There were other ways to understand what Bohr was saying. We see the synchronicity of ancient ideas when, during the very year Bohr introduced his principle of complementarity, Virginia Woolf published her novel, To The Lighthouse, in which she wrote the following passage:
"[C]hildren never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of--to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another ... must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. Loosing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at--that light, for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that--"Children don't forget, children don't forget"--which she would repeat and begin adding to it. ... She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one's being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover. ...
Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight. She listened ... She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotized, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!"[1]
Here, Woolf gives us an illustration of what quantum reality means in the center of a consciousness... the inside-looking-out, nonlinear mind that perceives the complementary relationship inherent in the points of view by which reality is defined for any given character. In the case of Mrs. Ramsey, in To The Lighthouse, she takes advantage of her moment of rest when the work of raising a family briefly subsides, and she can sit with her knitting and just think. It is in this that she if free, and rich. In her mind’s eye, her window on the universe through which her potential experience was limited only by lack of time to entertain the unlimited possibilities of what it means to be alive.
Daydreams...do they reflect cravings for actual experience…or simply provide the psychological landscape for ones ongoing daily reflections? Mrs. Ramsey’s experience of her life reflects a quality of consciousness...a peace of mind arguably available only to the good, the unselfish, the egoless, or so at least it would seem. Woolf contrasts the nervous ego of her husband, Mr. Ramsey, a self-conscious and pompus professor, too caught up in the alphabet of his profession to experience the real life that goes on in his family all around him.
Compared to Mrs. Ramsey’s confident character, Mr. Ramsey is pathetically insecure and apparently incapable of the kind of joy that is a regular feature of his wife’s life. One can say this is a caricature, but not an isolated incidence. It is more the rule, than the exception. But this, in itself is not Mr. Ramsey’s problem; it is, rather, his misappropriation of values, his tendency to put the world of power and prestige above the arguably more real world of children, family, and friends. Friendship itself had come to mean something other than which it might, were Mr. Ramsey to value, as did his wife, not the mere appearance of happiness and power, but the real thing.
This feeling is found only by the perfect tip of the ear to just the right angle of the breeze at just the right moment in time. A coincidence which occurs often enough, if one listens carefully and constantly, but it is an elusive and delicate state that comes and goes with the cycles of everything else, and thus does not occur at all without free time to contemplate. When work is well finished, the children are content, and no immediate concerns prevail, we are free for the time being to return to where we live most deeply, here, in this place to which all who know their way back return. No unanswered questions, only inherent sense; no words, only feelings; no deceits, only truth.
[1][To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, p.95-100]
"[C]hildren never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of--to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another ... must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. Loosing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at--that light, for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that--"Children don't forget, children don't forget"--which she would repeat and begin adding to it. ... She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one's being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover. ...
Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight. She listened ... She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotized, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!"[1]
Here, Woolf gives us an illustration of what quantum reality means in the center of a consciousness... the inside-looking-out, nonlinear mind that perceives the complementary relationship inherent in the points of view by which reality is defined for any given character. In the case of Mrs. Ramsey, in To The Lighthouse, she takes advantage of her moment of rest when the work of raising a family briefly subsides, and she can sit with her knitting and just think. It is in this that she if free, and rich. In her mind’s eye, her window on the universe through which her potential experience was limited only by lack of time to entertain the unlimited possibilities of what it means to be alive.
Daydreams...do they reflect cravings for actual experience…or simply provide the psychological landscape for ones ongoing daily reflections? Mrs. Ramsey’s experience of her life reflects a quality of consciousness...a peace of mind arguably available only to the good, the unselfish, the egoless, or so at least it would seem. Woolf contrasts the nervous ego of her husband, Mr. Ramsey, a self-conscious and pompus professor, too caught up in the alphabet of his profession to experience the real life that goes on in his family all around him.
Compared to Mrs. Ramsey’s confident character, Mr. Ramsey is pathetically insecure and apparently incapable of the kind of joy that is a regular feature of his wife’s life. One can say this is a caricature, but not an isolated incidence. It is more the rule, than the exception. But this, in itself is not Mr. Ramsey’s problem; it is, rather, his misappropriation of values, his tendency to put the world of power and prestige above the arguably more real world of children, family, and friends. Friendship itself had come to mean something other than which it might, were Mr. Ramsey to value, as did his wife, not the mere appearance of happiness and power, but the real thing.
This feeling is found only by the perfect tip of the ear to just the right angle of the breeze at just the right moment in time. A coincidence which occurs often enough, if one listens carefully and constantly, but it is an elusive and delicate state that comes and goes with the cycles of everything else, and thus does not occur at all without free time to contemplate. When work is well finished, the children are content, and no immediate concerns prevail, we are free for the time being to return to where we live most deeply, here, in this place to which all who know their way back return. No unanswered questions, only inherent sense; no words, only feelings; no deceits, only truth.
[1][To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, p.95-100]