Some Basic Points

by novalark

Posted to Utterances on 2002-12-05 18:06:00

Parent message is 334563
The spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese thought, Taoism, Zen differ in many details, but their view of the world is essentially the same. It is based on mystical experience – on a direct non-intellectual experience of reality – and this experience has a number of fundamental characteristics which are independent of the mystic’s geographical, historical, or cultural background.

The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view – one could almost say the essence of it – is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality, or suchness in Buddhists terms. What is meant by the soul as suchness, is the oneness of the totality of all things, the great all-including whole.

The basic oneness of the universe is not only the central characteristic of the mystical experience, but is also one of the most important revelations of modern physics.

Quantum theory has demolished the classical concepts of solid objects and of strictly deterministic laws of nature. Quantum theory reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world in independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated ‘basic building blocks’, but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. The human observer constitute the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can only be understood in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer. In atomic physics, we can never speak about nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves.

This reflects the basic unity and the intrinsically dynamic character of matter. The theories show that the properties of a particle can only be understood in terms of its activity – of its interaction with the surrounding environment – and that the particle, therefore, cannot be seen as an isolated entity, but has to be understood as an integrated part of the whole. In modern physics, the universe is thus experienced as a dynamic, inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way.

Such an experience is very similar to that of the Eastern mystics. The similarity becomes apparent in quantum and relativity theory, and becomes even stronger in the ‘quantum-relativistic’ models of subatomic physics where both these theories combine to produce the most striking parallels to Eastern mysticism.

The universal interconnectedness of things and events seems to be a fundamental feature of the atomic reality which does not depend on a particular interpretation of the mathematical theory. At the atomic level, the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve into patterns of probabilities, and these patterns do not represent probabilities of things, but rather probabilities of interconnections. Quantum theory forces us to see the universe not as a collection of physical objects, but rather as a complicated web of relations between various parts of a unified whole.

This is the way in which Eastern mystics have experienced the world, and some of them have expressed their experience in words which are almost identical with those used by atomic physicists. Statements from atomic physicists could, in turn, be read as a description of the mystical experience of nature.

In Eastern mysticism, this universal interwovenness always includes the human observer and his or her consciousness, and this is also true in atomic physics. In the words of Heisenberg, ‘What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning’. In John Wheeler’s words, ‘In some strange sense the universe is a participatory universe’. The idea of participation is an idea which is well known to any student of mysticism. The notion of the participator is crucial to the Eastern world view, and the Eastern mystics have pushed this notion to the extreme, to a point where observer and observed, subject and object, are not only inseparable but also become indistinguishable. This is the final apprehension of the unity of all things. It is reached in a state of consciousness where one’s individuality dissolves into an undifferentiated oneness, where the world of the senses is transcended and the notion of ‘things’ is left behind.

Quantum theory has come to see the universe as an interconnected web of physical and mental relations whose parts are only defined through their connections to the whole. To summarize the world view emerging from atomic physics, the words of a Tantric Buddhist, Lama Anagarika Govinda, seem to be perfectly apropos.

“The Buddhist does not believe in an independent or separately existing external world, into whose dynamic forces he could insert himself. The external world and his inner world are for him only two sides of the same fabric, in which the threads of all forces and of all events, of all forms of consciousness and of their objects, are woven into an inseparable net of endless, mutually conditioned relations.