For 35 years I was a member of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that taught the essence of reality was shabd, all-pervading conscious energy, which could be heard as divine sound and seen as divine light.
In the early 1990s I wrote a book for RSSB, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, that described my take on the links between the new physics and ancient mysticism, focusing on how the "all-pervading" and "energy" aspects of shabd were recognized by quantum mechanics, but not the "conscious" part.
That's still true, of course.
Naturally there have been advances in quantum mechanics over the past 30 years, but the basic tenets remain the same as when this field of the very small (which nonetheless has strong implications for the very large, since the universe started out as very small in the big bang) came to be in the first part of the twentieth century.
There's a difference in me, though.
I no longer view all-pervading conscious energy (I liked the acronym ACE) as the foundation of ultimate reality. However, I still enjoy learning about how science views all-pervading energy, which in physics is known as quantum fields.
My new favorite book -- I'm serially promiscuous in a literary sense, finding intense delight in a book before casting it aside in favor of a fresh-faced attractive newcomer -- is Harry Cliff's Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe. The back cover says:
Harry Cliff is a particle physicist based at the University of Cambridge and carries out research with the LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. He was a curator at the Science Museum, London, for seven years and regularly gives public lectures and makes TV and radio appearances. His 2015 TED talk "Have We Reached the End of Physics?" has been viewed nearly three million times.
So Cliff is both highly qualified to write about the current state of physics, and a skilled enough communicator to make what he says both understandable and entertaining. In short, he has a way with words that is unusually appealing for a scientist.
In a Prologue, Cliff summarizes the core theme of his book.
Meanwhile, in particle physics, a series of anomalies has also been growing ever more significant, leading many to believe that we are on the brink of something big. Particles with unbelievable energies have been spotted bursting from beneath the Antarctic ice while hidden forces seem to be tugging on the basic building blocks of matter.
From the vast subterranean caverns of the Large Hadron Collider to a balloon floating high above the frozen ice sheets of the South Pole, scientists are uncovering a catalog of weird phenomena that can't be explained by our long-established theories of the universe.
...These anomalies could be the answers to all our prayers, lifting the veil on nature's best-kept secrets and leading to a revolutionary new scientific age.
But they also bring danger. As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there are good reasons to question whether these results are really signs of something wondrous and new or mere statistical flukes, theoretical confusion, or, worst of all for us practitioners, a glitch in an experiment.
Could we be so desperate to see something new that we risk seeing effects where there are none? Could we be chasing ghosts? Or, after decades of fruitless searching, could we finally be catching glimpses of a profound new view of the fundamental nature of reality?
Before Cliff gets to the anomalies that stimulated those questions, he spends 18 pages on telling "The Cosmic Story" in a chapter with that title. This is background for the science to be discussed in later chapters. But there's some sparkly scientific gems to be admired in that introductory chapter.
However, rather strangely perhaps considering its name, the standard model of particle physics isn't really a theory of particles at all. Instead, it describes the world around us as being made of rather more mysterious and nebulous objects known as quantum fields. Particles are fairly easy to picture, conjuring images of little spheres whizzing around in space. Quantum fields are far harder to get our heads around.
...[Regarding the force felt with magnets, attraction and repulsion] The thing that's there is a quantum field, in this case the magnetic field. It may be invisible, and you may not be aware of it except when you're playing with magnets, but nevertheless it is ever present. And it is not simply the case that magnets generate a magnetic field close to their poles.
In truth, the magnetic field permeates the entire universe, connecting my little magnets to the magnetic dynamo of the Earth, the Sun, and even the most distant galaxy. There is only one magnetic field, and it's everywhere.
The "quantum" bit of a quantum field comes into play when we try to understand what a particle is. If quantum fields are like invisible fluids filling all of space, particles can be thought of as little ripples in these fluids.
The reasons you are able to read these words is that a torrent of uncountable particles of light known as photons are bouncing off the page and smashing headlong into your retinas. Each photon is a tiny undulation in something called the electromagnetic field (of which the magnetic field is just one aspect).
What we think of as a particle, therefore, is simply the smallest possible amount of wobble that can travel through a quantum field.
It may seem counterintuitive to think that it is the invisible influence of fields that governs the universe. But in fact, it's even stranger than that. According to the standard model, fields explain not just light and photons but even the particles that make up the apparently solid world around us.
Atoms are ultimately made of subatomic particles -- electrons and quarks -- which aren't tiny hard spheres, as we've been trained to imagine, but instead little ripples in underlying fields. Electrons are little ripples in something called the electron field, while quarks are tiny wobbles in the quark fields.
It is those fields, not particles, that are the ultimate constituents of our universe. Each of us is made of fields. Deep down, we are all vibrations in the same invisible oceans.
Beautiful. No, more than beautiful. Awe-inspiring also.
This is the message of mysticism in the language of science, supported by solid facts rather than ethereal conjecture. It's why I've always loved science. Yes, for a long time I also loved mysticism. And I'm still open to the possibility that one day science will add "conscious" to the attributes of all-pervading energy known as quantum fields.
Until that day arrives, though, I much prefer science to mysticism. Because I prefer my reality to be real.
I appreciate the prizing of fact over ethereal conjecture. It's undeniable there's much hoodoo in the world of mysticism. Then again, I'm in agreement with the scientist Stephen Meyer on how the existence of the universe, and life on earth, points to a mystical cause.
Before Hoyle's Big Bang theory, most scientists assumed the universe had an eternal origin. But Hoyle found that the universe had a beginning. Before that beginning 13.8 billion years ago, there was no matter. So how did no matter and no energy -- that is, how did nothing -- create a universe of matter and energy?
If one wants to argue that an alternative universe gave rise to this universe, the question still stands on what created t h a t universe.
Then there's the mystery of the origin of life. The multifaceted mystery. How did one cell of any kind get created? And how to explain why cells are so brilliantly coded? These and other mysteries are examined in Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe
Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe.
Might the Radhasoamis at least be correct to surmise that material reality itself points to a mystical reality?
Posted by: sant64 | May 06, 2024 at 08:29 AM
There is positive energy , our souls, and negative energy , of kaal/ satan / jot niranjan . Dirty gurinder singh dhilon is a very low vibration negative energy, disguised as a high vibration guru to fool his prey - the sangat. He actually uses negative energy, to lure in the innocent sheep into him - rather like a snake hypnotizing its prey before suffocating them. He uses the shabad singers to create an atmosphere , and gives you that "feeling " which is really the venom. He weaponises and manipulates the love potion on people to fall for him - ever wondered why young females fall for an old man with a turban and a beard - logically its not possible yet this creep does it. He is a crafty manipulating baba, and wants to become the only god on earth , a super guru in a world wide mega cult with the, RSSB science of the soul logo stamped on it. But he is exposed as a crook who is rotten to the core, and a dirty filthy murderer. Your days are numbered and you will have to pay for your karma- punished by a system you invented.
Posted by: Kranvir | May 21, 2024 at 05:07 AM