The mystery of matter and the paradox of Newtonian vs Quantum physics
It seems curious to me that in this day and age we have turned away from superstitious theological explanations from the past and towards modern rational science to explain the workings of the universe to us. Yet at the same time scientists themselves cannot agree with each other regarding the fundamental make up of the universe and all the matter within it. Where on earth does this leave us then? Is the universe still a mystery to us despite all the advances we have made over the past 100 years? We can but wonder.
For example, there is a particular impasse or conflict of theories between those scientists examining the macrocosmos and those studying the microcosmos. Their theories do not fit together well and they are in direct conflict with each other as to the fundamental scientific explanation of reality as we know it. This is seen in the fundamental contradiction between Newtonian physics on the one hand and Quantum physics on the other. The former deals with gravity and the planets, etc floating in space, while the other deals with the subatomic world within all matter in reality. Yet they are coming up with contradictory characteristics in their observations and physical laws, which is something we may not realize as a general observer. But there it is.
On the one hand we have Einstein and his theory of relativity, while on the pother hand we have David Bohm and his unified field theory. Both of these great geniuses worked together actually, at Princeton University during the early part of the 20th century. There they both did research with Oppenheimer, the man who created the atom bomb. They were all doing research together, and yet as much as they looked for a “unified field theory” or “theory of everything” as Einstein liked to call it, they simply could not find one because of this basic discrepancy between what they observed in the greater world of reality or matter, and what they observed in the microscopic world of the same matter making up our reality. And this didn’t make sense, not even to them. And they were the top minds in physics and still are to a degree 70 years later, on paper.
David Bohm was the more open to the non-physical understanding, or the mystical potential of reality, compared to his peers, so he even looked for a unity not only of the theory of the cosmos but also of mind and matter. He was actually a friend and supporter of the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti and together they shared an understanding of the world as a single collective, all interconnected, as explained in the ancient Vedic literature from thousands of years ago already. This made Bohm a forerunner of the quantum unified field theory that we may accept today, although in his time he was frowned upon for such radical insights. It shows you how far we have come today, since then.
One famous experiment performed by Bohm, which has gone down in history as a breakthrough in observation, and still leaves us mystified to this day, is the double split experiment. It is a simple yet mystifying experiment where electrons or little light particles are sent through two slits at the same time, and instead of moving through like particles in two lines through the two slits, they move through and emerge in several overlapping rays, as if like waves. The particles turn into waves in this experiment, which was a revolutionary discovery that remains the core of this unexplained mystery to this day.
This was the experiment that showed us that everything we assumed about electrons was wrong. These ultra small parts of the material reality around us changed from a particle to a wave, but not only that. It became stranger still. It turned out that even the simple act of observing the experiment tended to change the wave so that it behaved like a particle again. This was again a revolutionary finding – that the observer affects the outcome of the experiment simply by the act of observing. This mystery of reality goes beyond a classical Newtonian understanding of reality and leads us into the field of quantum particles.
This inexplicable paradox is now an accepted part of quantum physics. And yet it makes no sense. It suggested that the observer and the observed were somehow interconnected, part of the same whole, and this was what David Bhom wanted to share with the world, in the vein of Krishnamurti and the mystics of the East all along. However, it was decades before such a paradoxical insight was finally accepted by mainstream science.
These giants of science wrestled with the problem of our underlying reality. Was there even an underlying reality as Einstein insisted, and are all things actually connected even at a distance? Does separation even exist between observer and observed? Mystics have been saying it is all connected and part of a unified whole for ages, and Bohm was one of the first scientists to feel in intrinsic agreement with this radical theory. There was at this time back in the 1950s, a need for an implicit and truly radical new understanding or theory of reality.
How could electrons behave differently when observed? Today we understand and accept a little more easily the concept of the Unified Field, or the Matrix, as some might like to call it. Yet all of these discoveries require a certain degree of humility before reality today, for it seems as if consciousness itself is present throughout reality to a greater degree than we realize. Even the hard problem of consciousness itself, is today the new mystery that scientists are yet to comprehend fully.
It seems that there will always be parts of reality that remain a mystery to us, or that show sides that are beyond our scientific understanding at this point in time. Millennia ago ancient spiritual cultures referred to these abstract truths in the ancient Vedic texts of India without any need for mechanical science or physics. To them the mystery was understood because they received their explanation via the descending process, from a higher authority, handed down, not by the ascending process of trying to grasp at the truth by our own scientific attempts.
Anything we do is unfortunately tinged with imperfections and will have the four defects, namely the tendency to have imperfect senses, to make mistakes, to be bewildered and curiously to cheat. This is why the ascending process cannot always provide all the answers perfectly. However, fortunately today the Unified Field Theory is more readily accepted, and it just so happens to concur with the ancient Vedic texts after all. Such is the Great Mystery of reality. Quantum science today actually contradicts classical physics in that what happens on the microcosmic level differs from the laws of the marcocosmos.
This “wholism” for want of a better word, or unity consciousness of the ancient Vedic texts on yoga and meditation, is now understood to be the actual reality of our material realm, and this is not at all supernatural or mystical. It is no longer a superstition or theological dogma, but is accepted as science. Magic is, after all, only a science which we have not yet understood. Well today science is merging with the mystical and the conclusions match, particularly on the subatomic level, which is the foundation of all matter anyway.
Therefore we need to remain open to the mystery of the universe, we need to accept that we may not comprehend everything by logic and scientific inquiry alone. Some of the truth and law of matter is in fact supernatural in appearance but purely natural to one who has understood nature for what it is. To the master of nature, everything is interconnected, including all of us and all of the planet. Whatever we do, we do to ourselves as a collective. There is no us and them at that level, it’s all us.
Science is only now in the past decades really accepting this ancient truth, and has been humbled in their findings. As a result spirituality or consciousness exploration is a science now, not a religion or superstition. And we are the Jedi knights who walk among the Force. These forces of nature are all about us and the Jedi knights and masters are aware that there is an unlimited amount of potential energy, or chi, or prana, as it is called in different ancient cultures. Even that other science genius, Nicola Tesla, showed us how it is possible to scientifically tap and channel this vast supply of energy, which is available to us all.
In the ancient Vedic literature this scientific understanding of the unified field theory, or unity conciousness, is labelled in different ways, one of them being by the Sanskrit aphorism
“achintya bedhabedha tattva”
or
inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference.
In other words both Einstein and David Bohm were correct, both Newtonian and Quantum physics are right. We are simultaneously all connected in unity, as well as also separate as individuals.
Remember, it all depends on the observer, on the consciousness and the expectation of the observer in relation to the observed, as to how the matter plays itself out, or how reality behaves. It may not make sense, but that is because it is inconceivable. And such is the Great Mystery of life and reality, so dive in and enjoy the mystery. There is more to life than meets the eye, and it all depends on the eye of the beholder. Welcome to the magic which is the mundane.
(image pixabay)