by David Anderson, Ph.D.
MetaPhysics
Introduction | People | Free Will | Finding Harmony | Sparks from Time | Time Metaphysics Thoughts | Rediscovering Ancient Wisdom | Universe of Information and Energy | Human Mind Time Travel | Changing Views of Space-Time | Is Time An Illusion?Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality
Physicists have always been separated from the worlds of philosophy and religion by the strict walls of analytical science. But something very exciting is happening. Today physicists are rediscovering the ancient wisdom that shows the sense of wonder and oneness that connects us with the universe and God. The new discoveries, and what is being called the "new physics," is crossing into and driving support for the long standing views of metaphysicists. Metaphysicists strive to explain the nature of being and the origin and structure of the world in order to enrich the human experience. This new physics steps outside the walls of analytical science and is embracing a holistic view that unites man’s physical, mental, and spiritual character into a single and true nature.
The effect of these new discoveries on our culture will be staggering in its power to lead the people of the world to enlightenment. The majority of our world population still embraces the material and scientific as the only "real truth" or reality. Its ironic, that for the first time, it is these very scientific beliefs that will cause many to look beyond the walls of analytical science and step into a deeply personal, thoughtful and inspiring journey that will help them find their true place in the universe – and the universe in themselves.
The impact of science, religion and philosophy now aligned so closely for the first time cannot be underestimated. This will open a floodgate ushering the masses of the world’s population into the new age. This will lead to a new enrichment of the human experience for more people across the globe than ever before experienced in the documented history of civilization.
It is very impressive that this "new" view of the universe, the same views held by metaphysicists and eastern mystics for thousands of years, is now being rediscovered in the strangest of places… in scientific laboratories all around the world.
The high-energy scattering experiments of the past decade have shown us the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the sub-atomic particle world in the most striking way. Matter has appeared in these experiments as completely mutable. All particles can be transmuted into other particles. They can be created from energy… and vanish into energy. The kinetic energies required for these experiments are achieved by the means of huge particle accelerators, enormous circular machines with circumferences of several miles, in which protons are accelerated to velocities near the speed of light and are then made to collide with either protons or neutrons. It is impressive that machines of this size are needed to study the world of the infinitesimally small. They are the super microscopes of our time.
In this new world, classical concepts such as elementary particles, space, time, material substance or isolated objects have lost their meaning. Without a doubt, these scientific tools and research are closing a circle and leading to the same conclusions of eastern mystics and metaphysicists. This conclusion is that the world and everything and everyone in it are all part of the same, and inseparable, dynamic web of energy.
The final achievement and acceptance of this new knowledge will represent the greatest achievement in mankind’s history – transforming our world and reality in a manner that is difficult to comprehend.
This raises serious questions and concerns for many. Perhaps the most basic of all questions is… "What is reality?" Will the barriers of our culture and language even allow us to be able to communicate and understand these concepts within our everyday, yet totally inaccurate, framework and view of reality? What if we truly live in a holographic universe… a single world and universe completely interconnected into a dynamic web of energy? How will we feel and react if we learn that reality is simply the end result of our life force acting on the energy particles within this universe? The answers to these questions may be best understood by examining some of the parallels within the two worlds of science and spirituality.
For example, eastern mysticism is based on direct insight into the nature of reality, and physics is based on the observation of natural phenomena in scientific experiments. In both fields the observations are then interpreted and the interpretation is very often communicated by words. Since words are always an abstract approximate map of reality, the verbal interpretations of a scientific experiment or of a mystical insight are necessarily inaccurate and incomplete. Modern physicists and eastern mystics alike are well aware of this fact.
In modern physics a very new attitude is now developed. Physicists have come to see that all their theories of natural phenomena, including the laws they describe, are creations of the human mind. They are properties of our conceptual map of reality rather than of reality itself. This conceptual scheme is necessarily limited, and approximate, as are all the scientific theories and laws of nature it contains.
All natural phenomena are ultimately interconnected and in order to explain any one of them we need to understand all the others, which is obviously impossible. What makes science so successful is the discovery that approximations are possible. If one is satisfied with an approximate understanding of nature, one can describe selected groups of phenomena, in this way neglecting other phenomena that are less relevant. Thus, one can explain many phenomena in terms of a few, and consequently, understand different aspects of nature in an approximate way without having to understand everything at once. This is the scientific method. All scientific theories and models are approximations of the true nature of things. But the error involved in the approximation is often small enough to make such an approach meaningful.
Both physicists and mystics realize the resulting impossibility of fully explaining any phenomena, but then they take different attitudes. Physicists are satisfied with an approximate understanding of nature. In the eastern view, as in the view of modern physics, everything in the universe is still connected to everything else and no part of it is fundamental. The properties of any part are determined not by some fundamental law but by the properties of all the other parts.
However, the eastern mystics on the other hand are not interested in approximate or relevant knowledge. They are concerned with absolute knowledge involving understanding of the totality of life. Being well aware of the essential interrelationship of the universe, they realize that to explain something means to show how it is connected to everything else. As this is impossible the eastern mystics insist that no single phenomena can be explained. All things in their fundamental nature are not nameable or explicable. They cannot be adequately expressed in any form of language.
To free the human mind from words and explanations is one of the main aims of eastern mysticism. Both Buddhists and Taoists speak of a network of words, a net of concepts, thus extending the idea of the interconnected web to the realm of the intellect. As long as we try to explain things we are bound by Karma, trapped in our conceptual network. To transcend words and explanations means to break the bonds of Karma and attain liberation and to see the real truth of the human experience.
The principle theories and models of modern physics lead to a view of the world that is internally consistent and in perfect harmony with these views of eastern mysticism.
Perhaps the views of both are very well captured in William Blake’s famous lines, "to see a world in a grain of sand… and a heaven in a wild flower… hold infinity in the palm of your hand… and eternity in an hour."
Every day, physicists are continuing to prove, rationally, that our "rationale" ideas about the world in which we live are profoundly deficient. The final acceptance of this new knowledge will transform our world and reality in a manner that is difficult to comprehend. An example of how these new discoveries will shatter our view of the world and reality can be seen in the new view forming on the simple and most basic concepts of reality we embrace, like the concept of time.
"Common sense" tells us that many things aren’t possible. Common sense tells us that it is nonsense to suggest that moving objects shrink and get heavier… and that an astronaut who travels to a distant star and returns to earth will be younger than her twin brother. But this isn’t science fiction… today its science fact! How many more new discoveries about time and our ability to control it will emerge from these new discoveries?
Physicists say that in the actual world each observer can only experience phenomena in a succession of space-time sections, that is in a temporal sequence. Mystics, on the other hand, maintain that they can actually experience the full span of space-time where time does not flow any longer. Zen Masters say it is believed by most that time passes. In actual fact it stays where it is. This idea of passing may be called time but it is an incorrect idea. For since one sees it only as passing one cannot understand that it stays just where it is. Many of the eastern teachers emphasize that thought must take place in time, but that vision can transcend it. Vision is bound up with a space of a higher dimension and is therefore timeless.
The space-time of relativistic physics is a similar timeless space of a higher dimension. All events in it are inter-connected but the connections are not causal. Similarly, the eastern mystics assert that in transcending time they also transcend the world of cause and effect. Like our ordinary notions of space and time, causation is an idea that is limited to a certain experience of the world that has to be abandoned when this experience is extended. In a sense… time, space and causation are like the glass through which the absolute is seen. In the absolute there is neither time, space or causation. The eastern spiritual traditions show their followers various ways of going beyond the ordinary experience of time, and of freeing themselves from the chains of cause and effect, from the bondage of Karma, as the Hindus and Buddhists say. It is therefore been said that eastern mysticism is a liberation from time. In a way, the same may be said of relativistic physics.
The acceptance that we are interconnected in life to everything in the universe will help the people of the world open their eyes and really look at many new possibilities. All particles are connected to everything… and everything is connected to everyone… we are inseparable from any other part of the universe. This also suggests that we are not only connected to inanimate objects but that we are also connected in death. Does this violate the laws of physics?
Physicists have concluded that not only can you never catch up to a light wave… you can’t even get close. No matter how fast you go you will always be separated from it by the speed of light. This speed is unattainable by any material object. To reach the speed of light you would have to "de-materialize." When the life force leaves the material body at death, de-materializes, does that energy rejoin this intricate web as pure energy? Does this offer some explanation of the light tunnels and other observations seen by so many in after-death experiences? Will these new discoveries lead to increased study and acceptance of mediumship, psychometry, channeling, and other "less scientific" practices? Does the quantum world of the new physics really support the possibility of parallel universes… and do parallel universes offer some possible rational explanation of schizophrenia and multiple personality orders… of people who are tuned into other universes or other parts of this web of energy and life?
Once the parallels between western science and eastern mysticism are accepted, a number of questions will arise concerning their implications. Is modern science with all its sophisticated machinery merely rediscovering ancient wisdom known to metaphysicists and eastern sages for thousands of years? Should physicists therefore abandon the scientific method and begin to meditate? Or can there be a mutual influence between science and mysticism, perhaps even a synthesis?
Science and mysticism are two complementary manifestations of the human mind, of its rational and intuitive faculties. The modern physicist experiences the world through an extreme specialization of the rational mind. The mystic experiences the world through an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind. The two approaches are entirely different and involve far more than a certain view of the physical world. However, as we have learned to say in physics, they are complementary. Neither is comprehended in the other… nor can either of them be reduced to the other… but both of them are necessary supplementing one another for a fuller understanding of the world.
In many ways, religion has become a matter of the heart and science has become a matter of the mind. This regrettable state of affairs does not reflect the fact that physiologically one cannot exist without the other. Everybody needs both. Mind and heart are only different aspects of us. To paraphrase an old Chinese saying, mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches… scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism… and mysticism does not need science… but men and women need both. Mystical experience is necessary to understand the deepest nature of things and science is essential for modern life.
What we may need is not a synthesis but a dynamic interplay between mystical intuition and scientific analysis. So far this has not been achieved in our society… but things are changing. In the past 20 years we’ve seen an increasingly strong interest in eastern mysticism and the study of metaphysics, an interest that is part of a much larger trend… ready to explode across our world.
The most profound and age-old questions of existence will continue to be explored and discovered by more and more people due to the extraordinary advances of this field of science known as the new physics. The discoveries of 20th-centruy physics – originating from relativity and the quantum theory – are now pointing the way to a new appreciation of man and his place in the universe. They are, in fact, closing the circle and reaffirming the views and beliefs held and practiced by metaphysicists and eastern mystics for thousands of years. For the first time this could bring within our grasp a unified description of all creation accepted and embraced by the masses. This will demand a radical reformulation of the most fundamental aspects of reality and a new way of thinking will be much closer in accord with metaphysics than analytical science and materialism.
In a sense we are approaching the end of science. The end of science does not mean the end of the un-resting endeavoring and continually progressing development of more and more comprehensive and useful physical theories. The end of science means the coming of western civilization in its own time… and in its own way… into the higher dimensions of human experience.
Metaphysicists will play a key role in helping the people of the world unlock their minds, find the keys to success, and to recognize the true value of their own human experience. Their teachings will guide the masses toward a consciousness of the truth, which in turn will lead to harmony and prosperity in their life and our world.
The dance within this intricate web of energy and life, this reality, is one of the most beautiful movements that ever was created. Every individual is that movement, is a part of that movement, and it is part of them. Sometimes it is best to try to forget everything you "know" and really look. We all need to open our minds to these new ideas that embrace this true nature of our universe.
The truth is here and all around us and inside everyone of us. We need to listen to it, hear it, listen to it so closely that we become one with it. It will give us the power to guide us all to our own road to discovery and the truth we need to live.
This information should not be used or reproduced with prior permission by David Anderson or the Time Travel Research Center. For requests please contact the Time Travel Research Center.
MetaPhysics
Introduction | People | Free Will | Finding Harmony | Sparks from Time | Time Metaphysics Thoughts | Rediscovering Ancient Wisdom | Universe of Information and Energy | Human Mind Time Travel | Changing Views of Space-Time | Is Time An Illusion?