Einstein’s famous quote, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.”, contains within it the key to the very thing he and his collaborators were looking for, ie. hidden variables, when in 1935 they invented the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, thought experiment. This is the famous EPR Experiment. In it they proposed using quantumly entangled particles to try and prove that Quantum theory was incomplete and so hidden variables must exist. In 1964 John Bell devised his famous Bell’s Theorem, also known as Bell’s Inequalities. This theorem was open to testing and in 1972 was tested by John Clauser and Stuart Freedman. Their experimental results violated the inequalities of Bell’s theorem and thus showed that hidden variables could not explain the probabilistic features of reality that Quantum Mechanics describes. After 1972 further testing grew more and more accurate and imaginative as physicists sought to close a number of possible experimental loopholes that could also explain, or muddy, the results. All have been closed but one, the Free-will loophole. John Bell described the Free-will loophole as something to be taken seriously. He conceptualized a Superdeterministic universe. In this case the universe already “knows” everything, including what measurements the experimenters “choose” to make. In such a universe there are no probabilities. In essence he proposed that conscious free-will is an illusion.

So how is it that Einstein’s quote contains a key to the hidden variable he sought? We first need to understand that the ‘illusion’ he describes in his quote is a creation, a product, of the bio-sensory process that creates for conscious observers an ‘experience’ of reality. While this experience is believed by the observer to be real, it is in fact a bio-sensory interpretation. As we know, an interpretation of a thing is not the same as the thing itself. Just as a picture of a peach is not the same as a peach itself. Our conscious experience of reality is not the same thing as actual, source reality. As an interpretation, it can also be described as an illusion. The gulf between actual source reality and the qualitatively and quantitatively inferior product created by our bio-sensory system that we accept as reality becomes the hidden variable Einstein sought when he said “God does not play dice.”

The conundrum is that with this understanding we come to see that the hidden variables are, in fact, composed of the very attributes of source reality that conscious experience is incapable of having an experience of. The world we experience is built from the limited sense detectors and the brain that collects and collates their bio-chemical/electrical signals. It creates from them the product that is our experience of reality. Our understanding of reality is limited to only those experiences our bio-sensory system creates for us. That which we cannot experience does not exist for us. But more importantly, the attributes of source reality are not constrained to comport with the fabricated attributes of our experiences of reality created by our brains. This includes our experience of time flowing at us from a future through the manifest now moment and into the past. This too is illusory, an interpreted product of our bio-sensory system. It is upon our experience of flowing time that all experiences of cause and effect as well as free-will depend. This, in a nutshell, is the measurement problem as it is called in Physics. ALL observations and measurements can only take place in this illusory ‘now’ moment.

So how can free-will be an illusion? It seems so real; it seems that we can make choices that will affect future outcomes. But this is only true because we cannot know the future. Our existence is a manifest one. It only manifests in the now moment of flowing time. This now moment is another creation of our bio-sensory process. As consciousness we are manifest beings. Our very existence depends on the manifest ‘now’ moment. The source reality of this universe requires no ‘now’ moment to exist, it is an unmanifest phenomenon. Quantum Theory tells us that reality is probabilistic in nature. Einstein says that God does not play dice. Who’s right? Neither is right! Source reality is not constrained to comport with the attributes of our ­experience of reality. We, on the other hand, can only experience this world with our consciousness based binary possibilities. Good/Bad, Black/White, Before/After, Fate/Free-will. We can create shades and subtleties by mixing these ingredients in various proportions, but they remain ever binary. Reality is a Unity. It exists beyond any of our limited conceptions or imaginings, creations all, of a limited and fallible bio-sensory process.