Consciousness, the Big Bang, Being and the Soul

Many of the leading theoretical physicists today continue to struggle with the age-old 'hard problem' of matter and the mind, physical reality and consciousness, science and the soul. "They are definitely grappling with the problem of the soul," says Fred Wolf, himself a leading theoretical physicist, "because they are grappling with the problem of the origin of the universe."

You observe an atomic system," Wolf notes, "and the atomic system changes from a field of possibilities into something that is solid and physical and real, and right there in front of your eyes. This is a fact of physics that we have to deal with."

If the Big Bang . . . occurred out of nothing and produced a material universe," he points out, "then there had to have been quantum mechanics operating at the moment of the Big Bang, and that means that there had to have been an observer present, and this is where . . . the whole question of the soul (arises)."

"Positivism," (the philosophical school that says that the only things that we can be talk about scientifically and rationally are things that we can 'sense with our common senses') should have been tossed out a long time ago when we recognized the existence of electrons and atoms," Wolf observes. "No physicist - no one - has ever seen an electron or an atom," he points out, "We (only) see something very fuzzy when we start looking for things like that. So it is very difficult to deal with positivism rationally."

I think positivism is a fine theory," Wolf notes, "but it is (only) a philosophy."

"Since we can't sense an electron, a single electron, with our common senses," from a positivist approach, "we really shouldn't be able to talk about it. And since we can't sense - we can't hold in our hands - the very essence of quantum physics, which is something called the quantum wave function (which is a mathematical abstract), we shouldn't talk about it either. So we have this basic schism," Wolf notes. A schism, he points, that goes all the way back to Aristotle and Plato.

"The question," he asserts, "isn't: Is the soul is a 'thing'? Can we prove its 'existence' as an object?" This, he posits is a misdirection. The soul is not an object, he says. "It is not a noun, it is a verb. The 'soul' is a process." "And," he reasons, "because it is a process, it has consciousness and its alive. To understand life and consciousness without a material substrate, that is where a lot of people have difficulty. They think, 'Well, how can something be conscious and alive if there is no matter there?'" Which is, it seems, the common view and understanding of most people.

It is at this point, that Wolf goes beyond our common understanding. "There has to be something before even matter appears according to my understanding of quantum physics," he notes. "I don't see any reason why we can't have consciousness and 'aliveness' without necessarily having matter."

Wolf's view is not unique, as he points out, but rather is a point of view that is shared by many other leading physicists, as the following videos attest.







In Gary Zhukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters, a now-classic treatise on the convergence of modern physics, metaphysics and the world's oldest wisdom traditions, Zhukav writes:

"According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way round."

 To this end, Zhukav quotes the pioneering Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, who observed:

"The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves."

 According to Zhukav, Jung's friend and colleague, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, put it this way:

"From an inner center the psyche seems to move outward, in the sense of an extraversion, into the physical world . . . ."

"If these men are correct," Zhukav observed, "then physics is the study of the structure of consciousness." [Emphasis added.]

Max Planck: Quantum Theory and Consciousness

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."

-- Max Planck --
(Theoretical physicist and founder of the Quantum Theory)

Rupert Sheldrake on 'The Extended Mind'

"We don't know how consciousness works, or what it does," says controversial biologist, Rupert Sheldrake. "This is one of the things which in science is called 'the hard problem,' because there is no known reason why we should be conscious at all, or exactly how the mind works."

"What I'm going to suggest," says Sheldrake, in a fascinating Google TechTalk, "is that our minds are field-like, that they are not confined to the inside of the head, that they spread out into the environment around us. And because our minds are extended beyond our brains, they can have effects at a distance."

"I'm suggesting, he says "that minds are field-like and spread out beyond brains in a similar way to the way that magnetic fields spread out beyond magnets, cell phone fields spread out beyond cell phones, and the Earth's gravitational field stretches out far beyond the Earth. These fields are within and around the systems that they organize, and I think the same is true of our brains."

Taking vision as an example, Sheldrake suggests that the mind is more than just the bio-chemical processes within the brain, that what we 'see' is not just an internal re-creation of an externality within the brain, but rather that the mind projects what we 'see' out to where it 'exists' in space-time.

Rupert Sheldrake

"I'm suggesting," says Sheldrake, "our whole visual experience of the world is projected out to where it seems to be. Our minds are projecting out all that we see.  So vision is a two-way process, light coming in and the outward projection of images. This, I suggest happens through . . . a perceptual field. . . . It is a field phenomenon, and in a sense your mind reaches out to 'touch' what you are looking at. The image of what you are seeing is superimposed on what is really there."

Because of this 'superimposition,' Sheldrake, who has developed a much larger theory of consciousness and what he calls 'morphic fields,' suggests that by looking at an object we can affect that object. In recounting a series of innovative experiments involving, amongst other phenomena, 'the sense of being stared at,' Sheldrake makes a convincing argument that the mind is, indeed, larger and more encompassing than the mere physical brain.

Einstein called the quantum phenomenon of 'non-locality' - or the entanglement of particles at a distance - "spooky." One wonders what he would have made of Sheldrake's findings. Would the preeminent scientist of the 'New Physics' have found Sheldrake's results 'spookier' still, or would it perhaps have spurred the great theorist on to bridge the continuing divides between quantum theory and relativity?

"If You Think You Understand Spirituality . . ."

Spirituality is a lot like quantum mechanics. The experience of higher consciousness - those moments when we lose our sense of individuality, of "ego" or "self" - may be described in the same way quantum mechanics was described by renowned quantum theorist, Richard Feynman: it's sort of "spooky." Equally, it confounds one's ability to describe it, or to "know" perfectly just what it is we are "observing" or "experiencing."

Perhaps this is why the "Infinite," the "Absolute," or "God" have so often been described as "the ineffable," literally beyond verbal description. Or, perhaps no matter how deeply we look - whatever experience of ever-purer consciousness we reach - there is yet another 'deeper' level that may be achievable. Certainly, this is what the eminent 20th-century theologian, Paul Tillich meant when he talked of the "depth of our existence."

"The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth. It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated - with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found they are not what what they  believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth. . . .

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. . . . For if you know that God means depth, you know much about him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God." (Paul Tillich, "Shaking The Foundations," Scribners, New York: 1948, pp. 56-57.)

Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

Similarly, it is how Richard Feynman describes his work in science. Probing ever further into "what the world is," always expecting (or perhaps knowing 'intuitively') that there is a still further depth of knowledge to be revealed in an ever-unravelling understanding of both the macrocosmic and the microcosmic nature of our 'reality.'




Both Tillich and Feynman - physicist and metaphysicist - challenge us to look at the depth of our knowledge, the depth of our experience and, yes, the depth of our consciousness. And both urge us to do so without prejudice as to what we might find

Thich Nhat Hahn (b. 1926)

Of course, this is what the Buddha also said 2500 years ago, when he urged us not to believe him, but to see for ourselves, to be witnesses to our own experience of the depth of our consciousness, and to do so without dogmatism or preformed beliefs.

As the much-admired Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, so eloquently explains, we are all called to explore the depth of our worldview, and in so doing, to look into the depth of our existence. Hahn notes:

"We each have a view of the universe. That view may be called relativity or uncertainty or probability or string theory; there may be many kinds of view. It's okay to propose views, but if you want to make progress on the path of inquiry, you should be able to be ready to throw away your view. It's like climbing a ladder, coming to the fifth rung, and thinking you're on the highest rung. That idea prevents you from climbing to the sixth rung, and the seventh rung. So in order to come to the sixth and the seventh, you have to release the fifth. That is the process of learning proposed by the Buddha. Buddhism fully practiced is free from dogmatism. If you worship something as a dogma, as absolute truth, you are not a good practitioner. You must be totally free; even from the teachings of the Buddha. The teachings of the Buddha are offered as instruments, not as absolute truth. (Emphasis added.) Thich Nhat Hanh, "Beyond the Self: Teachings on the Middle Way," Parralax Press, Berkeley CA: 2010, pp. 14-15.)

The point is that spirituality like science is in essence a non-ending quest. As Richard Feynman famously said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Similarly, perhaps it can be said that: "If you think you understand spiritually and the depth of consciousness, you don't understand spiritually and the depth of consciousness."

Werner Heisenberg on "The Spirit of Modern Physics"

See also: "Einstein on Spirituality and Religion."

In his Introduction to Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Werner Heisenberg's "Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, David Lindley observes that, "despite its thorough familiarity, most physicists, if pressed, will admit to finding something strange, something mysterious, something not quite graspable about quantum mechanics."

Just how an "observer" and an "observation" somehow trigger a quantum 'event' and so form the basic substrate of our physical 'reality' appears to be intrically connected with matters of consciousness and perception, making leading edge science not only stranger than we believe, but perhaps even stranger than we can believe - a point made by Richard Dawkins, one of today's leading voices of 'evangelical atheism.' As renowned physicist Richard Feynman wryly observed, "Anyone who thinks they understand quantum mechanics, does not understand quantum mechanics."

Werner Heisenberg was one of the 'fathers' of quantum theory. He first developed and postulated the "Uncertainty Principle" that often bears his name and that demonstrates one can only know either the position or the frequency of a particle at any one time with precision, but not both - a notion that is completely antithetical to classic Newtonian mechanics.

Heisenberg frames the fundamental 'strangeness' and 'unfathomability' of the most basic operations of physics and, thus, our 'reality' in 'spiritual,' almost 'mystical' terms. In 1958, writing in the dark shadow of the development of the hydrogen bomb, Heisenberg recounts how quantum theory was first developed and elaborated, observing that:

". . . (E)very tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created. Since every nation and every political group has to be interested in the new weapons, irrespective of the location and the cultural traditions of the group, the spirit of modern physics will penetrate into the minds of many people and will connect itself in different ways with the older traditions. What will be the outcome of this impact of a special branch of modern science on different powerful old traditions? In those parts of the world in which modern science has been developed the primary interest has been directed for a long time toward practical activity, industry and engineering combined with a rational analysis of the outer and inner conditions for such activity. Such people will find it rather easy to cope with the new ideas since they have had time for a slow and gradual adjustment to the modern scientific methods of thinking. In other parts of the world these ideas would be confronted with the religious and philosophic foundations of the native culture. Since it is true that the results of modern physics do touch such fundamental concepts as reality, space and time, the confrontation may lead to entirely new developments that cannot yet be foreseen. One characteristic feature of this meeting between modern science and the older methods of thinking will be its complete internationality. In this exchange of thoughts one side will be the same everywhere and therefore the results of this exchange will be spread over all areas in which the discussion takes place.

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)

Of course, with the advent of the Information Age, and a potential for the sharing of information, ideas and insights which Heisenberg could only possibly dream of, this exchange of thoughts between West and East is the norm, rather than the rare exception to the old adage, "East is East, and West is West, but never the 'twains shall meet."

One cannot help but think that it is this "exchange" between a Western scientific vision that can be 'explained but not really known,' with a millenia-old tradition of Eastern wisdom teachings which can be 'known but not really explained,' that is driving a seemingly global thirst for spirituality insights and wisdom teachings both old and new, both Eastern and Western.

Albert Einstein: Spiritual, But Not Religious?

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

I have long suspected that arguably the greatest scientist of all time, Albert Einstein, may have been just like many people today: "spiritual but not religious." A friend of mine recently forwarded me an archived article from Time magazine that seems to confirm this view.

Eintein's disapproving objection to the indeterminism of quantum mechanics - the "other theory," which along with Einstein's "theory of relativity," shattered  all notions of 'classical physics' and forever changed our understanding of the universe - may be the most famous of his many memorable sayings: "God does not play dice with the universe!"

By his own admission, Einstein was not an atheist. (Indeed, I've heard it said that all physicists are probably closet mystics, drawn to metaphysical speculation as a moth is drawn to the candle's flame, about which I will have more to say, below.) In Time's excerpted article from "Einstein," by Walter Isaacson, (Simon & Schuster: 2007) Isaacson writes:

"(T)hroughout his life, Einstein was consistent in rejecting the charge that he was an atheist. "There are people who say there is no God," he told a friend. "But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views." And unlike Sigmund Freud or Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw, Einstein never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists. "What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos," he explained.

In fact, Einstein tended to be more critical of debunkers, who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe, than of the faithful. "The fanatical atheists," he wrote in a letter, "are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'-- cannot hear the music of the spheres."

"The music of the sphere's." Do any of the spiritual masters, past or present, express either the spiritual nature of the universe, or what may be God, any more poetically? . . . as poetically, perhaps; but, more poetically? Certainly, not.

'Finger of God' Nebula: NASA

In fact, Einstein insisted that an 'inner religious' or 'spiritual' curiosity is necessary for the true scientist, and all scientific inquiry. "Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding," he once remarked. "This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion." Isaacson notes that these remarks on the religious well-springs of scientifc curiosity garnered "front-page news coverage," and prompted another of Einstein's most famous, pithy sayings: "(S)cience without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

But what were the sources of Einstein's "inner-religiousity" or "spirituality?" Isaacson notes that his parents were almost militantly, non-observant Jews, and that he received a Catholic early education. Nonetheless, he seems to have practiced his own form of Orthodox Judaism until at age twelve he abandoned all outward religious affectations.

I suspect that like many of the leading scientists of the early twentieth century (Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Robert Oppenheimer, spring to mind), Einstein may have been influenced, more than is readily discernible, by the then-recently transplanted Eastern wisdom teachings such as Bhuddism and the Advaita Vedanta. As Isaacson again notes, based on Einstein's own thoughts and words, Einstein was a profoundly "religious man." Like Heisenberg, who outlined the "uncertainty principle" in quantum theory that Einstein would spend a career unsuccessfully trying to refute, Einstein also penned a credo entitled, "What I Believe." In it, he notes:

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."

A "snuffed-out candle" is the root of the Pali word that the Buddha used to describe enlightenment: nirvana. A candle is also used extensively in Sufi imagery as a metaphor for the Divine. ("Judge the moth by it's candle," Rumi wrote.) And, of course, in the 'Sermon on the Mount,' Jesus urged people not to hide the "light" of their candle under a "bushel" basket, so as to deprive one's neighbour of candlelight in the large, communal houses many lived in at the time.

This is purely speculative, of course. But a man of Einstein's unslakeable curiosity and deeply held spiritual (rather than outerwardly religious) inclinations would surely have looked into the beliefs held by so many others, if not just the beliefs held by Heisenberg and Einstein's close colleague, the Nobel-laureate physicist, Pauli.

Physics, Spirituality and 'the Structure of Consciousness'

Quantum Fluctuations by Kevin Moore

Arthur I. Miller's book, 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession, traces the evolution of the relationship between Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Carl Jung, arguably, the West's most influential psychoanalyst. What started as a patient-therapist relationship quickly morphed into a partnership of metaphysical exploration.

The volume immediately caught my eye in my local bookshop not-so-much because of its subject matter - interesting though it may be - but, rather, because of a memorable passage from Gary Zhukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters, a now-classic treatise on the convergence of modern physics, metaphysics and the world's oldest wisdom traditions.

The memorable passage which had stuck with me from my first reading of the Wu Li Masters was the following passage on the fundamental nature of quantum physics that features the parallel views  Pauli and Jung held on the true nature of 'reality':

"According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way round.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, wrote:

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.

 Jung's friend, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, put it this way:

From an inner center the psyche seems to move outward, in the sense of an extraversion, into the physical world . . . 

"If these men are correct," Zhukav so memorably wrote, "then physics is the study of the structure of consciousness." [Emphasis added.]

Now why didn't high school physics start with that remarkable proposition rather than with the rote repetition of Galileo's experiments with falling bodies? That would have caught my attention!

The great theoretical physicist, Richard Freeman, reportedly said, "If you think you understand quantum physics, then you don't understand quantum physics. (The bongo-playing polymath also reportedly said, "If you think you understand quantum physics, you've got rocks in your head!")

The quantum world is apparently beyond (and antithetical to) our human comprehension because our language and mere existence in the 'ordinary world' of our conscious existence prohibits us from envisioning the indeterminate and radically interconnect nature of basic reality - a 'proven' reality where everything is composed of discrete 'quanta' of energy, yet where there is no such entity as a separate "thing."

Whether there is, in fact (and I believe there is), a limit beyond which our ordinary consciousness cannot penetrate the "suchness" of what "is" - to use a famous Buddhist description of fundamental reality - it is truly remarkable how the phenemona and explanations of quantum theory echo the conclusions of the world's most ancient wisdom traditions; conclusions which are themselves impossible to fully penetrate with "ordinary" consciousness. Hence, the search for "enlightenment" which has remained a fundamental concern and pursuit of humankind since we first walked out of the mists of time.

Zhukav's assertion that "physics has become the study of the structure of consciousness" is tantalizing because at once it seems to unite the three great streams of humankind's pursuit of knowledge: the sciences (which are all rooted in physics), the social sciences (that are all, in their fundamental aspects, sub-systems of psychology), and the humanities (which highest discipline is metaphysics).

Zhukav concludes his exposition of the 'New Physics' - which admittedly does not cover the most-cutting edge of quantum theory, such as "superstring theory" - by examining the profound implications of Bell's theorem and the work of quantum theorist David Bohm (who was a unique participant in the "dialogues" of Jiddhu Krishnamurti, one of the 20th-century's rare, enlightened masters).

In the closing pages of the Wu Li Masters, Zhukav, initially quoting Bohm, observes:

"Matter is a form of the implicate order as vortex is a form of the water - it is not reducible to smaller parts." Like "matter" and everything else, particles are forms of the implicate order. If this is difficult to grasp, it is because our minds demand to know, "What is the 'implicate order' the implicate order of?"

"A new instrument of thought such as is needed to understand Bohm's physics," Zhukav writes, "would radically alter the consciousness of the observer, reordering it towards the perception of the "unbroken wholeness" of which everything is a form."

The relationship of form with the formless, the reordering and submergence of ordinary human consciousness within universal consciousness, and the description of ultimate reality and our relationship to it, are the elements of all the world's great religious, spiritual and metaphysical traditions. As Zhukav notes, "all eastern religions (psychologies) are compatible in a very fundamental way with Bohm's physics and philosophy. All of them are based upon the experience of a pure, undifferentiated reality which is that which is."

In the end, as the juxtaposition of Jung and Pauli's views illustrate, just as in the beginning of human inquiry, not just physics but all explorations of  'what is' become "a study in the structure of consciousness."

Or, in the words of Rumi, the 11th-century Sufi poet and mystic (as translated by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi):

"If you have a body, where is the spirit?
 If you're spirit, where is the body?
 This is not our problem to worry about.

  Both are both. . . .

 Invisible, visible, the world
 does not work without both."