’t quite bear me talking about spirituality, and whom I would very much like to reassure that I am, in fact, still sensible.

Because there is a part of me that wants quantum physics to wink back at me. A part of me that would be delighted if the universe leaned over and said, “Yes, consciousness is fundamental, well spotted, carry on.”

And if I am being honest, I noticed that this part of me had been politely ushered out of the room while I was writing Part One.

Which felt responsible. And also slightly unfair.

The belief I wanted to sneak past security

If you spend any time at all near mysticism, philosophy, or late-night conversations that involve tea going cold, you will eventually encounter a particular idea. The idea that consciousness is not a by-product of matter, but something primary. Something fundamental.

This idea is often accompanied by a quote from Max Planck, usually delivered with a flourish:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.”

Which is a beautiful sentence. It practically begs to be framed.

And yes, when I first encountered it, a small part of me went, “Ah. There we are then.”

It would be wonderfully convenient if quantum physics itself were quietly confirming what mystics have been saying for centuries. It would save an enormous amount of explaining. Possibly several lifetimes.

But convenience is rarely a reliable guide to truth.

What Planck actually meant (and what I wanted him to mean)

Planck was not proposing a new experiment where your thoughts collapse wave functions like a cosmic light switch. He was not offering a mechanism. He was making a philosophical observation after a lifetime spent discovering that physics can describe relationships between observations, but not the raw fact of experience itself.

In simpler terms: physics can tell us how measurements behave, but it cannot explain why anything is experienced at all.

That is not mysticism smuggled into science. It is an honest admission of limits.

And this is where I had to catch myself.

Because I realised that while I respected Planck deeply, I was also trying to recruit him. I wanted him to stand slightly closer to my beliefs than he had actually agreed to. I wanted his words to do explanatory work they were never meant to do.

Which brings us to the observer effect, and why it causes so much trouble.

The observer effect is not the universe responding to your gaze

The observer effect, in physics, is not about consciousness magically rearranging reality. It is about disturbance. To measure something, you have to interact with it. That interaction changes what you are measuring.

No incense required.

This is closely related to the uncertainty principle, which simply says that certain properties cannot be known simultaneously with perfect precision. Not because the universe is coy, but because measurement has consequences.

And yet.

Even after all that clarity, consciousness stubbornly refuses to leave the building.

Because a measurement is only a measurement if there is a result. And a result only matters if it can, in principle, be experienced.

So while consciousness may not be collapsing particles in real time, it remains quietly embedded in the framework. Not as a mechanism, but as a condition of meaning.

This is subtle. It is also where things get messy.

The temptation to blur the lines

Here is the confession at the heart of this piece.

I wanted quantum physics to validate my metaphysical leanings. Not out of ignorance, but out of affection. I like a universe that feels participatory. Alive. Responsive.

But liking something does not make it true. And more importantly, it does not give me permission to ignore distinctions.

Mysticism and science are not enemies. But they are not interchangeable either.

If you really want to respect mysticism, you have to respect science just as much. No turning a blind eye. No selective hearing. No asking physics to speak poetry when it is very clearly speaking mathematics.

Ironically, forcing science to say what it does not say does not strengthen mysticism. It weakens it.

Where I landed instead

And before I go any further, I want to name something plainly, because I can feel the gap where it might otherwise be misunderstood.

I am not questioning whether spirituality is real. I am not quietly demoting it to a coping mechanism, a metaphor, or a psychological convenience. For me, spirituality is real in the most meaningful sense of the word: it is lived, experienced, transformative, and irreducible to explanation.

What I am questioning is something narrower, and far more specific.

And this is the part I want to be absolutely clear about, because clarity here matters to me.

What surprised me most was this: letting go of the need for quantum physics to agree with me did not diminish my sense of mystery. It clarified it.

The belief that consciousness is fundamental did not vanish. It did not weaken. It did not retreat in embarrassment. It simply stopped trying to do the wrong job.

Some truths are lived. Some are reasoned. Some are intuited. And some are carefully measured so that we do not misuse them.

Schrödinger’s Cat still belongs to physics. Max Planck still belongs to philosophical honesty. And mysticism still belongs to the interior life, where proof is not the point.

The mistake is not believing. The mistake is demanding that belief arrive wearing a lab coat.

And if that sounds like restraint, it is. But it is also a form of respect.

Which, I suspect, is what the universe responds to far more readily than agreement.