Maya - The world of Quantum Physics Part 1

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the western world considered India to be a most mysterious land crawling with snakes, tigers and naked fakirs. Hinduism was regarded as the most pathetic of all religions. The Hindus were worshippers of weird gods having hundreds of heads and hands, believers in absurd superstitions and rituals. However in the late 19th and 20th centuries many of the great scholars of Europe like Voltaire, Max Mueller and so on, discovered the Vedas and Upanishads and realized that there was much more to Hinduism than was revealed on the surface. In fact the 20th century brought about a revolution in the minds of educated people all over the world in the way they perceived the world. With the discoveries of quantum physics, scientists were astounded to see the solid, implacable character of the world they lived in, disintegrating before their very eyes! Strangely enough the opposite was the case with those who had studied the various aspects of Hindu thought about the nature of the world. All these years, westerners had laughed in scorn at the idea that the world was “maya” or illusion as the Hindus proclaimed! Surely their own five senses were the best instruments to understand this world, they thought. However, with the discoveries of quantum physics they realized that their five senses were actually giving a distorted vision of reality. Those who were capable of reflection and those who had gone deep into the wisdom of the Vedas started to realize that almost everything about the world as depicted in the ancient Indian scriptures more than ten thousand years ago made perfect sense when seen through the lens of the quantum world.

The greatest thing that quantum physics did for Hinduism was to show that the world as the senses tell us and as the Newtonian scientists had been telling us, is not a solid thing. Physicists who delved into the heart of “matter” were astounded by what they saw. Matter was not solid at all as our senses tell us but merely energy in motion. (e=mc squared). That is to say matter is not composed of hard, rubbery atoms but is made up of subatomic particles that have no design or shape and do not follow any standard order. Sometimes they behave like waves and sometimes like particles and sometimes they are both. It is a haphazard world in which we live, where nothing can be predicted with the certainty that science demands. The solid world of matter which the senses enjoyed, disintegrated into a dervish dance of protons, neutrons and energy particles. It was only now that intelligent people all over the world began to think that the maya theory of the rishis had some truth in it - the world of the senses is an illusion. The rishis had known this thousands of years ago but naturally it would have been meaningless to the common people of that time and even in this time, so they cloaked their knowledge in metaphorical words. It was only in the 20thcentury that physicists actually proved the maya theory in a scientific way! The rishis have been telling us the truth about the unreality of the world as the senses perceive it, for centuries but we, with our dependence and total belief in the theories of western science were most scornful of it. But now when the same words come out of western mouths, we are forced to believe it albeit reluctantly since our senses belie this truth. Actually, speaking Hinduism is the only religion in the world which is scientifically accurate in every single detail. All the great teachings of our saints and masters had been thrown into the dust bin, labeled “superstitious nonsense” by western scholars but every one of these was now found to be based on pure scientific facts.

The second shock to the western mind came with Einstein’s theory of relativity. Time and space had always been accepted as absolute and unchangeable facts of life by Newton but many of the scientists who came after him proved that time and space are relative. This was a shocking idea which even we, who are bound to our clocks and time schedules, find hard to accept. The Bhagavad Gita as well as all the Hindu scriptures have always declared that what binds us to wheel of samsara (transmigrational world) are the three mental conditionings known as desa, kaala and nimitta, - space, time and causality and that these are purely mental bonds which we have created ourselves! This has been said in all Hindu scriptures centuries before such a thought even occurred to the western scientists.

We have created this world of concrete objects and superimposed a false reality on them. This concrete world which we think we “see” is “maya” or an appearance. It has no permanent reality. It is only a passing show and has no permanence. Our bodies which are made of the same material – the five elements are also perishable. BUT we are not solely these bodies. Our reality is something far greater since we are actually the atman or divine spirit, which is imperishable and eternal and untouched by the changes of the body which take place in the world of Space /Time.

The Hindu scriptures reiterate that Absolute reality is beyond these three upadis (conditions), desha, kaala and nimitta or space, time and causality. The moment we demarcate ourselves as belonging to one specific place and time, that very moment we separate ourselves from our divinity (which is beyond space and time) and thus come under the law of cause and effect which in turn brings suffering in its wake. We are the creators of time and space and therefore the creators of our own unhappiness. We have been conditioned into accepting space and time and causality as the only truth. By some strange act of cognition, when we bring energy to conscious awareness, through the act of perception, we create separate objects that seem to exist in space through a measured continuum called time. By creating time and space we create our own separateness from our divine reality.

Until the last century even those people who tried to escape from the harsh facts of science by resorting to religion found themselves having to wrestle with these opposing views of life and having to defend their positions to the scientist. Now the boot seems to be on the other foot. The 20th century brought about a most profound change in the outlook of science as to the nature of the world and the nature of the human being.

Discoveries were made that proved what religion had always accepted- that the human being is far more than a collection of flesh and blood – a machine for re-producing the species with no vital role to play in the universe and no purpose or goal in life as Darwin stated.

Another important thing that the physicist discovered was that these subatomic particles had no meaning by themselves in isolation but only in relationship with everything else. At its elemental level, which is the quantum level, matter could not be chopped up into intelligible units but was completely indivisible. If we want to understand the universe, we will first of all have to understand ourselves and to see that everything is a dynamic web of interconnectedness.

We are all made up of packets of energy and float about in a field of energy like bubbles in a pond which are made up of the water they float in and which are connected to every other bubble which is floating on the water. Of course, we are also directly connected to the pond. This ever- active water of the pond in which the bubble exists is the central point of its existence. The bubble can never exist by itself. Thus, we can never be estranged from anything else in this universal pond!

Since we are totally connected with everything and every creature in this universe, for each of us to strive to better ourselves without regard to what happens to others is the most foolish thing that we could do. Human suffering stems from this very fact, that we have cut ourselves off from our roots and have condemned ourselves to a life of isolation. This was not how nature meant us to be. Modern physics has thus given us a correct evaluation of our place in the world. The human consciousness (as the Hindu scriptures have always told us) is a crucial factor in making up this universe. Sub atomic particles settle down from their constant erratic movements and take on solid shapes only when we observe them.

The zero-point field is the most fundamental state of matter and this is a heaving sea of energy – one vast quantum field. This is known as the “chitta’ in Hindu terminology. Information about all aspects of life is relayed through the interchange of information on the level of the chitta. Have you watched a flight of birds winging their way across the sky and how suddenly all of them veer to a different course as if at some hidden signal? The same phenomenon can be noticed in schools of fish. Till now it was assumed that these birds and fish had a novel method of communicating with each other by some radar or some noise signal which we cannot hear but now experiments on the quantum field proved that they are all in touch with this field and receive their orders simultaneously from it.The functions of our minds –like thinking, feeling etc draw information from the quantum field which is pulsing simultaneously through our body and brain. In fact, we resonate with the universe. Every breath we take is part of the universal breath and every breath we give out is our contribution to universal life. This prana, this life force is the same in everything and everyone and is spread everywhere simultaneously.

To be continued.

Hari Aum Tat Sat