Dr. Paul Brunton: The Wisdom of the Overself, Samuel Weiser Inc 1969
Sogyal Rinpoche: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Harper San Francisco 1992
Paul Davies: The Mind of God, Penguin 1993
Paul Davies: The Matter Myth, Penguin 1992
Paul Davies: The Cosmic Blueprint, Penguin 1995
Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time, Space Time Publications 1988
First up I would like to ask you to close you eyes, but not before you’ve read all this of course. When your eyes are shut try to imagine you can’t hear either. Then try to imagine you can’t taste, touch or smell either. In other words pretend all your senses are inactive. Remain in that condition until you can at least imagine what the state might be like, then have a go at the questions below.
What remains when all the senses are inactive?
If this state continued what might happen to your body?
Would you still be able to think or to dream? Shakespeare, in Hamlet, was very concerned with this question too.
To die, to sleep – To sleep – perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause…
The answers to these questions are not so important as the questions themselves. The question is essentially one about consciousness or awareness. In other words are you a body, or are you something else? Now, you might rush in and say, of course I’m a body, and when I die my brain will no longer function and so I’ll be dead; dead meaning eternal blackness, lack of thought, nothingness. But it is this nothingness I would like to call into question. How do we really know? And who could tell us anyway? The dead don’t come back. Or do they?
If you get the opportunity read some literature about near death experiences. The book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche is very useful. This reading may not convince you, but please keep in mind that I’m not here to convince you or convert you, but to explore along with you. Surely the challenge of the next century is not to prove, but improve!
Internalize then transpose. The universe plays tricks on us.
Those who don’t like riddles need not apply.
More than near death experiences I feel dreams are worth investigating. The work by Paul Brunton is particularly good for this. Imagine you’ re in bed asleep and having a dream. The type of dream, pleasant or nightmarish, is irrelevant. The images you see are somewhat vague and transitory, but none-the-less you experience something, albeit a different world from the one you’re used to. In fact it is a very private world. People and places can either be familiar or not. Themes can be familiar or completely absurd. There may or may not be continuity.
Now let’s just think for a minute, when you’re experiencing a dream it is quite obvious you are the dreamer, yet that strange world seems real enough for the short period of its duration. And what about the people who are in it? Are they real? Are you them or are you dreaming them? In other words are they figments of your imagination? That is, bits and pieces of your thought thrown together like chop suey?
Of course they are figments of your imagination thrown together like chop suey.
So if this is the case, what does it all mean?
It means that when we are asleep our minds are very active creating, if you like, an alternative universe. And one I might add that is predisposed to our particular wants and wishes.
Now let’s get back to our rather terrifying removal of all sense perception. At least until the body died we’d still have our mind and presumably our thoughts and dreams. The big question is, would we still have those when the body died? Or would all life, including thought and dreams cease?
Let’s take a closer look.
Buddhists believe in a continuation of consciousness or awareness, but this is not to say they are right. We cannot interview a detached consciousness, a spirit, if you like, although I imagine a ratings-conscious current affairs program would pay very well for the opportunity. Many spiritualists attempt it but it is difficult to say if any of them actually succeed. From time to time we might think we have made contact with the other world or be convinced this is possible, but who is to say we aren’t projecting something from our own minds into the situation, in other words, making it up?
Granted the answers to these questions aren’t easy to come by, so how do we make headway with this discussion? We begin, as all good scientists do, with justifiable evidence. And two of the best-dressed theories these days are the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Theory.
Now I’m no expert in matters scientific, but there are plenty of experts about. And from the bibliographies of the references listed others can be found. (This is a bit like the notion of multiple realities we will find out about later. Or ideas within ideas we will find out about later again. There really is so much symbolism in the universe to play with that I simply can’t restrain myself. ) It seems to me that many of the references say much the same thing, and whereas many texts are very heavy the excellent books written by Paul Davies suit an inquiring, if not so expert mind.
If we go back a phase in time to the Industrial Age, matter was considered as solid and inert. Although in ages gone by other philosophers had had their own ideas, and sometimes those ideas were surprisingly ingenious. Anyway Newton’s view on the matter became the predominant one and thus the Industrial Age was born resulting in man’s partial release from the slavery of repetitious tasks and also the evolution of a throwaway society and the devastating consequences to the environment.
However since that time new scientific discoveries have been made. The new physics, as it is called, and thereby complementing the New Age seems to have challenged the previously accepted materialistic view of matter and arriving at a conclusion, which emphasizes invisible energy fields. Ancient philosophy called it the quintessence.
It was of course Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that literally shot Newton’s static view of matter to pieces. Whereas prior to relativity space and time were held as constants, Einstein convinced us all that they were only relative, a point of view, if you like, and that observations and measurements could vary according to aspects of the observer. No longer were we fixed in time but relative to it.
Is your experience of life or time always consistent? For example, who experiences time when they are asleep? Its only when you wake up you know that time had passed. Nor do we consider the passage of time during dreams. Dreams happen so fast that everything in them is experienced very rapidly. There are no limits on the imagination. Even this minor example show that time is relative. How may of you have been having such a good time that time has seemed to pass more quickly? And doesn’t time pass more slowly during a dull or anxious time?
It seems to me that Einstein was definitely on to something, and that is, that time is relative to the senses or our observation or perception of it. If we had no senses to sense it, would time exist?
Indeed, would anything exist? Getting back to the point now, Einstein introduced us to a new way of thinking, a much more abstract and deliciously intellectual one, suitable, indeed, for a more intellectual age.
The science of every new age adequately reflects the life of the inner self.
The atom as the fundamental particle of matter no longer sufficed, matter had become an enigma yet again, and this time to become less like ping pong balls and more like invisible excitations.
I’m picking up good vibrations! It’s giving me the excitations. So did the Beachboys, so how about you?
No longer would we theoretically see matter even if we a microscope powerful enough, but experience it. Perhaps, if we were lucky enough, measure it. In addition to the Quantum Theory of matter is another theory called Chaos, where seemingly inert matter can arrange itself or self organize as though it had a mind of its own, creating, if you like, new spatial forms and structures. Although the systems thus arranged are unstable and susceptible to change, the theory has the means to demolish any remaining stronghold that solid state Newtonian Theory may have held.
So in the minds of the scientists the nature of reality had indeed altered. I for one appreciate their change in attitude and their acceptance of it. It shows a marked degree of common sense and maturity, yet I dare to suggest that it does not go far enough. You will see why later, but for now let’s look even more closely at the nature of reality from the non- philosophic, materialistic or rather scientific point of view.
As scientists endeavored to come to grips with Quantum Theory their idea of the atom changed dramatically, and in particular regarding the nature and role of the electron. Whereas formerly the electron was pictured as a teensy-tiny negatively charged particle spinning in various energy levels around a not quite so teensy-tiny positively charged nucleus, nowadays it is imagined more as an effect manifesting at different times and in different circumstances as either a wave or a particle.
Note that I have deliberately drawn your attention to the words imagined and manifesting. The reasons for this will become obvious later, but for now I can only say that my word usage does have a purpose. Firstly, and hopefully without transgressing any universal copyright laws, I have used words used by the scientists themselves, and secondly I do deliberately pick on them to assist me in the presentation of my arguments. My aim, if you like, is to use the techniques and language of science to call it into question. Or at least call into question its purely concrete interpretation. I hasten to add that I am not against science, in fact, I am a great supporter and admirer of it. Indeed it will inevitably help us discover and understand our origins. The presence of science in our world has also been of the utmost benefit in all sorts of practical ways, and will, most assuredly, continue to do so. But what I do hope to do is to put science into its proper perspective, and without, I hope, insulting or upsetting anybody.
So, this so-called wave-particle duality of energy vis matter in which the electron appears to function obliterates any remaining allegiance to the deterministic nature of reality. No longer is Newton’s apple just an apple, but an exchange of unpredictable energy fields temporarily manifesting, or verily materializing as an apple.
What rot you say. Well try to imagine the scientists themselves who must surely wonder what they’ve struck too. But honestly, how exciting it must be. Just think of it, at any moment one of them might discover that nothing material exists at all! That we only thought it did. I quite like to imagine, (there’s that word again), that an invisible, unpredictable electron is a representation, a symbol, if you like, of my invisible, unpredictable, often inconsistent thought. With homegrown logic and my senses temporarily in tact I can even imagine I catch and eat Newton’s rosy red apple.
Lawrence once wrote this in a letter to his mother:
Imagination should be put in the most precious caskets, and that is why one can only live in the future or the past, in Utopia or the Wood beyond the World.
Now back to business.
Not only are electrons thought to be waves one moment and particles the next, but they are thought only to be probabilities of such manifestations. Now this idea is pretty difficult to get one’s mind around. It essentially means that the same electron is likely to do anything at all resulting in a large degree of uncertainty in the sub-atomic world. If you ask me there’s a lot of uncertainty in the macroscopic world too. In view of the nature of reality, how could it be otherwise?
There is a principle called the uncertainty principle that was devised by the scientist, Werner Heisenberg that says, essentially, that nothing is for certain. That’s odd, don’t you think? Paul Davies tells us that Einstein was appalled by this notion and refused to accept it. However recent results show that it is, indeed, the case. The main difficulty faced by scientists is the taking of observations and measurements. The only supportive data comes from mind experiments. The dual nature of the electron makes its ‘capture’ impossible and so the nature of reality remains as always, an enigma.
In order to try to describe the nature of reality various experiments have been attempted but the results have added to the dilemma. Not only do electrons behave like co-conspirators but play tricks on the experimenter/observer. Or is it, I dare ask, the experimenter/observer playing tricks on himself or herself?
The fact that the nature of an electron can’t be described or its behaviour predicted seems the stuff of science fiction. And what is science fiction anyway except an idea of what may or may not occur in the future.
But all this is getting us nowhere. Or is it?
I’d like just to summarize the facts so far.
Instead of the previously accepted view that the nature of reality was based on matter made up of tiny particles called atoms, we have today a universe consisting of unpredictable energy fields in which the nature of the electron plays a vital role. Nothing much can be said about the electron, except that it is best described in terms of what it isn’t. Its not solid, its not a wave or particle but manifests as either at different times and its effects aren’t predictable.
Needless to say this unusual description is neither comprehensible nor ultimately fulfilling, but what it is, is beautiful. Just imagine it, a universe made up of entities that don’t know what they are themselves until someone observes them; in other words, until someone decides what they want or expects them to be. The moment the senses are engaged the nature of perceived reality, has been set. And what does this mean for everything and everyone else? Surely that ever observation/decision we make determines the nature of our own reality.
I said our own reality and not just reality in general for a reason. Who can, at any one time, know what is going on in someone else’s mind? You might think you do, but really, how can you? Have you got some sort of access code that establishes their thoughts in line with your own? Every observation/decision we make is a direct result of our own thinking. This projection (rejection) of our own thoughts elsewhere is commonly called the ego. I like to think of it as the imagination or creative context.
Let’s look at something else quite exciting.
The bi-product of the Quantum Theory is a holistic view of the universe. The word holistic essentially means all encompassing, or all embracing and is, if you ask me, a particularly delightful description. So now instead of a deterministic, materialist view of the universe we have this all encompassing one which seems to make each little part as important as the next. Those that felt isolated and cog-like within the material-machine frame of reference now have nothing to complain about. In fact they have a vital role to play. For if their volatile electronic thoughts display erratic behaviour they probably have no one to blame but themselves. Such is the contemporary nature of reality, where all particles and waves, thoughts and actions are interconnecting, communicating, parts of the whole. The universe is a veritable macrocosm of miracles.
And just to complicate things further. If the electron behaves in a certain manner according to the presence or absence
of an observer, surely the environment exterior to that particular observer is related to the next, and then the next in a series of interconnected observations/ decisions that
inevitably affect the whole? And is there anywhere outside the field exempt from these effects? In other words, is there an ultimate observer? These are questions and more I will
try to answer in the next exciting episode of
THE COSMIC CONNECTION AND THE THEORY OF UNIVERSAL FULFILLMENT.
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