February 11, 2006

MYSTICISM AND SCIENCE

THE NUMERICAL PARADOX

The Issue: Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961), with Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) but working independently from him, founded quantum mechanics around 1925. Schroedinger observes that one world crystallizes out of the many minds. Many conscious selves construct one world from their mental experiences. The several domains of Aprivate@ consciousnesses partly overlap. However, the region which is common to us all, that where all minds overlap, is the construct of the Areal world around us@ (pp. 86 and 89).

Philosophically, there are two ways out of this number paradox (both of which present AWestern@ scientific thought considers rather lunatic). The first is the solution of only one mind which relates to one world, the second, the solution of many minds each having their own perception of one real world.

Mystics: Mystics offer the Doctrine of Identity B the solution of one supreme consciousness (mind), identical in us all, which transcends and includes the material world. The multiplicity of minds (consciousnesses) is only apparent. There is only one. This is the view espoused by the Upanishads (composed beginning c.900 B.C.E.) and mystics who have experienced a union with God (pp. 86-87).

Aziz Nasafi (13th century), Persian Islamic mystic, from Nasaf (present Karshi, Uzbekistan), describes:

AOn the death of any living creature, the spirit returns to the spiritual world, the body to the bodily world. In this, however, only the bodies are subject to change. The spiritual world is one single spirit which stands like a light behind the bodily world, and which, when any single creature comes into being, shines through it as through a window. According to the kind and size of the window, more or less light enters the world. The light itself remains unchanged@ (p. 87; Encyclopedia).

A Mathematician: Gottfried Leibnitz (1646-1716), German mathematician and philosopher, offers the Doctrine of Monads B the solution of one real world to be distinguished from its pictures introjected into every one of us by way of perception.

Leibnitz was a consistent rationalist. In his view, the ultimate constituents of the universe are monads, simple substances, each of which represents the universe from a different point of view. Being simple, monads are immaterial and thus cannot act. Every monad is a world by itself, with no communication with the others. The monad has Ano windows.@ It is Aincommunicado.@ Apparent interaction and agreement between the monads are due to Apre-established harmony@(pp. 86-87; Encyclopedia).

A Biologist: Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952), English neurophysiologist, offers biological evidence which supports the view of the mystics:

* The Five Senses: In the neocortex, the five senses are plain to find, each demarcated in its separate sphere.

In vision, for example, the integration is in large measure structural, with two sub-brains, one for the right eye and one for the left, mental collaboration being provided by contemporaneity of action (rather than further structural union).

Thus, although integrated, the concrete aspects of life are compound sub-lives. They reveal their additive nature, and declare themselves to be an affair of minute foci of life acting together.

* The AMind@: The mind, however, is not in any measure a collection of quasi-independent perceptual minds integrated psychically by temporal concurrence of experience.

Rather, the nervous system elaborates a million-fold democracy, each unit being individual cells. There is no structural integration, with no sub-brain and no single nerve-cell being ever a miniature brain. Yet, the integration of the mental reaction from the multitudinous sheet of cells in the neocortex, is as unified and non-atomic as would be that of a single pontifical brain-cell. There is one mind based on the many cell lives.

Matter, energy and Alife@ seem granular in structure, but no so Amind@ (pp. 88-89).

A Physicist: Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961) finds support for the Doctrine of Identity in the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural. It is experienced only in the singular. None of us has ever experienced more than one consciousness, and the world has no trace of even circumstantial evidence that more than one consciousness has ever been experienced at any one time. There cannot be more than one consciousness in any one mind (pp. 87-88; also pp. 94 and 96).

THE NATURE OF MATTER

The Issue: Rene Descartes (1596-1650) points out that causes and their effects must be essentially of the same nature (pp. 144-145).

A Philosopher: Rene Descartes sees mind and matter as two entirely distinct kinds of entity, the essence of matter being extension in space, that of mind being thought. To him, therefore, mind and matter are two distinct worlds running independent courses on parallel rails which never meet. There can be no possible connection between mind and matter because the two are of fundamentally different natures (p. 144).

The Perennial Philosophy: The perennial philosophy maintains that ontologically (though not chronologically), matter is a crystallization, a precipitation of mind (p. 152).

The Great Chain of Being: The Great Chain of Being is the basic ontology of the perennial philosophy, as summarized by Arthur Lovejoy (1873-1962), Rene Guenon (1886-1951), Marco Pallis (1895-1990), Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) and Huston Smith (c.1925) (p. 12).

In this view, the ontology of Being is:

Matter (Physics)

Life (Biology).

Mind (Psychology).

Soul (Theology). The realm of Platonic Forms, archetypes, personal deity-forms.

Spirit (Mysticism). The soul becomes Being in a non-dual state of radical intuition and supreme identity, known as gnosis, nirvikalpa samadhi, satori, kensho, jnana. Spirit is that which transcends everything and includes everything. It is both completely transcendent to the world, and also completely immanent in the world (pp. 12-14).

A Philosopher: George Berkeley(1685-1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher and clergyman, reaches a conclusion similar to both that of the perennial philosophy, and that which mathematician Sir James Jeans (1887-1946) reaches two centuries later.

Berkeley and the idealist philosophers agree with Rene Descartes (1596-1650) that if mind and matter were of fundamentally different natures, they could not interact. However, mind and matter do continually interact (p. 144).

For example: Consider the following interaction between matter and mind. The sun emits radiation in the form of light which Atravels through the ether@ for eight minutes, and falls upon our eyes, causing a disturbance on our retina. The disturbance travels along the optic nerve to the brain, where the brain perceives it as sensation. There follows a train of thoughts B say poetic thoughts about the sunset (p. 144).

In this sequence of events, our own thoughts and sensations are the only links of which we have direct knowledge. Our consciousness is the only direct experience we have, all interpretation of sensory data being only inferences (pp. 145 and 202).

Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), the theoretical physicist who offered the first proof of the theory of relativity advanced by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), describes:

AThought is one of the indisputable facts of the world. I know that I think, [and I know this] with a certainty which I cannot attribute to any of my physical knowledge of the world@ (p. 185).

Therefore, says Berkeley, Asince there is nothing like an idea except an idea,@ the material universe must be of the nature of thoughts (ideas). Matter must be of the same nature as mind. The essence of matter must be thought (ideas) (pp. 144-145).

A thought (idea) cannot exist without a mind in which to exist. Within ourselves, during the time that we are conscious of an object, we may say that it exists in our mind. However, this does not account for the existence of the object while we are not conscious of it. The planet Pluto was in existence long before any human mind suspected its existence. Berkeley postulates an Eternal Being, in whose mind all objects exist. Objects exist Ain the mind of some Eternal Spirit@ (pp. 144-146).

To specify: If an object is actually in the process of being perceived by a Acreated spirit,@ or is in the mind of a Acreated spirit,@ then we may say that it exists. If it is in neither of these two conditions, then we either have to say that it does not exist, or must assume that it exists in the mind of some Eternal Spirit (p. 145).

A Mathematician: Sir James Jeans (1877-1946), mathematician, physicist and astronomer, finds support in mathematics for Berkeley=s conclusion that physical phenomena are of the nature of thoughts. At the far ends of the universe (the cosmos as a whole or the innermost structure of the atom), the universe is of the nature of pure thought:

A[Since we can only understand the physical world through mathematics, we must conclude that] God is a mathematician, and the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine . . . Our remote ancestors tried to interpret nature in terms of anthropomorphic concepts . . . , and failed. Our nearer ancestors tried to interpret nature on engineering lines, and failed. Nature refused to accommodate herself to either of these man-made molds. However, our efforts to interpret nature in terms of the concepts of pure mathematics have proved eminently successful@ (pp. 50, 133, 139 and 145-146).

A[Man as the] pure mathematician does not concern himself with material substance, but rather with pure thought. As the engineer produces engines, the pure mathematician produces thoughts. Concepts such as the following, which prove to be fundamental to our understanding of nature, seem to be structures of pure thought, incapable of representation which in any sense could properly be described as material.@

AFor example:

1. A space which is finite.

2. A space which expands forever.

3. A space which is empty, so that one point differs from another solely in the properties of the space itself.

4. Spaces with four-, seven- and more dimensions.

5. Sequences of events which:

Follow the laws of probability instead of the law of causation.

Can only be fully and consistently described by going outside space and time.

6. The >exclusion principle,= which implies >action at a distance= in both space and time. Every bit of the universe knows what other bits are doing, even at a distance, and act accordingly@ (pp. 8 and 143).

[The Aexclusion principle@ is a quantum mechanical principle formulated, in 1925, by Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958). It states that two identical fermions may not occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. Fermions are particles which obey the principle, and these include the three types of particles which make up ordinary matter B electrons, protons and neutrons. A consequence of the principle is that only two electrons can occupy any given orbital, and when they do, they must spin in opposite directions] (Encyclopedia; Internet).

A[Critics insist] that the universe must admit of material representation. But modern science cannot possibly grant [this]. The universe cannot admit of material representation, and the reason is that it has become a mere mental concept@ (p. 143).

ANature obeys laws which are less suggestive of those of a machine in motion than those of a musician writing a fugue, or a poet composing a sonnet. The motions of electrons and atoms do not resemble the motions of the parts of a locomotive, so much as those of the dancers in a cotillion . . . The universe can best be pictured . . . as consisting of pure thought B the thought of . . . a mathematical thinker@ (pp. 143-144; also pp. 150-151).

THE HARMONY BETWEEN OUR MIND AND THE WORLD

The Issue: Ken Wilber (1949-) points out that the founders and grand theorists of modern physics (quantum and relativity physics) were profoundly struck by the fact that the natural realms (matter and life) obey the laws of the mental realms (mind and soul). These theorists include Max Plank (1858-1947), James Jeans (1877-1946), Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961), Louis de Broglie (1892-1987), Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), and Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) (pp. 3 and 152).

Louis de Broglie (1892-1987), author of the theory of Amatter waves@ (the thesis that moving electrons produce waves), explains the remarkable harmony between the resources of our mind and the profound realities which lie behind natural appearances:

AWe are not sufficiently astonished by the fact that any science is possible at all B that our reason should provide us with the means for understanding at least certain aspects of what happens around us in nature@ (pp. 121 and 123).

The Theory of Relativity: The theory of relativity has given us a concept of time and space . . . which is absolutely contrary to our intuition. Our mind can, therefore, find within itself the necessary elements to interpret ideas quite different from those which are suggested by our experience of daily life. This shows an extensive parallelism between the rules of our reasoning and the order in our world.

Quantum Theory: Quantum theory has given us a similar experience. We have found within our mind all the resources necessary to represent the order which rules on that scale, although this order is radically different from what our imagination, starting from our usual perceptions, could conceive.

On the atomic scale, we have had to abandon the concepts of:

The individuality of corpuscles.

The movement of a corpuscle as representable by a continuous succession of positions in space B a trajectory which the corpuscle follows at a given speed.

Phenomena as being rigorously determined and exactly predictable (determinism). We have had to admit that different eventualities operate, so that we can predict only relative probabilities.

The role of constituents in a complex system (p. 123).

An Integral Philosopher: Taking the perennial philosophy as his starting point, Ken Wilber (1949-) explains why physicists have found that the lower realms (matter and life) obey the laws or forms of mathematics B or, in general, why the lower realms obey archetypal mental-forms which reside in the higher realms ( mind and soul) (p. 152).

Wilber accepts the ontology offered by the perennial philosophy, as described in its Great Chain of Being:

1. Matter

2. Life

3. Mind

4. Soul

5. Spirit (pp. 12-14).

Evolution: Evolution is the unfolding of successively senior dimensions from their prior (involutionary) enfoldment in the lower domains, where they exist as potentials. It is an addition, a creative emergence of successively higher domains through the junior dimensions (p. 152).

Involution: Involution is a Aprecipitation@ of the higher realms into the lower levels, where these higher levels continue to exist but only potentially, implicitly. The lower levels show no evidence of either the potential presence in them of the higher levels, or the fact that these higher levels can emerge through them transcendentally. Involution is a subtraction process from the higher to the lower B spirit precipitates into soul, which precipitates into mind, which precipitates into life, which precipitates into matter. Each junior dimension is a reduced subset of its senior dimension. The processes of involution and evolution reverse one another (p. 152).

The ABig Bang@: The ABig Bang@ was a process of involution during which the material realm blew into existence via a precipitation of the higher into concrete form. Since then, the universe has been evolving back (upward), producing, so far, matter, life and mind, and in some saints and sages, a conscious realization, concrescence of soul, and then spirit (p. 152).

Nature of the APrecipitate@ (The Lower Levels): The lower realms (matter and life) are a reduced subset of the higher (mind and soul). They are ontically less than these higher realms. It follows that while all fundamental processes in the lower realms can be represented mathematically, not all mathematical forms have an application at these lower realms. Of the almost infinite number of mathematical schemes which exist implicitly in the higher realms, only a rather small, finite number are actually crystallized, precipitated in, and as, the lower realms. Ontically, these lower realms are much less than the higher ones, and hence only the relatively simpler higher forms precipitate in, or as, them (p. 152).

The Consequences of Involution:

The Lower obey the Higher: The lower levels (matter and life) obey the archetypal mental-forms which reside in the higher levels (mind and soul). Specifically, physics obeys the laws (forms) of mathematics (p. 152).

Matter is a reduced Version of Mind (Idea): The mental laws which govern material phenomena are the simplest of all possible mathematical schemes which could explain the physical data.

James Jeans (1877-1946) sees matter as a platonic shadow which bears some of the forms (such as the mathematical) of the ontically higher domain of thought.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), father of the theory of relativity, puts it thus:

ANature is the realization [crystallization, precipitation] of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas.@

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), author of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, notes:

AThe simple is the seal of the true@ (p. 153).

Only the Mind discovers Mathematical Laws: Mathematical laws are discovered by the mind. To find which mathematical scheme applies to a particular physical universe, we use our mind, and only our mind. Using the eye of reason, we search through our mental universe to see which schemes or forms might have crystallized in, and as, that physical universe. Then, using the eye of flesh (the physical senses or their instrumental extensions), we check whether a particular mathematical scheme correctly applies to this physical level. Mathematical laws cannot be deduced from mere sensory-physical-empirical data. One cannot derive the higher from the lower (p. 153).

Validity Criteria must respond to both Mind and Matter: The criteria for establishing the truth of a physical theory must respond to both mind and matter:

Coherence: With respect to mind, the theory must be coherent, that is, free of self-contradiction.

Correspondence: With respect to the physical data, the theory must correspond, that is, match, fit the evidence (p. 153).

REFERENCES

All page numbers refer to:

Wilber, Ken. Editor. 1984/2001. Quantum questions B mystical writings of the world=s great physicists. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

Editor/Author Page numbers

Editor:

Ken Wilber (c.1949-) ix-x

xi-xii

1-28

On Max Planck: 157

On James Jeans: 133 and 152-153

On Albert Einstein: 101

On Arthur Eddington: 179

On Erwin Schroedinger: 77

On Louis de Broglie: 117

On Wolfgang Pauli: 167-175

On Werner Heisenberg: 31-32.

Author:

Max Planck (1858-1947)* 159-164

James Jeans (1877-1946) 135-152

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) 103-113

Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) 181-223

Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961) 79-98

Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) 119-129

Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) 170, 173, 174 and 175

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) 33-74

Other References:

Columbia encyclopedia. 2000. 6^th Edition. New York. Columbia University/Gale Group.

Internet.

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* In 1900, Plank ushered the quantum revolution by offering the idea that nature is not continuous, but rather comes in discrete packets, Aquanta@ (p. 157).

***