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The following article is submitted anonymously exclusively for the Nonduality Highlights. See the link at the bottom to the author's free e-book.
A Brief
Essay on the Mysterious Ways the Concept of
Nonduality
Presents Itself in Literature and Science
The Bhagavad-Gita is a story about war and death. At
the beginning of the story, the warrior Arjuna refuses to give
the command to launch the great battle. He falls down in fear and
confusion, because he sees that his beloved teachers and family
members are on the other side. He knows that if he launches the
battle, they will all be killed. The rest of the story is about
how
The soul that
with a strong and constant calm
Takes sorrow and
takes joy indifferently,
Lives in the life
undying. That which is
Can never cease
to be; that which is not
Will not exist.
To see this truth of both
Is theirs who
part essence from accident,
Substance from
shadow.
And a bit later:
Never the spirit
was born;
The spirit shall
cease to be never;
Never was time it
was not;
End and beginning
are dreams.
The best known
quote from the Gita is:
Now I am become
Death, the destroyer of worlds.
This line was quoted by Robert Oppenheimer as he
witnessed the first nuclear explosion at the Trinity test site in
Between the two
world wars, Sigmund Freud was greatly troubled by what he saw as
the tendency of the human race to destroy itself, and wrote a
book called Civilization and its Discontents. In this book he
described the human tendency for self-destruction as the
‘death instinct’, which he considered to be a
counter-instinct to the nature of emotional attachment, or
cathexis, which he considered to be the ‘life
instinct’. Freud used the word cathexis in the sense of
investment of emotional energy, based upon the Greek word
‘to hold’. Freud saw the drive to love something as a
‘holding’ of emotional energy, or an emotional
attachment, and considered the tendency for self-destructiveness
as its counter-instinct.
Shakespeare
understood this tendency for self-destruction as seeing the
futility of everything that can be done in the world, which he
expressed in Macbeth as:
Life is but a
walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and
frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard
no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury
Signifying
nothing
The same futility
of everything that can be done in the world is expressed in
Ecclesiastes:
I have seen all
the works that are done under the sun;
And behold, all
is vanity and a chasing after wind.
Shakespeare makes
frequent references to Plato and the Allegory of the Cave. This
is how Plato describes the world in the Allegory:
They see only
their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire
throws upon the opposite wall of the cave. To them the truth
would be literally nothing more than the shadows of the images.
See what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and
disabused of their error. See the reality of which in his former
state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying
to him, that what he saw before was an illusion. His eye is
turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision.
Shakespeare, like
Plato, describes the world in a way that is often referred to as
the ‘theater of consciousness’. Everything that appears
to happen in the world is presented on the ‘stage’ of
consciousness:
All the
world’s a stage
And all the men
and women merely players
They have their
exits and their entrances
And one man in
his time plays many parts
Shakespeare also
refers to the world as a dream:
We are such stuff
As dreams are
made on and our little life
Is rounded with a
sleep
And in Hamlet
describes the end of the dream:
To sleep:
perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Which brings us
right back to the death instinct, or self-destructiveness, which
might be described as the desire to awaken from the dream. The
big question is: Who or what is out there in the audience of the
‘theater of consciousness’, watching whatever is
presented on the ‘stage’ of consciousness? Who is the
‘one’ that is actually present for that
‘play’? The obvious answer is: I am.
And this brings
us back to the Bhagavad-Gita and the war of self-destruction. Who
or what is left after the desire to destroy the self-concept has
run its course, and there are no more characters left on that
stage? What is left when there is nothing but the consciousness
of the ‘one’ that is present in the audience?
The answer from
William Blake is:
If the doors of
perception were cleansed
Everything would
appear to man as it is, infinite
A few decades ago
it was a popular activity in neuroscience to explain the nature
of the mind by considering the brain to be like a computer, a
field that aptly was called computational neuroscience. The
theoretical physicist Roger Penrose objected in a book called The
Emperor’s New Mind, and a follow up book called Shadows of
the Mind. Penrose considers himself to be a mathematical
Platonist, and based his argument on the Gödel incompleteness
theorems. The upshot of the Penrose argument is that it is
impossible for consciousness to be something that is
computational in nature. It is impossible for consciousness to
arise from a computer, even a computer as complex as the human
brain. Penrose was viciously attacked by the neuroscience
community for pointing out this fact.
The story of how Gödel discovered the
incompleteness theorems is interesting, and is well described by
the novelist Rebecca Goldstein in her nice little book
Incompleteness. Gödel made his discovery in
Mathematical
concepts, like all other mental concepts, are presented on the
stage of consciousness. The nature of consciousness is that which
knows what those concepts mean. That consciousness belongs to the
‘one’ that is present in the audience. This is what
Plato described in the Allegory of the Cave. Whatever concepts
are presented in the mind, including the self-concept, are only
like the shadows that are projected upon a wall.
This is how
Melville describes the Allegory in Moby Dick:
All visible
objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event-in
the living act, the undoubted deed-there some unknown but still
reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from
behind the unreasoning mask.
If man will
strike, strike through the mask!
How can the
prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
Sometimes I think
there’s naught beyond. But it is enough.
Is the Allegory
only an allegory, or is there a scientific reason to believe it
really is a description of reality? The answer is found in the
unification of quantum field theory with relativity theory. That
unification has lead to the holographic principle of quantum
gravity. The holographic principle is about how space-time
geometry is quantized. The quantization of space-time geometry
creates a virtual reality, much like the virtual reality
described in the movie The Matrix. That virtual reality is
inherently computational in nature, as though the entire universe
is one big quantum computer. The movie The Matrix came out in
1999, a few years after the holographic principle was discovered.
In part, the rational for the holographic principle was based
upon a version of String theory called Matrix theory. It was
later discovered String theory is inherently holographic in
nature. Coincidence?
Basically, the
holographic principle is what you get if you put the uncertainty
principle of quantum theory together with the principle of
equivalence of relativity theory. The principle of equivalence is
the basis for how gravity arises as the curvature of space-time
geometry. Gravity is nothing but the curvature of space-time
geometry, and that gravitational curvature is equivalent to an
accelerating frame of reference. There is no way to distinguish
the effects of gravity on the surface of the earth, where the
acceleration due to gravity is g, from the effects of a
space-ship that accelerates through empty space with an
acceleration rate a=g. The principle of equivalence says all
observational points of view are the same, no matter how those
observers appear to move relative to each other. Every observer
has equal validity to its observations, no matter how those
observers appear to move relative to each other. Every observer
may proclaim that it is at rest, and that the rest of the world
moves past it, as long as a gravitational field is included in a
description of its environment. That gravitational field is
equivalent to an acceleration. An implication of the principle of
equivalence is that in free-fall through empty space the effect
of gravity disappears, since gravity is always equivalent to an
acceleration.
Relativity theory
predicts event horizons. The most famous event horizon is that of
a black hole. The event horizon of a black hole is a surface of
radius R where the acceleration due to gravity is so strong that
even light cannot escape. A black hole forms whenever a star
burns out and gravitationally collapses in on itself. A very
massive black hole is found at the center of every galaxy, with a
mass of the order of a million to a billon times the mass of the
sun. The radius of the black hole is given in terms of its mass M
as R=2GM/c2, where G is the gravitational constant and
c is the speed of light. Nothing can escape from a black hole.
The effect of gravity is so strong at the event horizon that even
light cannot escape.
But black holes
radiate a kind of radiation called Hawking radiation. This kind
of radiation is due to quantum uncertainty. Quantum field theory
inherently gives a description of physical reality that involves
creation and annihilation, just like the ideas of Brahma the
creator, and Shiva the destroyer. In quantum field theory, all
particles are created as excitations of field energy from the
vacuum state. The vacuum state is the state of zero energy,
conceptualized as empty space. But the vacuum state in quantum
field theory is described as a ‘stormy sea’ of quantum
fluctuations, due to the virtual creation of
particle-antiparticle pairs. The virtual particle-antiparticle
pairs are created out of nothing, and normally annihilate back
into nothing within a short period of time, as specified by the
uncertainty principle. A virtual particle-antiparticle pair is
described as a closed loop process. In some sense, the
antiparticle is like an ordinary particle with positive energy
that travels backwards in time, which is how the closed loop
process completes itself. The other way to look at the
antiparticle is as a particle with negative energy that travels
forwards in time. The antiparticle of the virtual pair carries an
equal and opposite amount of energy as the particle, so that the
total energy of the virtual process adds up to zero.
Something very
strange happens in the vicinity of an event horizon, like that of
a black hole. At the event horizon, the virtual antiparticle can
fall into the black hole and carry negative energy into the black
hole, while the virtual particle can travel away from the event
horizon, and carry positive energy away from the black hole,
called Hawking radiation. The black hole appears to radiate
Hawking radiation. The virtual particle-antiparticle pairs are
separated at the event horizon. To an observer outside the black
hole, the event horizon appears to radiate positive energy
‘real’ particles. The total amount of radiation
radiated away from the black hole only depends on the surface
area of the event horizon A=4(pi)R2. The idea
of the holographic principle comes from this result. The black
hole stores bits of information, just like a computer. Hawking
found the number of bits of information stored in the black hole
is given by b=A/4l2, where the Planck area is defined
as l2=Gh/2(pi)c3, and where h is
Planck’s constant. The holographic principle basically says
the event horizon is covered by Planck areas, and each Planck
area is like a pixel on a viewing screen that encodes a bit of
information. The holographic principle explains how space-time
geometry is quantized. Space-time geometry is quantized on
surfaces. Every quantized Planck area on the surface acts like a
pixel on a viewing screen, and encodes a quantized bit of
information.
In a sense, the
event horizon creates a three dimensional virtual reality from a
two dimensional viewing screen, as virtual particle-antiparticle
pairs are created in the vicinity of the event horizon, and the
virtual particle is separated from the virtual antiparticle. An
observer outside the event horizon only sees the virtual particle
that appears to become a ‘real’ particle. In that sense
the event horizon creates a virtual reality. That virtual reality
is inherently holographic in nature. Whatever that observer
perceives in that virtual reality is like a holographic
projection from the viewing screen. All the information perceived
is pixilated on the surface of quantized space-time, which acts
as a holographic viewing screen. Whatever that observer perceives
in that virtual reality is like a holographic image projected
from the viewing screen and perceived at a point of view.
The holographic
principle is not just about how information is encoded on the
event horizon of a black hole, but about how information is
encoded on all event horizons. Observational evidence is that we
live in an expanding universe that is exponentially expanding
faster over the course of time. Every observer, present at a
point of view, is surrounded by a cosmic event horizon, which is
a spherical surface where the universe at that point appears to
expand at the speed of light. Since nothing can travel faster
than the speed of light, that observer can only see things as far
out as that cosmic event horizon. Wherever that observer looks
into space, the cosmic event horizon forms a boundary in space
that is as far out as that observer can look into space. The
holographic principle also applies to the cosmic event horizon,
which is a surface of quantized space-time. Each Planck area on
the surface encodes a bit of information, and acts just like a
pixel on a viewing screen. Whatever that observer perceives in
space is like a projection of holographic images from the viewing
screen.
The concept of an
exponentially expanding universe is an integral part of the
standard theory of the creation of the universe, which is called
inflationary cosmology. The basic idea is that the universe was
created in the big bang event as a spontaneous eruption of energy
from the vacuum state. That spontaneous eruption of energy
occurred because of the virtual creation of particle-antiparticle
pairs. In an exponentially expanding universe there is always a
cosmic event horizon, which is just like the event horizon of a
black hole that separates virtual particles from virtual
antiparticles. Matter is separated from antimatter at the cosmic
event horizon, which is how a universe of matter is created. An
observer, present at a point of view, perceives the cosmic event
horizon. The cosmic event horizon acts like a holographic viewing
screen, and creates its own virtual reality.
The standard
theory of the creation of the universe says the size of the
universe at the time of the big bang was about a Planck length.
The current size of the universe is about fifteen billion light
years. The universe has expanded since the big bang event. What
did the universe expand into? The universe is holographic,
defined upon surfaces of quantized space-time that act as viewing
screens. The universe expanded into empty space.
So far we have an
idea from the holographic principle of what Brahma the creator
and Shiva the destroyer are all about, but what about Vishnu the
preserver? The nature of a hologram is coherent organization. A
hologram encodes information coherently, which means to hold
together as a bound state. There is no actual image on the
hologram, only a coherently organized interference pattern. That
inference pattern arises from a phase transition inside a laser
that emits coherent light, which interferes with itself and
creates the interference pattern on a piece of photographic film.
That interference pattern is like the pattern of wave motion we
see when we throw two rocks into a pond. The holographic image
that arises from the hologram represents that coherent
organization of information. In the language of thermodynamics,
which is the basis of the holographic principle, coherently
organized systems tend to replicate their forms in the same phase
of organization, since it requires a lot of energy to change
phase, which is the nature of a phase transition, like melting
ice into water. A lot of heat has to be applied to the ice before
it will melt into water. That is why coherently organized systems
tend to replicate their form in the same phase, or how their
forms are preserved. The only way to change the phase of the
system, or to melt the ice back into water and to allow the water
to flow freely, is to apply a lot of heat.
Which brings us
back to the death instinct and self-destructiveness. The desire
to destroy the self-concept is like the hot emotional energy that
melts ice back into water. The Bhagavad-Gita is the story of the
war within the true nature of what you are. In that war the ego
fights for its own self-destruction, which is like the heat that
is applied that allows ice to melt back into water, or the
burning away of the ego. But that war only comes to an end with a
surrender, which by its nature is an acceptance of the death of
the ego. By its nature, that burning away of the ego is the
willingness to let go of the emotional attachment to everything
in the world. That kind of detachment is only possible because of
the willingness to do nothing, which only arises if you clearly
see the futility of everything that you can do in the world.
Everything you can do in the world is for nothing, and leads to
nothing. Anyone who has watched the Matrix trilogy knows how the
story ends. The Oracle can see the end coming:
I see the end
coming. I see the darkness spreading. I see death-and you are all
that stands in his way. He won’t stop until there is nothing
left. One way or another, this war will come to an end.
At the very end,
Smith sums it all up:
Why do you fight?
Do you believe that you are fighting for something? Is it for
more than your own survival? Do you even know? Is it for freedom,
for truth, for peace or for love? Illusions. Vagaries of
perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect
trying desperately to justify an existence that is without
meaning or purpose-all of them as artificial as the matrix
itself.
What is left when
the ego dies? The scientific answer is found in the principle of
equivalence and the holographic principle. The entire perceivable
universe is defined on surfaces of quantized space-time that are
like event horizons and act as holographic viewing screens. If
the observer is in free fall, the event horizon disappears. The
disappearance of the viewing screen is the disappearance of the
universe. An observer with no emotional attachment to anything in
the world is in free fall. What is left when the viewing screen
disappears? Empty space is left.