OCT 1, 2014     

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THE PARALLELS BETWEEN

MYSTICISM AND PHYSICS

"For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one."

Albert Einstein

Part 2

Dualities, Space and Time

The mystical traditions recognize that our perceived reality is made up of a series of dualities which obscure a 'truer' perception of the way things work. Again, all polar opposites are aspects of the same phenomenon. We can't see beyond these dualities using only our five senses and our left brain logic. Modern physics seems to be in agreement. There are many paradoxes in physics, such as the wave-particle duality. Force and matter are different aspects of the same phenomenon. At the sub-atomic level, matter is both continuous and discontinuous, both destructible and indestructible. Niels Bohr recognized the similarity between the uncertainty principle and the Taoist principle of yin-yang. When he was knighted in 1947 for his contributions to science, he incorporated the yin-yang symbol into his family coat of arms.

The two perspectives of science and mysticism have much in common with their thoughts on the concepts of space and time. According to the old mechanistic view, space was an empty region that existed independently of any objects contained within it. Time was thought of as a separate dimension, flowing evenly and consistently, completely detached from matter. Relativity theory has suggested otherwise. At speeds approaching the speed of light, the elasticity of time has been proven on countless occasions. Time has been shown to be integrally connected to space and to matter. This view is also held by the eastern mystics, who consider perceptions of time and space to be relative to different levels of consciousness. D. T. Suzuki, speaking on the Avatam-saka philosophy of Buddhism, says, "There is no space without time, no time without space."

The elasticity of space at high velocities has also been demonstrated many times. At low speeds, a particle has a shape that is spherical. At very high speeds it shortens along the length of the direction in which it is moving. This flattens the spherical particle into a pancake shape. Which of these two shapes is the true reality? Capra points out that this is like asking which length of a shadow, which changes with the angle of the sun, is the real one. A shadow is the projection of three-dimensional points onto a two-dimensional plane, and so the length changes with the angle of projection. Similarly, the length or shape of a moving object is a projection of points in four-dimensional space-time onto a three-dimensional space. It changes according to the speed with which it is moving.

General relativity suggests that gravity is the bending or warping of the fabric of space-time. The structure of this fabric correlates to the distribution of matter within the fabric. Space is warped to accommodate large bodies, and so is time. Time flows at different rates at different locations in the universe. The reports of countless mystics also allude to the inconsistent elasticity of time and space. Their experience of it while in altered states of consciousness is very different, allowing mystics to 'travel' in space and time. While such travels are often dismissed as 'imaginary', there are many reports of the effects of such travels manifesting in our physical reality. Information has been brought back from different time travels, for example, which later prove to be true. Events that have occurred in our physical reality have been witnessed 'elsewhere'.

All events are somehow interconnected, yet without the definition of time as being a consistently linear unfolding of events, our notions of cause and effect become increasingly meaningless. On the other side of the time illusion, there is no before and after, no cause and effect. These philosophical consequences of the experiments of modern physics are in agreement with mystical experience.

The next segment in this series on the parralels between mysticism and the science of physics will talk about the idea that everything in creation is in a constant state of motion.