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1 – Vanitas vanitatis
To habitual participants of
scientific meetings and seminars it's a well known fact that the most exciting and
creative ideas, the most challenging and revolutionary proposals are not unearthed in
speeches pronounced in auditoriums or meeting rooms. It's widely acknowledged that really
hot theses are to be found in coffee break chats, at restaurant tables or in nighttime
bars, where the spirits heat and encourage tongues turning them likely to uncover
speculations carefully concealed in public statements.
In this symposium, with such unusual characteristics, I can perceive this state of affairs
is changing. The usual barriers between topics free to be divulged and those presumed to
be classified matter are falling down after each new lecture we attend. Otherwise, we can
see many science workers' fear of being insulted as philosophers, mystics or speculators
as a menace to their reputations vanishing day after day as the Conference goes on. To me
this represents a very good indication, once scientific research is a most liable activity
to develop heavy social masks on its practitioners.
It's not uncommon to see a modest individual accomplishment to become an ego swelling
factor, and evolve into illusory and witless personae - as labeled in Jungian terminology.
Nonetheless, it's fair to concede that such demeanor is not an exclusivity of science
workers, once also in the arts - mainly in the performing arts - this is surely more
frequent and intense. That's correct. However, it's more understandable that an opera
prima donna, or an actress of cinema or television, with her ego purposefully inflated by
her producers, be liable to an explicit vanity attack than to accept some scientists'
pretentious and snobbish behavior, as learned persons who should pursue knowledge with
more endurance and modesty. Sometimes we witness how these people adorn themselves with a
frame of haughtiness and pretended superiority which frequently point the way to their
attitudes and actions.
That Pandora's box of arrogance and vanity is the source of many evils such as the
intentional faking of scientific data, sabotage of other's work, dishonest competition
among colleagues and stealing of collaborators' ideas. We sadly verify that such shameful,
sometimes criminal practices have spread over scientific institutions and cannot be taken
as occasional behavior deviations anymore. Such dismal conditions begin with the inflation
of the ego, imperceptible in its initial phase and undetectable to those who aren't
mindful and vigilant to his or her own heart contents. Otherwise, these attitudes also
reveal traces of character that came from the cradle and hardly change in a lifetime.
Vanitas vanitatis, all is vanity. However, in the new world we witness to take shape in
this symposium such state of affairs will not be accepted as part of the human condition
anymore. More properly, it will be considered as absolutely unacceptable to the new ethics
outlined here and now.
I remember what I read about the atmosphere of healthy excitement and mutual collaboration
prevailing in the University of Berlin, at the time Albert Einstein, von Laue, Max Planck
and Erwin Schrödinger were teaching there, during the Republic of Weimar. Each new
finding by any of them was spontaneously praised by all other fellow scientists, without
any rivalry, competition or vanity. It was a place dedicated to discovery, a joyful
scientific enterprise of all and everyone 1. For some
time I enjoyed myself this kind of ambience at Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, and I know it
persists in several institutions and universities. However, in this fresh world we begin
to distinguish now it's required to disseminate the same friendship milieu everywhere,
turning it to be the rule, not the exception.
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2 – A scientific ethics
I'm sure this new worldwide
ethics will not emerge from exhausted philosophers, because they've been trying for
centuries to sell their proposals, with success limited only to their narrow circles of
followers. Nor from the leaders of worn-out religions, who have seen their dogmas engulfed
and excreted by the masses, when they passed to claim for myths and miracles, magic and
solutions to the problems surged from their empty and suffocating everyday lives. Not even
from the arts, whose drained out formulas have very little to say to the hungry,
uninformed or neurotic ears of our time.
Now
I see, with unexpected clarity, that the new ethics of our times will be formed departing
from a new mystical/scientific conception of the cosmic/individual wholeness, as revealed by a new caste of
scientists. After completing their process of
individuation (as to Jung's) they are able to bring forth something utterly new to
this newborn world, as a synthesis of our expectations and aspirations to fulfill the
claims of humanity, accumulated in its long journey throughout timeless ages.
A
scientist who, breaking the fetters of his or her specialty, set free from his ego's
limitations and takes off to a higher flight on the comprehension of himself and what a
human being is, of life and its relationship to the planet we live on, will be able to see
his or her own consciousness reflected in the unbelievable vastness of the cosmos. That
scientist surely will gather the means to set up a self-evident ethics that will not
require any explanations or justifications to impose itself on society and propagate.
Such
new ethics will be the only foundation capable of supporting the Herculean endeavor of
rescuing our enormous social debt of brutality, ignorance and famine, a shameful plight
that still strangles two thirds of humanity and can only be healed a worldwide resolution
of really abolishing economic and moral indigence. I understand it, as an indispensable
condition, that ethics' foundation must come from theoretical and experimental scientific
knowledge chartered as a new standard cosmic model, linked to a new conception of the
human being, to be recognized and accepted by the international scientific community.
Science
and philosophy were born together in Antiquity. They remained companions for several
centuries and frequently were under the tutelage of religion. Establishing its
independence from the seventeenth century on, science split into many specialized fields
and its concerns became centered on problems specific to these branches. However this
brought into being unheard-of marvels in manifold domains, on the other hand it left
unsolved the broadest questions, those which require all-inclusive integration of topics
and provinces of investigation. Such problems cannot be solved by means of more accurate
observations or the improvement of new and better instruments.
Specialization
results from reductionism, which marked the evolution of science in the last three
centuries and decisively contributed to the expansion of empirical knowledge, to improve
technology and everything it created to ameliorate the life conditions of mankind, in
spite of its dark side of destruction and death. In this beginning of century and
millennium, specialization, although indispensable to the progress of technology, turned
into a hindrance to the evolvement of science – in its widest sense of natural
philosophy. The most advanced investigation, be it in cosmology, or physics, biology,
information theory, psychology, even mathematics itself have shown that a
multidisciplinary approach is crucial to generate more audacious insights in these areas.
From the latest elaboration of scientific research we turn amazed seeing how physics
– both experimental and theoretical – in its laboratories and equations has
compelled the acknowledgement of the researcher's subjectivity as an essential datum to
bestow legitimacy and meaning to the results of studies and investigations.
We
have seen how cosmology has encountered the human spirit in most remote parts of the
universe, when it takes refuge in the Anthropic Principle, which re-enthrones the human
parameter as the center of being. Among the endless theoretically possible universes, only
this one recognized by science, as absurdly improbable as it seems to be, uniquely this
universe, with its constants so finely adjusted, is suitable to host galaxies, stars, life
and intelligence. It's the spirit of man paradoxically returning to the privileged
position that always belonged to him, usurped as it was during a few centuries of
transient but necessary alienation.
We
have received from computing science the colorful gift of fractals 2, mathematical entities of inexhaustible wealthy and
unexpected beauty generated from the remarkable peculiarities of imaginary numbers,
brought to this symposium in Prof. Sunyl Mahavajra's amazing lecture. Highly evolved
computer technique and extraordinary refinement seem to join in these shapes and rhythms
in order to suggest something mystical to some configurations that appear in the monitors,
however entirely produced by mathematical processes. I see in fractals and its more recent
developments – as much as in cellular automatons 3,
which preceded them and continue to evolve in unexpected directions – a topic
deserving profound philosophical thoughtfulness. To these objects advanced computer skills
produce surprising esthetical quality that isn't intended by their creators, who only manipulated equations, not shapes,
revealing something numinous secretly hidden in the mysterious realms inhabited by
mathematical entities.
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3 – The resurgence of the sages
In
this beginning of century and millennium we must adapt ourselves to world views where the
logical categories we inherited from the Greeks are not suitable to grasp
cosmic/individual wholeness anymore. Observing rigorously and impartially the new face of
that thing we use to call reality, I see that we must review or renounce the fundamental
dualities we usually employ to understand the world.
As
an outcome of the evolution of knowledge itself, that now disembarks in the virgin shores
of a new paradigm, the common notions of subject and object (hence subjective and
objective), shape and background, real and imaginary will be categories discarded as old
fashioned ways of reasoning, obsolete criteria to evaluate the world or bad habits of
older generations. Even the distinction between science, the arts, philosophy and
religious mythology should be carefully considered as a methodological compliance to
reductionism, useful to strictly pragmatic purposes aiming empirical results only, without
any intention to reach a comprehensive understanding of the intimacy of things and
phenomena.
As
a matter of fact, we are now witnessing the ascension to a position of undeniable hegemony
of these men of science – recognized as the most prominent of our times – who
never feared to be considered as sympathizers of a mystical/unified view of the world.
These men, to whom we ascribe some of the most fruitful outcomes of science, have always
respected the profoundness of the genuine mystical insights without renouncing their noble
condition of high rank scientists, rigorous in their methods and criteria, nonetheless
immune to the seductions of positivism.
In
this very moment I feel a need to recognize and pay homage to those who most justly
deserve the epithet "the sages of our times", capable of uniting the brilliance
of their intelligence and privileged intuition to a remarkable modesty we can only equate
with the far-reaching extent of their achievements[i].
These men, after overcoming all selfish and insensate egocentrism, have completed their
process of individuation and wisely advanced towards a daring synthesis of the individual
and the universal, confirming that these views mirror each other and intermingle into a
perceptual entireness without discernible frontiers.
Scientists
like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, W. Pauli, Schrödinger, C.G. Jung, James Jeans,
Eddington, Peter Medawar, John Wheeler, Lyall Watson, Erich Jantsch, David Bohm and many
others have overwhelmed the limitations of their egos and conquered the right to look
beyond appearances to decipher their own versions of cosmic truth. In his book Mein
Weltbild (My World View), Einstein literally declares that "According to only one
rule I evaluate the authentic value of a man: in what measure and to what finality he has
liberated from his ego?" Others, however, whose names I don't need to mention, attach
themselves to illusory and egocentric self-images that have nothing to do with true
individuality, which unfolds from the uniqueness of being. To these, the conquest of
knowledge is more tortuous and more liable to embark in dead-end clues, sometimes
disguised as great truths that time soon unmasks and drops into the wastebasket of
science.
I
am sure that from this symposium on, the standard conceptions of the most embracing
science, as physics, cosmology and psychology no more will resist to accept the evidence
that science and mysticism share a common final objective: to understand the unity of
being, as manifested in the flourishing and always surprising kaleidoscope of
multiplicity, endless like a fractal of fantastic proportions. Many scientists, as much as
mystics, are convinced that wholeness is oneness. The first try to describe it by means of
a theory, an equation, a mathematical formalism; the mystics endeavor to experience it.
However, both are spurred by the same impulse and – most surely – the same
faith.
As
far as prejudice is overcome many distinguished scientists – who used to be upset
when analogies about their objectives and those of mystics were suggested – change
their minds and don't consider this as an insult anymore. Now we can witness the revival,
under updated version, of the archetypal figure of the wise man, or woman, who doesn't
constraint him or herself under a logic/conceptual framework. He or she knows that
knowledge, in its deepest and far-reaching scope, cannot be restrained into the linear
structures of discursive thought, in the mostly quantitative language of mathematics, nor
be confined to particular one-sided approaches.
The
classical figure of the mystic/scientist, that we usually associate to Emanuel Swedenborg
and Giordano Bruno, seen under suspicion by historians of science since they don't fit
into the model of a science worker who doesn't involve with superstition, rigorously
should also include names such as Isaac Newton, René Descartes and many others who have
been considered as representative of the pure scientist, pillars that sustain contemporary
science. It's widely recognized today something that has been carefully concealed by
zealous biographers and publishers of encyclopedias: that alchemist practices occupied a
great deal of Sir Isaac Newton's time[ii] and
that René Descartes belonged to secret societies which had very little or nothing to do
with the well known rationalism he developed for external use.
In a similar way to emblematic figures of classic
science, such as Newton, Kepler and Descartes, who were God-fearing men – probably in
a conception related to the Jewish Father God, prevailing at the time – also
contemporary highest-rank scientists are, or were, men who didn't reject the spiritual
dimension of their lives, however under interpretations far from the personal and majestic
image of a God who control the universe from outside as a director of scene. As a matter
of fact very few scientists could fit the pedantry of Laplace who, being asked by Napoleon
about the role performed by God in his system of the world, replied that he "didn't
need that hypothesis".
In
the last decades of last century we witnessed, as a refreshing breeze of renewal, the
resurgence of men and women of science who are not afraid of being accused of mysticism in
their proposals and practices as a menace to their reputations. However, this is not to
say that these scientists have renounced the rigor of scientific method or have succumbed
to the "black tide of occultism" as feared Sigmund Freud.
On
the contrary, what we see today is a broadening wave of enlightening in all levels, the
steady falling away of logic constraints and prejudice, the dilution of barriers that
assorted knowledge into categories, blocking the healthy flow of different approaches to
the investigation of the major questions on the spirit and the universe. We have witnessed
the process of coalescence of most rigorous scientific knowledge with deep and serious
mystical insights, as an outcome of the labor done by science workers who have never
feared the pressure exerted by narrower vision colleagues, with their mocking smiles and
the causticity of their comments. Or, furthermore, to withstand their aggression and open
hostility, when forbidden topics as synchronistic or paranormal events are broached,
although such phenomena are so extensively documented today that its denial brings a
strong sense of dishonesty – not towards experimenters, but to those who reject these
facts.
In
this highly meaningful moment to the history of human knowledge, in front of the
microphones and cameras that put me in touch with the whole international scientific
community, I wish to express my gratitude to all those who endeavor the difficult task of
breaking into the walls of the sophisticated ignorance that have blocked the most
unfettered bursts of creative thought, in the human eagerness to ascend to new levels of
comprehension.
I
respectfully pay homage to pioneer divulgers as Marilyn Ferguson, Fritjof Capra, Gary
Zukav, Ken Wilber, Renée Weber, F. David Peat, Lyall Watson, Fred Alan Wolf, Michael
Talbot and specially award-winner Prof. Paul Davies who, with his painstaking and
far-reaching work daringly emphasizes the scientific approach to subjects hitherto
exclusive to philosophy and religion, defiantly using the word God in the title of
his books.
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4 – The turning point
I'm particularly joyful in face of this convergence trend we now witness in the
fields of philosophy, science, the arts and religion, a process unveiled when the most
prominent names of science turn to regard their mystical interests more friendly, as a
sensible way to approach the major questions of life and wisdom. This tendency, which in
fact under a more or less concealed form, always existed among the greatest scientists of
all times accelerated since the seventies and attains now its more explicit level in
history, making us understand we're reaching a crucial point in the evolution of science,
the turning point mentioned by Fritjof Capra. Beyond this stage only a new
philosophical substructure can sustain the upcoming maturation of knowledge.
Now,
we can ask: is it presently possible to synthesize this new outlook on the world as a
prevailing view among the science workers, one that can be taken as a standard model of
this turning point we witness now? Is it already possible to present in this very
symposium a model, however provisional, of the proposed conception of reality to be
adopted in this moment of history? Is there a consensual picture among scientists and
mystics, artists and philosophers, poets and shamans of an acceptable understanding of
what the individual and the cosmos are, what a subjective experience means or what are the
manifestations of that thing we call an objective reality? Is it possible to outline a
brand-new launching pad from which we can see the third millennium science take off?
Perhaps.
These are still very sensitive questions, in spite of a confirmed gradual overlapping of
the broad areas of human learning, as it divided from the Renaissance on. Nonetheless we
can already breath alleviated since we almost exorcised the phantoms of nineteenth century
who haunted all twentieth century with their materialist theories; despite the
invigorating hearts and minds blossoming of a new generation that sees knowledge and
wisdom as two faces of a single unity, in spite of all that, we are still far from an
agreement and surely too far from unanimity.
In
fact, on such thoughtful and sweeping questions we shouldn't expect general agreement and
still less unanimity. Individual contributions from each man or woman of knowledge, be it
so in science, in the arts, philosophy and mystical experience – or in all these
fields together, under a transcendental kind of approach – is something to respect
and capitalize on it. A most beautiful paradox we can enjoy is precisely the full
realization of the Whole through individual devising and achievements; the accomplishments
of human beings who succeed in the completion of their transcendent function[i] and advance on
their process of individualization[ii], as to Jung's proposals.
What
I can and intend to offer as my individual contribution to this conference and all those
who see and listen to me the world over is my personal synthesis of the most recent
manifestations of scientific thought, as it dilutes its boundaries and open its doors of
perception to other complimentary kinds of knowledge. Finally, I intend to present the theory
of relational consistency in a condensed framework and without any mathematical
formalism that could restrain its understanding. It's a work my friend and partner Prof.
Adam Newman and I developed together.
To
enhance the world view understanding outlined as a new paradigm characteristic – one
that comprises manifold versions and interpretations – it's necessary to study its
roots. I will not repeat Prof. Newman's explanations, as he lectured on the metaphysical
bases of Western scientific information this morning. It's enough to remark our concern on
the growing inquietude about these statements, as they're more and more recognized as
inconsistent, arbitrary or at least too fragile.
The
kernel of that epistemological rupture is the concept of what an objective reality
is. Or, in other words, what is the dialectical relationship between subject and object,
between the individual and the cosmos.
The
naive realism of those who affirm the existence of an objective reality outside the
perceiving subject was never an entirely accepted view in Western culture and, still more
in other cultures different from our own. To the unconcerned or casual observer,
effortless on his relationship with the world, it will be simpler to use Occam's razor and
assume an outside reality as separate from himself, than to examine other less simplistic
alternatives. This view seems to be so evident that its questioning is ordinarily
considered as an eccentric standpoint ascribed to unoccupied "philosophers".
That naive demeanor encountered haven in the materialism that thrived during nineteenth
century and remained, by way of a process of cultural inertia, throughout the next.
In
twentieth century conventional science the prevailing paradigm remained linked to
materialism, to empirical pragmatism and positivism in its various shades. However, since
the beginning of last century it was already under fire, a situation that attained
revolutionary proportions in the years 1925, 1926, and 1927, with the subversive proposals
of quantum theory. From these crucial years to the history of science on, the colossal
clockwork conceived by Newton has begun to be dismounted and the universe passed to
"resemble more a great thought than a great machine", in James Jeans* famous remark.
In
the following seventy years till the end of the century, the progressive dilution of the
objective world upon which classical physics was based accelerated, not only in the new
theorems and equations of mathematics but in laboratory experiments, as well. These
remarkable advancements, however, remained disregarded – or conveniently ignored
–by most scientists. Unable to liberate from the logic foundations upon which were
educated they played the role of guardians of common sense, attached to an obsolete
paradigm[iii] no
more appropriate to explain experimental facts or the newest theoretical propositions. The
most effective missiles that cracked the structures of classical physics and jeopardized
the notion of an objective reality surged in the years '20 in the form of principles
emergent from the theories and experiments produced in these splendid years.
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5 – Identifying principles
In the summer of 1925,
Heisenberg was just 23 years old and recovering from a hay-fever attack on the island of
Heligoland, when he came up with matrix mechanics, the first quantum theory. A few months
before, young French prince Louis de Broglie deduced the wavelength of an electron and
suggested experiments that could show these particles would present diffraction phenomena,
analogously with light.
In January, 1926, at age 38, Schrödinger formulated his celebrated equation,
one the electron must obey to form the atom of hydrogen, supporting the idea that an
electron could also be a wave. Soon, a series of experiments have shown that, if an
electron effectively displayed diffraction phenomena, then some kind of wave should be
present. But... a wave of what, if in other experiments the electron shows very
clearly to be a particle? A group of scientists of the University of Göttingen, under the
leadership of Max Born rejected the interpretation that matter could be made of waves,
since they could count individually each electron and other particles with a Geiger
counter, or observe their tracks in a chamber of Wilson. The double nature wave/particle,
which seemed to be common to light – hence to all electromagnetic radiation –
and matter, was confirmed as the first great paradox that installed in physics to stay.
Should light and electrons be waves or particles? The heated contention
proceeded for more than a year, mainly between Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and
Dirac till February, 1927, when Bohr and Hesenberg had astonishing insights on the meaning
of quantum theory. Their daring proposals subverted logic itself and opened the path to a
new interpretation of reality and the limits of the human capacity to apprehend it.
One of the most daring standing points in the history of
science was taken by Niels Bohr, when he announced his principle of
complementarity which separated science from Aristotelian logic, as he proposed that wave
and particle are two different – however complementary – aspects assumed
by matter and electromagnetic radiation. Despite being logically incompatible, both are
true and will appear in one or the other manner, according to the experiment done. The
wave associated to a particle is the equation of mathematical possibilities[i]
that such a particle shall manifest itself in a considered point (Schrödinger's
function) and this only occurs when it "collapses" due to a conscious
observer's intervention, bringing forth that particle from a potential into an actual
condition of existence.
On that occasion, Heisenberg established
for the first time a definite limit to the scientists' pretensions to fathom
"everything" about reality as deep as they wish. With his uncertainty
principle, he has shown the impossibility to know, with any desirable precision, pairs
of observables such as moment and position of a particle. The more precise is one of these
measurements, the less trustworthy will be the other. And this is not due to any
imperfections of the instruments or methods employed; rather it's an intrinsic
characteristic of nature itself.
From these principles the so called Copenhagen
interpretation established, profound philosophical implications on the knowledge of
the sub-microscopic world were introduced. First of all, we have to acknowledge that
quantum reality has a probabilistic nature, instead of a determinate one: Only one
experiment on a quantum property of a particle doesn't yield a trustful result; or that
experiment is made on many particles or it should be done many times on the same particle,
in order to obtain the average. The second implication is that it doesn't make sense to
say anything about the physical properties of a quantum object without specifying the
experimental arrangement used to know it. Or, in other words: in some mysterious form
quantum reality is created by the observation act, which causes Schrödinger's wave to
collapse, turning actual something only potential.
At this time, Niels Bohr said that "it's a
mistake to suppose that the object of physics is to discover what nature is. Physics
occupies only with what we can say about nature." That statement opened the way
to John Wheeler's declaration that "No elementary phenomenon is a real
phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon", and, more recently, N. David
Mermin of Cornell University to utter his famous boutade: "We now know that
the Moon is demonstrably not there when nobody looks."
While the quantum revolutionaries, armed with their
equations and puzzling experiments, proceeded with the sweeping subversion of the objective
reality concept, the rest of the scientific establishment in the universities of the
world ignored, or pretended to ignore, what was happening.
However, not all of them closed the eyes to that. And the
reaction in defense of the sacrosanct paradigm of realism came in 1935 led by the grand
patriarch of science, Albert Einstein, who, with his allies Boris Podolsky
and Nathan Rosen, conceived an imaginary experiment that, as they expected, would
demonstrate the errors of quantum conceptions. That famous mental experiment, described in
many books of scientific popularization, would show that if the quantum propositions were
true 1) or things would move to a speed superior to the light, something not acceptable by
the theory of the relativity, 2) or then reality could not exist independently of the
observer. Ever since, a controversy that lasted for decades was settled on the EPR paradox, as it came to be known. And the
result, already confirmed at the laboratory but not entirely digested by the scientific
community, is unfavorable to Einstein and his two friends.
There are many different interpretations of the quantum
theory proposed and discussed among scientists, but the one that seems less to correspond
to the experimental facts and the theoretical formalism is exactly the realistic
interpretation, that states the existence of an objective reality independent of whom
observes.
Now, at the forum of debates of physics, there live
together other theories that extend and deepen the quantum proposals and, with varied
metaphysical assumptions, try to adjust facts to equations. Some of those theories are
based on solid mathematical formalism[ii], and other didn't achieve
that much yet, although their concepts seem respectable and convincing. Such theories aim
to explain important segments of the individual/cosmic totality, which includes, according
to the quantum vision, the mysterious objective/subjective interlacement of the world.
Some of the most respected names of contemporary science,
as Henry Pierce Stapp, Geoffrey Chew, and David Bohm risked their
reputations as scientists when they acknowledged the evidence of the essential role of the
observer of an experiment. Such a view implied to acknowledge consciousness, subjectivity
and the spirit itself, that imaginary face of wholeness rejected by the old paradigm's
naďve materialism. Following the same path, many other workers in Physics, Cosmology,
Neurology, Ecology and other don't fear to mention the spirit as the central agent of
consciousness. And the imaginary face of wholeness as "the stone rejected by the
builders, that later has shown to be the keystone"[iii].
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6 – Theory of Relational Consistency
Just like in Geoffrey Chew's bootstrap conception[i], no aspect of the theory of
relational consistence can be considered basic; almost all are imported from other
theories and they only subsist due to its interdependence in a coherent configuration,
capable of elucidating enigmas that other approaches don't solve per se. This way,
relational consistence is a bootstrap theory once it refuses the reductionist conception
ingrained into the current paradigm that says the universe to be made of basic elementary
constituents, such as particles, laws, constants etc. In the view of relational
consistence both 1) the search for minimal elementary sub-particles and 2) the
investigation of what happened in the minimum fraction of linear time after the big bang
are illusory roads that ultimately will lead to nothing.
A point to be preliminarily considered is the dimensional framework
where that part of totality accessible to human knowledge is inserted. It's presented in
two slopes, two faces of a same coin made compatible due to an extension of Bohr's principle
of complementarity: 1) the face said to be real or objective, manifested in the three
dimensions of the space (Euclidean or non-Euclidean, depending on the considered scale or
the investigator's option) and 2) the imaginary or subjective face, manifested in the
three dimensions of time, as presented yesterday morning by the honorable Professor Kether
Weisskopf. This way, the cognoscible being has two opposite and complementary faces in its
wholeness, classically known as matter and spirit, that are no more than our peculiar form
of noticing what, without this resource, would remain rationally unrecognized. Let's
remember Einstein's words: "time and space are not properties of the universe in
itself, but just forms we use to notice it".
This way, the dimensional frame that supports the cognizable wholeness
comprehends the three "real" dimensions of space x, y
and z plus the three "imaginary" dimensions of time t,
u and v. Everything real and all the imaginary realm, all the
"objective" world and also the "subjective"[ii] kingdom, all physical and mental
phenomena – including those said to be paranormal – can fit in that
six-dimensional framework.
In the perceptive system ordinarily adopted, the "real"
contents of the universe – the physical universe delimited by physicists and
cosmologists as their object of study – are said to exist. On the other hand,
the contents of the psychological "imaginary" world, as well as the ideal
creations of all subjectivities – either human or not-human – we propose
to say they inist. To speculate on other contents outside of that dimensional
framework is pointless, once such contents would not be accessible to human knowledge. The
mathematical formulations that describe anything unfit for that framework would exist
only, or better, would inist only as an abstract mathematical entity linked to its
specific ontological status of the imaginary slope of wholeness.
Observe that, as we admit time as being 3-dimensional and imaginary
– the point Albert Einstein missed, as Professor Weisskopf has shown –
the whole problem of the origins and evolution passes to be referred to a non-sequential
understanding of the cosmic facts. This is the deepest and most wide-ranging revolution of
our proposal. It subverts all the investigation forms related to one-dimensional and
linear time, with its arrow inexorably harnessed to the big bang and the second law of
thermodynamics.
This puts us in face of the Buddhist's conception of Being. D.T.
Suzuki writes:
Buddha
(...) is not one more who lives in a world conceived in terms of time and space. His
consciousness is not more the consciousness of a common mind, regulated in agreement with
the senses and logic. (...) Buddha (...) lives in a spiritual world that possesses its own
rules.
The entity that physicists and cosmologists recognize as being
the universe, the cosmos whose secrets they study, in truth is neither unique nor
objective, except under a strictly consensual perspective. Each subjectivity, each
spirit, each observer, each scientist, each person of any social level or cultural
background, each consciousness – be it human or not, be it terrestrial or not –
carries around a private universe of beatitude or anguish, of ignorance or light, built
throughout the eons of his or her non-temporal existence. This sends us to the theory of
the monads, of Leibniz, a sage who reveals a surprising contemporary view.
He had a premonition of important aspects of several recent theories, particularly the
holographic vision of the brain (Karl Pribram) and also of the universe (David
Bohm).[iii]
Our model for the relational consistence is sustained on the shoulders
of those precursors.
As to the interpretations of the quantum paradoxes, we emphatically
endorse the discovery (we see it as a discovery) that consciousness creates reality, when
it promotes the collapse of Schrödinger's function, turning actual (real) what was
only a potential existence (imaginary). That process, countless repeated in all
observational actions, turns actual worlds potentially hidden in quantum possibilities, as
it builds around that observing subjectivity his or her universe.
Thus, we link ourselves also to the interpretation of the multiple
universes, of Hugh Everett III, as we acknowledge the universe as, actually, a
multiverse: an inexhaustible unfolding of universes that can portray small – or much
accentuated – differences among themselves. However, we distinguish our
interpretation from Everett's. He admits that all countless versions of universes in some
way would "exist", superposed in a hyper-space of endless simultaneous realities
as we, collectively, would only have consciousness of one. In our view, conversely, these
multi versions can exist only when centralized around subjectivities that function
as their existential nucleus: each subjectivity is the center of his or her own parallel
universe. We consider as evident that something not perceived cannot be real, as observed
John Wheeler. Therefore, universes not provided of a conscious subjectivity as its
perceptive nucleus, do not exist.
Our proposition, however, doesn't mean that each subjectivity is
confined in only one parallel universe that, for him or her, would exist
"forever" as a single private universe, according to the classic conception. It
is nothing like this. In our view, each consciousness is a pole of ever unfolding
universes that each subjectivity brings about according to the myriad quantum options
embedded in their decisions – conscious or not – that we would call observations,
equivalent to what, in formal quantum experiments, is characterized as a measurement.
This way, each subjectivity is a focus of unfolding parallel universes, as predicted by
calculations and admitted in Everett's interpretation. However, each one of these parallel
universes has a size restricted to the limits of that subjectivity's perception. With the
fundamental difference that, while in Everett's interpretation only one unfolding system
exists, actualizing a single hypothetical reality where all of us would cohabit, in our
proposal that old reality – independent of observers and common to all – stops
having autonomous existence and becomes an existence of consensual nature. Which,
for its time, is not unique: there are countless consensual realities, however compatible
and consistent with the subjectivities inside them. Consensual realities which are not
under interaction can be very different; but if they don't interact there's no problem.
Synthetically, we propose the thing we call reality passes to be understood as a
vast inter-subjective network that interlaces consensual realities shared among groups of
interacting subjectivities.
The generation of the phenomena shared by multiple subjectivities
happens according to processes of holographic nature[iv],
each part containing information on the entire interacting group. This view synthesizes
the theories of Pribram and Bohm in only one conception and suggests a dimensional locus
– 3-dimensional time – where can comfortably be inserted the implicit order
of Bohm; the domain of frequencies of Pribram; the morphogenetic fields of Sheldrake;
the said paranormal phenomena; the archetypes of Plato and Jung
etc. We live in a consensual universe mathematically built by our consciousness,
according to the Fourier's transformation[v] as it
interprets patterns of electromagnetic frequencies originated from other subjectivities as
geometric projections of the superior dimensions of space-time. Consciousness is a
hologram that reproduces "one" holographic universe in perpetual mutation –
a holomovement, according to Bohm – due to the continuous motion of
interacting subjectivities. The most present physical processes in the forming of that
consensual world are interference and resonance of electromagnetic waves
– mostly unsuspected, however present. We agree with the Scandinavian scientist Hannes
Alfvén, when he says that "our cosmos is more an electromagnetic than
gravitational being".
It remains, now, another problem to be examined. To consolidate those
propositions it seems indispensable to provide a formulation of the principle that
allows the compatibility of the many universes in their updating process. Around each
conscious pole (we call it a subjectivity) the illusion of a single reality seems
solid and convincing in the way ordinarily verified. If each subjectivity unfolds his or
her own universes, how is it possible that this is not perceived and the suggestion of a
single unique reality seems so obvious?
In the tradition of the founding fathers of the quantum quest,
whenever a crucial aspect on the conception of reality and the means and limits we have to
apprehend it was reached, something emerged as a principle, a basic parameter that
establishes a pattern and delimits the cognitive process. This way appeared Bohr's
principle of complementarity; Heisenberg's principle of indetermination; Pauli's
principle of exclusion and several others. This feature seems to be an intrinsic
characteristic of wholeness or, at least, of our process of apprehension of its deeper
aspects.
In the same way we glimpsed what can be called a principle of
consistence, which makes compatible the many worlds generated by interacting
subjectivities, so that the consensual fabric comes out without flaws or fractures. That
principle, as general and including as the others we have mentioned, is a key condition
that allows the contents of a non-linear time – a 2 and 3-dimensional lattice –
to be geometrically projected in our perceptible space-time and interact among them.
According to the principle of consistence, the arrow of the time comes
out from no conflicting sequential collapses of quantum waves (Schrödinger's function).
This starts with the endless conscious interventions in the super-hologram, triggered by
the individual holograms of each subjectivity. This process forms the super-holomovement
we see as reality, or the world. Therefore, consensual reality is shaped in
the linear time by the successive accumulation of myriad quantum collapses in the
super-hologram common to the interacting subjectivities. That sequences – which exist
only in the linear time of the each subjectivity – spread common views of a reality
updated in a growing consensual field, as a growing fractal that continuously incorporates
new subjectivities, without contradictions or inconsistencies.
As can be inferred from the propositions above, the now called consensual
reality – that to our view replaces the old concept of an objective reality
– is formed together with lineal time as auto-consistent patches that grow
according to mathematical auto-correlation functions of fractal characteristics,
dispersing from different generation centers. As our perspective is holographic
(non-local), we admit that such patches exchange information, even if they are not
spatially close to each other, preventing they fit together without any cracks when they
enter in further contact.
However, that compatibility is not always perfect. Sometimes those
processes present flaws that can be detected, if they are not yet healed and adjusted. The
more distant in the perceptible space-time and less interacting among themselves, more
probable it will be the occurrence of compatibility fissures among different patches of
consensual realities in their process of formation. An interesting example is the case of
the neutrinos. For many years in the researches realized in Western laboratories neutrinos
didn't accuse any mass, but in Russia invariably they appeared as bearers of very small,
but measurable mass. That crack in the pot of reality was healed in January of 1995 when
finally the American experiments have found mass in the neutrino.
This consensual conception of reality and the cosmos rests on
epistemological foundations rather different from the one that sustained science until the
end of 20th century. It also stands largely far from the Western cultural
inheritance of Greek roots. Now we need to review countless remaining crucial aspects in
many sciences and research methods. More than a revolution, what is configured now in the
relationship between the individual soul and the cosmos is a sweeping subversion of many
things supposed to be known in Cosmology, in Physics, in Anthropology, in History, in
Psychology. From now on, it will be essential that, with courage and humility – we
don't see them as incompatible – all of us became willing to acknowledge and assume
the paradoxes and marvels offered to human knowledge and fruition on the verge of this new
millennium.
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Notes:
1 Scientist Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider,
who graduated in Physics at the University of Berlin at that time, says in her book Reality
and Scientific Truth that "When Einstein, von Laue and Planck and, later,
Schrödinger, taught in Berlin an exceptional climate of harmonious exchange of ideas
became characteristic of that period. Each one of the students must have felt the benefits
of that cooperation without attritions." The quantum theory bloomed entirely in
the fertile years between 1925 and 1927. Referring to that extraordinary period of the
history of science, Paul Dirac said to J.C. Polkinghorne that was "a time in which
obscure men accomplished a work of first greatness". Our perspective shows today
that the vision that those men would be "obscure" just reveals the indispensable
modesty to the scientific work of great reach, and that those men were giants that changed
the world."
[1]
Prof. Weisskopf, who shared close
friendship with Einstein, relates how he once told the master, in Princeton, that a
recently-formed physicist would like to work with him assuring he was a good "very
humble" boy. To that Einstein replied him: "But how can that young man be
humble? He didn't do anything yet..."
[1] Richard Westfall, the best of
Newton's biographers, informs that "He didn't trip in the alchemy, discovered its
absurd character and started to tread the road of the sober and rational chemistry. To the
contrary, he left of the sober chemistry and gave up of it well fast, in favor of what he
judged to be the largest depth of the alchemy." Further, he comments on: "In
the mechanical philosophy, Newton had found an approach that eliminated the soul of the
operations of the nature and explained those operations only for the mechanical demands of
the matter particles in movement. The alchemy, in contrast, faced the nature as life and
explained the phenomena for the activating intermediation of the soul." And he
ends remarking to be "necessary to face Newton's interest for the alchemy as a
rebelliousness manifestation against the restrictive limits that the mechanic thought
imposed to the natural philosophy."
[1] Analytical psychology, of C.G.
Jung, calls transcendent to the function that, expressing through symbols connects
the opposites, allowing the transition from the irrational to the rational, from the real
to the imaginary and vice-versa, making the connection of the conscious with the
unconscious. After proposing such denomination for this important psychic function Jung
verified – with a pleased smile – that there was already in advanced mathematics
a function of real and imaginary numbers that also bear the name of transcendent
function.
[1] C.G. Jung denominates individuation
to the process that should be accomplished along a person's life, and that consists of
finding and recognizing the Self archetype in one's inside, the Himself, that is the
individual expression of the Totality. It is a spiritual process that not all get to
complete and that implicates that the surface ego is limited and illusory. When
accomplishing the individuation process the person starts to live the paradox of being a
common man or woman and, at the same time, a manifestation of Self, of the immanent Divine
Being in each individual soul. The individuation process, is the accomplishment of the
Delphic precept of sofrosyne, or to know himself, and it demands to overcome
selfishness and the persona, or social mask.
[1] The notion of paradigm,
developed by Thomas S. Kuhn in his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
of 1976, is defined as the group of concepts, methods, procedures and expectations common
to a scientific community in a certain time of its history, that usually delimits what
"can" or "cannot" be admitted as "truth" or "worthy of
consideration."
[1] A possibility wave is not the
same thing that a wave of probability, as appears mistakenly in some texts on that theme. Probability is the square root of the possibility.
A wave of this kind has the same existential status of other mathematical entities; that
don't have "real" existence. However it is subject to all of the diffraction
phenomena and interference of the said "real" waves.
[1]
The theory of the complex relativity, of the French physicist
Jean-Émile Charon, published in 1977, extends the field of applicability of the theory
of the relativity, of Einstein, into a complex – real/imaginary – space-time
(in the mathematical sense). Starting from the use of the imaginary numbers, it's one of
the recent theories of more complete mathematical formalization. But not even such
credential was enough to be well received by the scientific establishment, that threw on
it a silence curtain, maybe because Prof. Charon dares to use the word spirit to
designate the being's imaginary slope, studied and described starting from his/her theory.
[1] Cf. Gospel of Thomas,
verse 66, Psalm 118-22 and Acts 4-11.
[1] The interpretation bootstrap of
the quantum world postulates that fundamental particles don't exist and that each
subatomic particle is "made by the others". The word bootstrap (belt of the
boots) mentions a metaphor that suggests that the world rises "pulling for the belts
of the own boots."
[1] The concepts that we put among
quotation marks are interchangeable, as the well known ambiguous figures of Gestalttheorie.
[1] Leibniz didn't just sense the
current holographic conceptions - he proposed that each monad was an alive
"mirror of the whole universe" – as well as Geoffrey Chew's bootstrap
vision, once none of the aspects of that doctrine can be considered fundamental or
central. For him, the several aspects of the system were complementary amongst themselves
and were supported on all the others. Besides, Leibniz proposed the existence of an
unconscious –or subconscious – mind for the first time (cf. Monadology
19-21), advancing Freud and Jung in more than one century.
[1] Holography is an optical system
of registration of images that uses the laser beams and the phenomenon of light waves
interference to codify in photographic film 3-dimensional images of objects, that can be
reproduced in the space with definition level and characteristics very different from the
common photography. While in the photo to each point of the object corresponds an
equivalent point in the film, in the holography each point of the film contains
information on the whole object. If we cut a piece of a photographic film will just have a
fragment of the image of the object, but if we remove a piece of a holographic film,
nevertheless we can project with him the complete image of the object, just with smaller
clearness than if the film was entirely.
[1]
The transformation of Fourier is the system of mathematical analysis developed by
that French mathematician to decompose any wave, regardless of its complexity, in a sum of
simple sinusoidal waves.
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Further reading:
Bohm, David Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1985.
Bohr, Niels Atomic Theory and Description of Nature.
London: Faber & Faber, 1957.
Briggs, John P. and F. David
Peat Looking Glass Universe.
Fontana Paperbacks, 1985.
Capra, Fritjof The Tao of Physics. Shambhala, Berkeley, 1975.
Capra, Fritjof The Turning Point. Shambhala, Berkeley, 1982.
Charon, J-E. Theorie de la Relativité Complexe.
Paris: Albin Michel, 1977.
Charon, J-E. L’Esprit,
cet Inconnu. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977
Davies, Paul God and The New Physics.
London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1982.
Davies, Paul Other Worlds. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1988.
Davies, Paul The Mind of God. Orion Productions, 1992.
Davies, Paul Superforce.
Gleniser Gavin Ltd.
Jantsch, Erich The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human
Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution.
London: Pergamon Press, 1987.
Leibniz, G.W. von Monadology. New York: P.P. Wiener – C. Scribner’s
Sons, 1951.
Mandelbrot, Benoit B. The Fractal Geometry of Nature.
San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company,
1983.
Peitgen, Heinz-Otto, and
Peter H. Richter The Beauty of Fractals –
Images of Complex Dinamical Systems. Heidelberg:
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 1986.
Pribram, Karl Languages of the Brain.
Monterey: Wadsworth Publishing, 1977.
Rosenthal-Schneider, Ilse Reality and Physical Truth: Discussions with Einstein,
von Laue and Planck. Detroit:
Wayne State Press, 1980.
Ruyer, Raymond La Gnose de Princeton.
Paris: Librairie Arthčme Fayard, 1977.
Samuels, Andrew, Bani
Shorter and Alfred Plaut A Critical Dictionary of
Jungian Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.
Sheldrake, Rupert A New Science of Life:The Hypothesis of Formative
Causation. London: Blond and Briggs, 1981.
Talbot, Michael The Holographic Universe. Harper Collins
Publishers, Inc., 1991.
Wallace, B. Alan Choosing Reality – A Contemplative View of Physics
and the Mind. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1989.
Weber, Renée Dialogues with Scientists and Sages.
New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1986.
Westfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton.
Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
Wilber, Ken, ed. The Holographic Paradigm and
Other Paradoxes – Exploring the Leading Edge of Science. Boston: Shambhala
Publications, Inc., 1990.
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