Maya, Existence and Non-Existence

"When the Hindu says the world is Maya, at once people get the idea that the world is an illusion. This interpretation has some basis, as coming through the Buddhistic philosophers, because there was one section of philosophers who did not believe in the external world at all. But the Maya of Vedanta, in its last developed form is neither Idealism nor Realism, nor is it a theory. It is a simple statement of facts - what we are, and what we see around us."

"The one peculiar attribute we find in time, space, and causation is that they cannot exist sepearte from other things. Try to think of space without colour, or limits, or any connection with the things around - just abstract space. You cannot; you have to think of it as the space between two limits, or between three objects. It has to be connected with some object to have any existence. So with time; you cannot have any ideas of abstract time, but you have to take two events, one preceding, and the other succeeding, and join the two events by the ideas of succession. Time depends on two events, just as space has to be related to outside objects. And the idea of causation is inseparable from time and space."

"As no man can jump out of his own self, so no man can go beyond the limits that have been put upon him by the laws of time and space. Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time and space, would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these things."

"What does the statement of the existence of the world mean, then? "This world has no existence." What is meant by that? It means that it has no absolute existence. It exists only in relation to my mind, to your mind, and to the mind of everyone else."

"We see this world with the five senses, but if we had another sense, we would see in it something more. If we had yet another sense, it would appear to be as something still different. It has, therefore, no real existence; it has no unchangeable, immovable, infinite existence. Nor can it be called non-existence, seeing that it exists, and we have to work in and through it. It is a misture of existence and non-existence."

-- Swami Vivikenanda --
("Teachings of Swami Vivikenanda," Advaita Ashrama Publishings, pp. 198-199.)

Emptiness, Oneness and Reality: Where Buddhism and Science Converge

"Buddhism has all the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogma and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

-- Albert Einstein --

Albert Einstein: "Science without religion is
lame. . . . Religion without science is blind."

In the book "The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama," editor Arthur Zajonc makes the following comments on the ways in which the so-called "New Physics" has turned classical understandings of the cosmos and reality on their ears:

"During the three centuries that established classical physics and cosmology," Zajonc observes, "the mechanistic and materialistic character of physical theory came to dominate Western thinking even outside these areas. Increasingly, philosophy came under the powerful sway of science through such thinkers as Descartes, Kant and Locke. The life sciences, longing for comparable precision, sought out a similar path to development to that of physics. Genetics, evolution, and cellular biology displaced natural history and whole-organism biology. The mind itself, traditionally understood as the expression of the spirit, gradually became part of the mechanistic universe as well. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the physics of the seventeenth century had successfully conquered the adjacent areas of science and was already encroaching on that of the mind. A single mechanistic paradigm and its associated materialistic metaphysics came to dominate Western thinking."

However, he notes:

"With the opening of the twentieth century, the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity would make incomparable demands on our conception of the universe. We are still struggling to grasp their full implications. They challenge the simple mechanistic accounts of matter and the cosmos we inherited from earlier centuries, replacing them with accounts that shun such pictures. In addition, both quantum theory and relativity grant a new prominence to the observer. It is hard to overestimate the significance of these developments. The ramifications of twentieth-century discoveries for physics and cosmology have been enormous, changing our very notions of space and time, the ultimate nature of matter, and the evolution of the universe. They have also begun to affect philosophical discussions in significant ways."

For his part, the Dalai Lama notes that, "In Buddhism in general, and particularly in Mahayana Buddhism, the basic attitude is that you should remain skeptical at the beginning. This skeptical attitude automatically brings up questions. Questions bring clearer answers, or investigation. Therefore, Mahayana Buddhist thinking relies more on investigation rather than on faith. . . (An) attitude that is very, very helpful in communicating with scientists."

"There are two kinds of wrong views," the Dalai Lama notes. "One exaggerates what is actually there, superimposing onto a thing a property of existence or status that is not there. The other denies what is actually there. So both absolutism and nihilism are seen as wrong views. Thus, even in ethical discourse, a correct understanding of reality is very much emphasized. Therefore, scientific findings are very helpful to Buddhist thinking."

The three-part video discussion, below, (like the dialogue between scientists and the Dalai Lama in 'The New Physics and Cosmology') examines the areas where "the new physics" described by Zajonc seemingly converge with traditional Buddhist teachings about emptiness, Oneness and the nature of 'reality.'

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The Over-Soul"

"Our faith comes in moments," writes Emerson, the great American Transcendentalist, "our vice is habitual." "Yet there is a depth in those brief moments," he observes, "which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences."

Continuing in his essay, "The Over-Soul," we read:

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related; the Eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle the subject and the object are one."

"We see the world piece by piece," Emerson observes, "as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul."



"All goes to show," writes Emerson, "that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and will; is the background of our being in which they lie - an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, a light shines through upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing but the light is all." (Emphasis added.)

"The soul circumscribes all things," he notes, "contradicts all experience. . . . (And) in like manner . . . abolishes space and time."

"The influence of the senses," he observes, "has in most instances overpowered the mind to that degree that the walls of times and space have come to look real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the soul."

"We are often made to feel that there is another youth and age," he continues, "than that which is measured from the year of our natural birth. Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. Every man parts from that contemplation with the feeling it rather belongs to the ages than to mortal life."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

David Bohm and the "Implicate Order" Behind What We See

In re-introducing his theory of the "Implicate Order" in his later work, "Unfolding Meaning," theoretical physicist and spiritual iconoclast, David Bohm highlighed the differences between the two leading strains of what may be called the 'New Physics' - relativity theory and quantum mechanics - two physical theories that still challenge scientists to synthesize their findings in a true "theory of everything."

"Relativity requires strict continuity, strict determinism and strict locality. In quantum mechanics you have to say the opposite - discontinuity, non-determinism and non-locality. The physical concepts of these two theories have not been brought together, although people are working out equations and methods of doing it mathematically. But the physical meaning has never been made clear."

[David Bohm, "Unfolding Meaning: A Weekend of Dialogue," p. 8.]

Of course, written in 1985, this description of the state of theoretical physics continues to hold true today. Although there have been a host of contender theories, like 'string theory' and the 'multiverse theory,' none has been accepted as closing the theoretical gap between relativity and quantum theory.

There has not yet emerged a consolidated, unified theory that accounts for both the macrocosmic effects of relativity theory and the microcosmic effects of quantum mechanics. Moreover, and one cannot but speculate that this is a result of not being able to reconcile relativity and quantum theory, science has not yet been able to formulate a unified theory that explains how the force of gravity is related to the electro-magnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces in a true "Unifiied Theory, or 'theory of everything."

David Bohm (right) in dialogue with spiritual teacher, Jiddu
Krishnamurti, with whom Bohm collaborated for many years.

Bohm suggests the problem is that we are looking at the phenomena of an "explicate order" only, and that beneath this explicate order" there exists an "Implicate Order" that truly forms the fabric of our 'reality.' "If you want to look at relativity and quantum theory as being together coherently," he observes, "we may ask a new kind of question. Instead of asking how the theories differ, let's ask what they have in common."

"What is common to both is [the] unbroken wholeness of the universe. Each has this wholeness in a different way," Bohm notes, "yet if wholeness is their common factor, that's perhaps the best place to start."

And, indeed it is from this "unbroken wholeness" of the universe, that many subsequent researchers and theoriststs have started. But with the continuing failure of such de riguere and exotic attempts as "string theory" and "multiverse theories" to reconcile these two great branches of modern physics - and, even more so, to give us a plausible "picture" of what the substratum of our glimpsed "reality" is - Bohm's notion of an as-yet unobservable "Implicate Order" remains convincing.

Indeed, it is echoed in the words of Bernard d'Espagnat, the French physicist and winner of the prestigious 2009 Templeton Prize (for research at the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion), who "developed the idea that the reality revealed by science offers only a 'veiled' view of an underlying reality that science cannot access, and that the scientific view must take its place alongside the reality revealed by art, spirituality, and other forms of human inquiry."

"Quantum mechanics allows what d'Espagnat calls 'weak objectivity,'" writes David Lindley in ScienceNow, "in that it predicts probabilities of observable phenomena in an indisputable way. But the inherent uncertainty of quantum measurements means that it is impossible to infer an unambiguous description of 'reality as it really is.'" D'Espagnat "has proposed that behind measured phenomena exists what he calls a 'veiled reality, that genuinely exists, independently of us, even though we lack the ability to fully describe it."

"D'Espagnat's writings on quantum mechanics lay out with great clarity the genuine puzzles that quantum mechanics presents," says Jeffrey Bub, of the University of Maryland. "But," Lindley notes, there is a certain skepticism "about finding common ground among notions of reality from art, science, and spirituality." As Bub remarked to Lindley, just because there's something strange about the physical world that quantum mechanics isn't telling you, "it doesn't follow that those gaps can be filled with poetry."

And yet, in close resemblance to Occam's famous 'razor,' a certain "elegance" of theory is one factor that science seems to favour in selecting one scientific paradigm for another. And in that "elegance" there appears what may almost be thought of as "the art of science." In suggesting his notion of what  constitutes an "Implicate Order" out of which our 'reality' is unfolded (or what d'Espagnat would qualify as falling behind the "veil") Bohm's technical language and vision have an artistic feeling and dynamism of their own:

" . . . (T)he movement of enfolding and unfolding is ultimately the primary reality, and . . . the objects, entities, forms, and so on, which appear in this movement are secondary.

. . . (Q)unatum theory shows that the so-called particles constituting matter are also waves similar to those of light. One can, in principle, make holographs using beams of electrons, protons, and so on, as well as sound waves -which has been done. The point is that all mathematical laws of the quantum theory that apply to these waves, and therfore all matter, can be seen to describe just such a movement in which there is a continual enfoldment of the whole into each region, along with the unfoldment of each region into the whole again. Although this may take many particular forms - some known and others not yet known - this movement is universal as far as we know. I'll call this univeral movement of enfoldment and unfoldment 'the holomovement.'"

"The proposal is that the holomovement is the basic reality, at least as far as we are able to go, and that all entities, objects[and] forms, as ordinarily seem, are relatively stable, independent and autonomous features of the holomovement, much as the vortex is such a feature of the flowing movement of a fluid. The basic order of this movement is therefore enfoldment and unfoldment. So we're looking at the universe in terms of a new order, which I'll call the enfolded order, or the implicate order."

"The word 'implicate' means to enfold - in Latin, to fold inward. In the implicate order, everything is folded into everything."

To Bohm, it is in this intricate and artistic dance of the enfolding and unfolding that our 'reality' takes form, seemingly separate yet entangled with, and an integral part of, the unseen and underlying "implicate order." It is in this dance, perhaps, that one finds expression of the largely unnoticed artistic side of physical reality. And it is  the "unknown" or perhaps the "unknowability" of our most basic realities that draws us to try and interpret this dance for ourselves.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Basil Hiley, Emeritus Professor of Physics in Birbeck College, Univerity of London;
a colleague of David Bohm, on Bohm's Implicate Order and Quantum Physics.

"Fragments" from Bohm's "Implicate Order"

“. . . If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For what we know is incomplete and what we prophesy is incomplete. But when what is complete comes, then what is incomplete will be done away with.. . . Now we see only an indistinct image in a mirror, but then we will be face to face. Now what I know is incomplete, but then I will know fully . . ."

(I Corinthians 13:8-12)

David Bohm (1917 - 1992)

David Bohm, the renowned physical theorist - who was at once the contemporary, colleague and friend of both Einstein and the renowned spiritual teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti - proposed that there is a for-now imperceivable "Implicate Order" within which our perceivable universe (the "Explicate Order") unfolds. "I would say," he wrote in his treatise, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order," "that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment. . . ."

Over and over, Bohm observes that the basic problem we have in understanding ourselves, each other, and the basic nature of our 'reality' - particularly in the West, which is still in the grips  of a more-or-less 'classical' Newtonian worldview - is that we tend to break up or "fragment" the universe, the world, mankind, and even our thoughts, in order to 'understand' them, rather than trying to obtain a holistic vision of what we perceive.

"Being guided by this view," he observes, "man then acts in such a way as to try and break himself and the world up so that all seems to correspond to this way of thinking. He therefore obtains an apparent proof of his fragmentary self-world-view." (This echoes Einstein's comments about the commonly held world-view that he described as a sort of cosmic "optical delusion of [man's] consciousness.") It is a world-view that has grave implications, according to Bohm:

"Fragmentation is . . . an attitude of mind which disposes the mind to regard divisions between things as absolute and final, rather than as ways of thinking that have only a relative and limited range of usefulness and validity. It leads therefore to a general tendency to break up things in an irrelevant and inappropriate way according to how we think. And so it is evidently and inherently destructive. . . .

When man thinks of himself in this fragmentary way, he will inevitably tend to see himself first - his own person, his own group - he can't seriously think of himself as internally related to the whole of mankind and therefore to all other people. Even if he does try to put mankind first, he will perhaps think of nature as something different to be exploited to satisfy whatever desires he may have at the moment. Similarly he will think body and mind are independent actualities. . . . Physically this is not conducive to over-all health which means wholeness, and mentally, not to sanity which also has a similar meaning."

In a five-part 1989 interview (hosted on SeekerAfterTruth.com) that was filmed at the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Bohm lucidly - given his vast knowledge, wide yet cohesive interests, and keen intellect - holds forth on a wide range of interrelated topics.  These include the relationship of the quantum and relativity theories to a holistic spiritual or metaphysical view of our 'reality,' the interconnectedness of all 'things' (including humankind) in a 'Wholeness,' the conflict between Western and Eastern worldviews, and the underlying 'deep roots' of the world's looming environmental problems - problems which stem from our treating world resources as separate "fragments" instead of the interrelated parts of a larger whole.

The "must-see" Bohm interviews capture one of the great minds, as well as great spiritual seekers, of the past 100 years at the height of his understanding of the "inter-relatedness" of all 'things' in the universe and our tendency to perceptively and conceptually break 'everything,' including (perhaps most importantly) our human interactions into 'fragmentary,' unrelated pieces.

Quantum Consciousness Effects: Is This What 'Wires' the Brain?

In a Google TechTalk (see here for video and analysis), Alan Wallace calls the predominant scientific paradigm,  a "consciousness-formed-inside-the-brain" perspective, "the retinal blind-spot in the Western scientific viewpoint." Now, his video is of a talk he gave to Google in 2007, and I understand that a lot of work is now being done with respect to seasoned meditators and brain MRIs etc. - a lot of this work being inspired by Wallace himself - yet, I wonder how much of this research is even investigating the opposite viewpoint (the traditional Eastern philosophical and psychological view) that consciousness is separate from, formative, and greater than the brain.

Neural Ridge (bottom and left)
Heart/Circulatory System (top)

On a related note. . . . Sometime ago I saw a video on the development of a human embryo. Shortly after the fertilized egg cell begins to divide - when there is a very minimal number of cells - a dark "neural ridge" appears. It will later "evolve" into the central nervous system and brain. Shortly thereafter,   a 'group' of cells begins to pulse, cells that will develop into the heart, lungs and circulatory system, as the ebryo grows through its amphibian, reptilian and mammalian stages to form a complete and viable human being.

(I know that this "recapitulation theory," or the "theory of embryological parallelism," is controversial; yet it seems indisputable that the developing embryo goes through various stages that mimic the evolution of humans from single cells to fully formed human individuals. Certainly, neuroscientists distinguish between the "reptilian" brain, the "mamallian" cortex, and the "primate's" neo-cortex.)

My question is: How is there some form of 'consciousness' built into the DNA that causes these developments to take place?

At the genetic level that DNA proteins form (from adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosene, as I remember from High School biology), we are very close in degrees of magnitude to the atomic and sub-particulate levels where quantum effects begin to be the determinative factors. As quantum "events," sub-particles continually flash into and out of 'existence' seemingly instantaneously. 

Yet we "know" that a quantum event need an "observer" and "observation" in order to collapse the probability wave that is all - apparently - that is "real" in any sense before an initial act of "observation" takes place.

How is there an "observation" that collapses the "probability waves" of the particles and sub-particles from which DNA is constructed at an atomic level?

Of course, the biggest challenge for modern physics is probably how to square the quantum dynamics that can be observed at the microscopic and cosmic level with relativity theory that operates at the macrocosmic level. (I like to think, as Sri Ramakrishna observed, that "God is in the microcosmos and the macrocosmos," a conclusion Einstein would undoubtedly support.)

I can only conclude that there is a pervading "consciousness" throughout our universe that is, in a quantum theoretical sense, the "observer." The renowned physicist  (spiritual seeker and colleague of both Einstein and Krishnamurti), David Bohm, as explained in "The Dancing Wu Li Masters," said that it makes absolutely no sense to talk about a quantum system that is smaller than the universe itself. It is all part of an explicate "Whole" beneath which an "Implicate Order" operates. This is, of course, the conclusion that Eastern yogis and sages came to many thousands of years ago. It is certainly the view of the Buddhist Abidharma which, while old, is not as old as the Upanishads that express this holistic and cosmic perspective quite clearly.

Or, as Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita (Chap. X:42):

". . . Know that with one single fraction of my Being, I pervade and support the Universe, and know that I AM."

Spiritual Awakening By Living Consciously in Our Double Nature

Humankind has always been faced, knowingly or unknowingly, with the reality of living with a strange paradox, a barrier to spiritual awakening. As human beings we live as seeming individuals in a relative "reality" that is dictated and delimited by our five senses. The rational and analytic functions of our mind, and the imagery and vocabulary of our thoughts, create a world perception that seems wholly dependent on and strictly limited by the sensual reality that forms the fabric of our world perspective. But strict reliance on this, the shallower part of our mind, robs us of a true perspective on existence. Such a strict reliance on rationality and the senses obscures the deeper intuitive and mystic depths of our being. And it is these deeper faculties that a true perspective of Being lies.

As spiritual beings - interrelated and entangled entities that are inextricably part of the Whole, or Being - we have our existence in what the leading minds of physics (and metaphysics) describe as a field. Some say that the fundamental energy that forms this field is nothing less than an all-pervading consciousness itself. Some would call that unitive consciousness G_d, others know that unitive Whole by other names, but all - physicists and metaphysicians of every sect, school and tradition - seem to point to the same unitive Whole. They point to a supra-sensual Absolute beyond (or at least beyond the limits of) our senses and the relativities of time and space. The great dilemna for the seeming "individual" within this Whole is how to live in both "realities" at once. Great teachers say that to live in one or the other of these two "realities" without knowledge or awareness of the others is a false path which only engenders suffering and restricts our ability to take refuge and find peace within the Absolute. Far better to be transformed by the renewal or recovery of the inner depths of one's mind and being, than to be merely conformed to the outward perceptions and relativities of a strictly sensual world.

In a lecture to an assemblage of Buddhist monks, nuns and lay people at Bodh Gaya (the place where the historical Gautama Buddha first achieved enlightenment) the 14th Dalai Lama taught the "Essential Teachings" of Mahayana Buddhism. Central to these teachings is the Buddhist notion of 'dependent origination' and the underlying 'emptiness' - both physical and mental - of all phenomena and nuomena. He spoke of the importance of recognizing and being attuned to the "emptiness" that underlies our world experience if we are to avoid suffering and realize the bliss of spiritual enlightenment (or nirvana) for our own sake and - more importantly - for the sake of all other beings. At the center of our difficulty in doing this lies the paradox of our having existence, or seeming existence, in the relative and the Absolute at the same time. "Every day," the Dalai Lama notes, "we are fooled into believing that something is true when it is not; similarly . . . we suffer because we think that all phenomena have a real existence when they do not."

In "Relativity, Philosophy and Mind", Paul Brunton, a true 'world philosopher', highlights the paradoxical challenge of living simultaneously in both the relative and the Absolute once we become cognizant of the double nature of our being. He suggests that we must be conscious of both simultaneous 'realities' and practice living both at once, albeit from a deeper and unitive perspective, if we are to live successfully.

"The Absolute is not a human being and can have no possible point of view," Brunton observes, "but the human being must have a humanized philosophy and can have a point of view. What is he to do after recognizing the opposition between the absolute and relative consciousness, between the real and the unreal? The answer must be (to manifest) the double point of view. Not, mind you, the double nature of Truth, but the double point of view for us, humans: the one being empirical, practical, earthly and rational, the other being ultimate, divine, intuitive."

Both Brunton and the Dalai Lama seem to assert that our impression of an event, or of the world, is 'real' from a relative perspective, yet 'surreal' from the perspective of the Absolute (or 'Emptiness'). Truly, 'things' are not as they seem, but exist eternally and ephemerally as a strange amalgalm of the real and surreal. All wisdom traditions seem to point to the necessity of our being aware of both perspectives simultaneously and continuously if we are to live successfully and end suffering - a daunting existential task.

To do so, the Dalai Lama, urges us to practice compassion, the way shown by the Buddha as well as Christ. Brunton urges a dispassionate compassion - the way of the sage - to avoid the personal suffering of our relative existence by taking refuge in the timeless Absolute. Going beyond the relativities of our dualistic nature to embrace a fully unitive perspective and consciousness rooted in the Absolute of timelessness is a means to go beyond suffering, and to demonstrate this possibility to others.

"If the worldly man agitatedly sees the event against the background of a moment, if the philosophic student calmly sees it against the background of an entire lifetime, the sage," Brunton writes, "while fully aware of both of these points of view, offsets them altogether by adding a third one which does not depend on any dimension of time at all. From this third point of view, he sees both the event itself and the ego to whom it happens as illusory. He feels the sense of time and the sense of personality as unreal. Deep within his mind he holds unshakably to the timeless character of true being, to the eternal life of the kingdom of heaven, In this mysterious state time cannot heal, for there are no wounds present whereof to be healed."

"So soon as we can take the reality out of time," Brunton explains, "so soon can we take the sting out of suffering. For the false self lives like a slave, bound to every passing sensation, whereas the true self lives in the timeless peace of the kingdom of heaven. As soon as we put ourselves into harmony with the true self, we put ourselves into harmony with the whole universe; we put ourselves beyond the reach of calamity. It may still happen, but it does not happen to, nor is it felt by, our real self. There is a sense of absolute security, a feeling that no harm can come to us. The philosophic student discovers the mission of time; it heals sorrows and under karma or through evolution, cures evils. The sage solves the mystery of timelessness, which redeems man."

Shakespeare, an enlightened man, wrote that this world is but a stage and we are merely players. To solve this paradox of the dualistic nature of relativity and the Absolute and become whole, we must become like the sage who sits in the audience partaking of this moment in time from the perspective of a timeless and innate unitive Wholeness, dispassionately enjoying the play until the curtain falls on maya and our identification with the relative.