We are made from waves of the universe

For thirty-five years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization that taught the ultimate reality of the cosmos is all-pervading conscious energy termed shabd, in English sound current. 

I wrote a book on behalf of RSSB called God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, in which I argued that findings of the new physics reflected the message of ancient mysticism that waves of conscious energy not only permeate our universe but actually are the deep-down nature of the universe.

I no longer believe in the supernatural aspect of this viewpoint, but I've maintained my interest in how modern physics looks upon the foundation of physical reality. That foundation rests on relativity theory and quantum mechanics, the two great discoveries of the first part of the 20th century.

Recently I started reading a book by Matt Strassler that I believe I learned about in the magazine New Scientist, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean. Though I've only read the first few chapters, that's enough to tell me I'm going to enjoy the book a lot.

Strassler has a great background. Of course, I'm biased toward bloggers. Strassler's blog is called Of Particular Significance. The book's cover says:

Matt Strassler is a theoretical physicist, blogger, and writer whose research often takes him to the Large Hadron Collider. An associate of the Harvard University Physics Department and a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study, he was previously a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and Rutgers University. He lives in rural Massachusetts.

I have the impression that now Strassler is semi-retired and has written this book aimed at a general readership to communicate the meaning of physics as he sees it, in addition to the facts of physics. He starts off with an amazing fact that usually escapes our attention.

Imagine yourself clinging, like a character in a spy thriller, to the roof of a bullet train hurtling along at 150 miles per hour. Your situation is extremely precarious. As you are dragged along, the air resists your passage, and a hurricane-force wind threatens to push you off the back of the train. Your hair flies around wildly as you hang on for dear life.

And yet, as you read the opening words of this book, you may well have forgotten that you are sailing across the cosmos at 150 miles per second. That's over 500,000 miles per hour. You are carried along with the Earth and Sun, in their orbit of our galaxy's center, thousands of times faster than the imaginary train. Nevertheless, you feel no space resistance. There is no "space wind" blowing your hair about. You travel through empty space as though it's not even there.

After a brief one-page introduction to empty space, gravitational waves, light waves, and elementary particles, Strassler turns more philosophical in a pleasingly science'y sense after noting that both gravitational and light waves have an unbreakable cosmic speed limit of about 186,000 miles per second, or 670 million miles per hour. 

Why is there a single speed restriction that applies to all these different objects? Perhaps electrons and quarks, too, are part of the same structure that incorporates light, gravitational waves, and space. If so, what might this mysterious structure or system be, and how might it work? Our knowledge is limited. but we have a name for it. We call it "universe."

I don't just mean The Universe, as written with a capital "U" and spoken into a microphone with lots of echo -- the gigantic black spaces that we typically block out of our minds except on clear, dark nights. I'm referring to the universe writ small as well as large, as it plays out in our daily living: in our own bodies, in our homes, and in everything we encounter during every moment of every ordinary day.

Here's another curious fact, perhaps another clue. Obviously, you and I can't move through solid rock; we'd face stiff rock resistance, far more severe and destructive than the air resistance that would endanger us atop a bullet train. Yet seismic waves in the Earth's rock caused by earthquakes and volcanoes, don't have this problem. They can travel directly across our planet from one side to the other facing no resistance whatsoever.

How do they manage this little miracle? It's not so mysterious. To the rock, our bodies are alien; the rock resists our presence in its territory. But seismic waves are vibrations of the rock itself. They belong there.

So what does it mean that we move through empty space -- through the universe -- without space resistance? Our drawings and descriptions of basic physics subtly lead us to imagine ourselves as made from ingredients that exist within the universe. But perhaps that's not so. It seems as though we are made from waves of the universe. 

I do not mean this in a spiritual or metaphorical sense, though there's no harm in those resonances if you are inclined to hear them. My meaning here is concrete, tangible, real in the scientific sense. I am suggesting that our very substance is the cosmos in action.

From this perspective, we are not merely residents of the universe, living within it as we live within our houses and apartments. Nor do we swim through the universe as fish swim through the sea. We are aspects of the universe, as seismic waves are aspects of rock and as sound waves are aspects of the air.

A better understanding of how the cosmos works, then, is a path to a better understanding of ourselves. 

This gives a fresh understanding of the ancient Greek adage, "Know thyself." To know ourselves, says Strassler, is to know the universe. It also undermines the oft-heard saying in spiritual circles, "We are not material beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a material experience." 

Well, the more likely truth is that we are material beings having a material experience, and introducing "spiritual" into the conversation runs the danger of making a simple truth into a complex falsehood that confuses more than clarifies. 

Comments

[sant64]

Sunday Morning Satsang

Welcome to Master's satsang.

Excuse me, I recently had eye surgery so I can't read too well this morning. But speaking of eye surgery, the path is a kind of "I" surgery. The path is about demolishing the I, the ego.

Saint Deadguyji said, "the ego is what separates us from God." But do we listen to the saints? We do not, because all day long we think about our cares, our wants, our desires. We complain that the path is too hard. All we have to do is sit 2 and a half hours a day! We sit that long watching a baseball game, so why aren't we complaining about that?

We must always remember that his path is about our salvation. We forget that we somehow arrived precious human birth after 960876241 past lives as tree moss, worms, stinkbugs, and ground squirrels. We forget we have the inestimable good graces to have met a perfect master and to have taken initiation from him. But we still think thought from our lower selves. We don't do simran at every free moment. We seem to want to throw this life away and spend countless lives in the suffering of samsara.

WE HAVE TO MEDITATE AT LEAST 2.5 HOURS A DAY OR WE DO NOT HAVE A CHANCE AT SALVATION!!! And yet we skip our meditation. We could have become a saint like Babaji. Someone once asked Babaji how he became a saint, and he said it was because he followed the direction of his guru. PERFECTLY. But not us. We don't follow the guru's directions as we prefer to follow the whims of our lower selves. How deplorable!

We forget that because we are initiates of a perfect master we are assured of one day securing salvation. Do we not want salvation? Why then do we do such a poor job of following the path? THIS PATH IS ALL ABOUT OUR SALVATION. We should never concern ourselves with the welfare of other people; if we do that we betray the purpose of the path which is about PERSONAL SALVATION. THE WAY OF SELFISHNESS IS THE WAY to GOD.

And we must never forget that while the Master is the greatest helper, the greatest guru who is God in human form, IF WE DON'T LIVE PERFECT LIVES OF TOTAL SURRENDER WE ARE SURE TO TAKE BIRTH AGAIN IN TERRIBLE CIRCUMSTANCES. We must bear in mind that the Master ONLY HELPS those who give 100% to the path. And if we don't give that 100% every single second of the day then we are really not satsangis, and bereft of Nam. We are still "in love with the world" and are likely to receive just karmic compensation for our dereliction. We may find ourselves not in Bhanwar Gupha but chewing on someone's garden. The law of karma is inexorable.

To put it plainly with as much love as I can, you and I mean we suck at the path. We dare to complain to Babaji things like (heavy mocking tone) "Oh Babaji, I have such a hard time with my mind!" "Oh Babaji, I'm having trouble in my family, please help me!" We need to understand that such callow outbursts show we are terrible satsangis who have no real understanding of The Path, as I do. I mean as we do.

To sum up, we must never forget we're on a gnotic path where the weight of the entire universe is tacked against us, and every stray thought we have with the slightest taint of self is a bomb that can pitch our jivas into a horrible destiny of suffering. If we eat a bit of egg or think of sex, we've chosen to go off the path and will probably end up as a garden animal if we're lucky.

But we should always remember, Sant mat is a positive path! :)

So that's it for today's satsang gang. Come back next week for the exact same uplifting message.

[La Madrugada]

October the 7th.....
Good morning Brian, Happy birthday!
May today bring all that makes you smile and fill your heart with love.

[Ron E.]

I really like this theory from Matt Strassler: - “So, what does it mean that we move through empty space -- through the universe -- without space resistance? Our drawings and descriptions of basic physics subtly lead us to imagine ourselves as made from ingredients that exist within the universe. But perhaps that's not so. It seems as though we are made from waves of the universe.”
“From this perspective, we are not merely residents of the universe, living within it as we live within our houses and apartments. Nor do we swim through the universe as fish swim through the sea. We are aspects of the universe, as seismic waves are aspects of rock and as sound waves are aspects of the air.”
---
Not wishing to bring in any of the many religious or spiritual philosophies with their complex and pedantic belief systems, but this theory from Matt Strassler so reminds me of the Mahayana Zen Buddhism Heart Sutra where it states: - “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not separate form, form is not separate from emptiness; whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.”

There are of course many interpretations and translations of the Heart Sutra but generally, whether they are referring to the totality of the universe or just the forms we are aware of here, on Earth and expressed as being ‘without inherent existence’ (i.e., no separate self), the overall message of ‘form is emptiness and emptiness is form’, is intriguing in light of Strassler’s idea.

When thinking of form/emptiness (and now Strassler’s waves!) I can’t help but visualise a flow where everything passes into and out of existence just like clouds forming over land where sea meets land then changing and dispersing.

All very intriguing. I may get this book – although physics is beyond me. Look forward to more postings on this Brian.

[Kranvir]

@sant64, this statement of yours is laughable

"WE HAVE TO MEDITATE AT LEAST 2.5 HOURS A DAY OR WE DO NOT HAVE A CHANCE AT SALVATION!!! And yet we skip our meditation. We could have become a saint like Babaji. Someone once asked Babaji how he became a saint, and he said it was because he followed the direction of his guru. PERFECTLY. But not us."

How can gurinder Singh dhillon be a perfect saint , he has not done a day of meditation in his life. You are a perfect example of a brainwashed sangat @sant64, you will never escape by your own effort. Just would like to bring to your attention a few points on your fake ass so called perfect master, gurinder: he has over 16 companies on his name , is a control freak, has anger issues, murdered his wife and siphoned billions from his nephews while they are in jail for his own crimes. Also he doesn't even give any discourse because he has run out of lies to tell. I hope you can see his actions are a complete contradiction to a perfect living saint. Unless he is a perfect saint for kaal / satan or lucifer.