Preview #3 God and Reality

This preview #3 is also an excerpt from my third chapter, which is about quantum physics:

It is well-known among cosmologists that Dr.Hawking is the one man who can understand both the mathematics of general relativity and that of quantum mechanics. In the early seventies he felt that the time had come to combine the two theories. He put his brain in gear and started thinking for several months on the lines of applying quantum mechanics to black holes, both small and large. He knew that quantum theory had established that empty space was never actually empty but always cluttered with particles and anti-particles such as electrons and positrons, which came into existence for a short time before annihilating each other. Finally he realized that at the event horizon of the black hole a condition could arise where one such particle was sucked into the black hole before it had time to annihilate the other, and the other would then escape as a free particle into the outer universe. That led him to the discovery that the black hole could emit particles. This was so revolutionary that he could hardly believe it. But, although he checked his mathematics again and again he could not find any mistake, and was forced to accept his own discovery. At first, many other physicists thought it was complete nonsense, and said so. But eventually, as the idea was tested, it began to prevail. In consequence he found that black holes eventually lost energy, and once they had weakened beyond a certain point they exploded into the outer universe as gamma ray bursts. From his calculations such explosions were due to start happening right about that time, and, sure enough, within a few years they did start showering the universe with bursts of incredible strength and brightness. Was this a mere coincidence or was the Ghost of the micro-world working overtime? It appears that these particular black holes were probably ones left over from the Big Bang, which alone contained enough energies to forge their original state. This was the first time in history that one man had combined the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics in a prolonged thought experiment. It was an astonishing success. Let us hope he can do the same thing for quantum gravity.

                       

The University of London physicist, David Bohm, a protégé of Einstein, is one of the world’s most respected physicists. From the evidence of quantum experiments he showed that the tangible reality of our everyday existence is really a kind of illusion, similar to a holographic image. Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects of our world in much the same way as a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram. Bohm called this deeper level of reality implicate order in the sense of enfolded, while the reality we observe is called explicate or unfolded order. He claims that everything in cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order. There are no separate parts in that implicate order. Thus everything in the universe exists within a single continuum of existence. Paradoxically, things can be one with this continuum yet still keep their individuated qualities.

Bohm also described matter as frozen light. He also said: “In its generalized sense, light is the means by which the entire universe unfolds into itself. It is energy, information, content, form and structure. It is the potential of everything.”

One of the things Einstein told us is that we don’t actually know what light is. It is a datum of reality that is known only by its own self. Light is known to us only by light.

Furthermore, according to our current understanding of physics, every region of space is awash with different kind of fields composed of waves of varying lengths. Each wave always has at least some energy. When physicists calculate the minimum amount of energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy than the total energy of all the matter in the universe. Some physicists refuse to take this calculation seriously and believe it must somehow be in error. But Bohm thinks this infinite ocean of energy does exist and tells us at least a little about the vast and hidden nature of the implicate order. He feels most physicists ignore the existence of this enormous ocean of energy because, like fish who are unaware of the ocean in which they swim, they have been taught to focus primarily on objects embedded in the ocean, that is on matter. None the less, it has been proved that after one has removed all matter and all light from the space inside a vacuum, an infinite ocean of energy remains.

This agrees with what the UB says about the ether, and also about space itself being the medium for creating matter.

In Elemental Mind: Human Consciousness and the New Physics Nick Herbert, Ph.D., describes the mathematical foundation of modern physics: “What the math seems to say is that, between observations, the world exists not as a solid actuality but only as shimmering waves of possibility…Whenever it is looked at, the atom stops vibrating and objectifies one of its many possibilities. Whenever someone chooses to look at it, the atom ceases its fuzzy dance and seems to ‘freeze’ into a tiny object with definite attributes, only to dissolve once more into a quivering pool of possibilities as soon as the observer withdraws his attention from it. This apparent observer-induced change in the atom’s mode of existence is called the collapse of the wave function or simply the quantum jump.                           

The famous Hungarian-born physicist, John von Neumann, in his book The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics , addressed the problem that something new must be added to ‘collapse the wave function’, something that is capable of turning fuzzy quantum possibilities into definite actualities. But since von Neumann was forced to describe the whole physical world as subject to fuzzy quantum possibilities, he decided that what turns these latent possibilities into actual facts cannot be a physical process. Reluctantly, he was forced to conclude that the only known entity fit for this task was consciousness. In von Neumann’s interpretation the world remains everywhere in a state of pure possibility except where some conscious mind decides to promote a portion of the world from its usual state of indefiniteness into a condition of actual existence. It, therefore, seems that by itself the material world is not fully real, but takes shape only as a result of the acts of numerous centers of consciousness. 

However, the work of Jagdish Chandra Bose, Luther Burbank and others has proved that consciousness is not confined exclusively to humans, but can exist to some extent in lesser creatures. I suggest that this might be sufficient to produce normal continuity of nature even in the absence of humans. I also postulate that consciousness is a divine quality in whatever form it appears. The ideas of von Neumann could be held to confirm the opinion of many mystic masters that we humans create the world we live in. Consciousness empowers that creative process.

This would explain why the whole quivering mass of matter remains an amorphous and indistinct sort of fuzzy phenomenon until consciousness waves its magic wand. In my opinion, whether that consciousness is located in a conscious human being, a field mouse, a squirrel, an angel, or a deva, it is radically divine, and that is why it has the power to transform potential into physical reality. All these lesser beings are instruments and vehicles of the divine consciousness. Possibly it is also true to say as Monsignor Ronnie Knox did, when he was still an undergraduate at Oxford:

                        “I am always about in the quad.

                        And that’s why this tree

Will continue to be,

                        Since preserved by ……….

                        Yours Faithfully, God.”

In any case it seems that matter can never become completely real until it is somehow blessed with localized divine consciousness. An interesting point is that even if a person is unaware of the power of his consciousness and the effects it is causing, the keen, all-penetrating intelligence of God remains fully aware through the instrumentality of that person’s soul, mind and senses. Therefore, the full power of the Infinite is available to produce the result. That is why merely being here on earth is important even if we don’t have the slightest idea what we are actually doing. We are still His instruments. And we are also His partners.

Robert Lanza’s theory of biocentrism:

This theory is derived from the discovery by quantum theory of the predominance of consciousness in determining reality as we know it. In the physical universe nothing takes a definite shape until a conscious observer comes along. Robert Lanza extends this principle by deduction to the point that he denies any objective reality in nature. He claims that all reality emanates from the consciousness of the observer, and is ,therefore, radically subjective in nature. He accepts that, literally, we create the world we live in.

Ideas of Jacques Maritain, a Thomist philosopher:

According to Jacques Maritain it is God Himself who observes all things subjectively, while we humans observe only ourselves subjectively and all other things and persons as objects. In his book Existence and the Existent he writes:

“17. God does not create essences to which He can be imagined as giving a last rub of the sandpaper of subsistence before sending them into existence! God creates existent subjects or supposita which subsist in the individual nature that constitutes them and which receive from the creative influx their nature as well as their subsistence, their existence, and their activity. Each of them possesses an essence and pours itself out in action. Each is, for us, in its individual existing reality, an inexhaustible well of knowability. We shall never know everything there is to know about the tiniest blade of grass or the least ripple in a stream. In the world of existence there are only subjects or supposita, and that which emanates from them into being. This is why ours is a world of nature and adventure, filled with events, contingency, chance, and where the course of events is flexible and mutable whereas the laws of essence are necessary. We know those subjects, we shall never get through knowing them. We do not know them as subjects, we know them by objectivising them, by achieving objective insights of them and making them our objects; for the object is nothing other than something of the subject transferred into the state of immaterial existence of intellection in act. We know subjects not as subjects, but as objects, and therefore only in such-and-such of the intelligible aspects, or rather inspects, and perspectives in which they are rendered present to the mind and which we shall never get through discovering in them.

“As we pass progressively to higher degrees in the scale of beings we deal with subjects of existence or supposita more and more rich in internal complexity, whose individuality is more and more concentrated and integrated, whose action manifests a more and more perfect spontaneity, from the merely transitive activity of inanimate bodies to the occultly immanent activity of vegetable life, the definite immanent activity of sentient life, and the perfectly immanent activity of the life of the intellect. At the last degree the threshold of free choice is crossed, and therewith the threshold of independence properly so called (however imperfect it be) and of personality. With man, liberty of spontaneity becomes liberty of autonomy, the suppositum becomes persona, that is, a whole which subsists and exists in virtue of the very subsistence and existence of its spiritual soul, and acts by setting itself its own ends; a universe in itself; a microcosm which, though its existence at the heart of the material universe is ceaselessly threatened, nevertheless possesses a higher ontological density than that whole universe. Only the person is free; only the person possesses, in the full sense of these words, inwardness and subjectivity—because it contains itself and moves about within itself. The person, St.Thomas says, is that which is noblest and highest in all nature.”

The flaw in biocentrism: Although Maritain does not address himself to the questions raised by Lanza, these remarks are relevant to any debate about the validity of Lanza’s observations, and also add some interesting perspectives of their own. It seems that biocentrism is flawed because it lacks a unifying principle. Each created being is the subjective center of its own universe, but it knows only itself as subject of it. All other beings are known to it only as objects, and fellow personal beings only know him as an object for them. They cannot know him as subject. Falling in love is precisely the transcendent illusion of knowing another person as subject. But it is an illusion, and that is why it usually does not last very long: it is “sooner lost and worn” as Shakespeare said ( at least in regard to the males). A moment of introspection is enough for each of us to discover this truth. If biocentrism were literally true then each subject would be creating a separate universe for himself and there would be no coherence between all these separate universes. They would either be in conflict or they would be disassociated. Each of us would be living on his own desert island of separate reality and we would find little in common between us. It is only the hypersubjectivity of God, Who shares the subjectivity of each subject, and never knows it as an object–only that binds all reality together and produces total coherence between spirit, mind and physical energy, as the Mighty Messengers and the Melchizedeks and the Divine Counselors assure us. Just because the uncertainty principle requires the consciousness of an observer to bring about the quantum event, which is the collapse of a mathematical probability wave, does not imply that the conscious observer is by himself enough to explain the entire act of creation. He is rather the recipient of a message that is coded into the events of his life. He should ask himself where that message comes from, and also Who it comes from. He should also ask himself what it means.

In my opinion the message behind such events is very often itself a question. The question is very often “what do you think this means?” It could be our own answer to the question that gives a direction to our co-creative power. This is how prevenient and efficacious grace come into action. God often asks us questions. For example, “Who do you say that I am?”;  “Are you able to drink the cup that I shall drink?”; “Do you love me more than these things?”; "Why do you wait to do what can save your life?"

But it is wonderful to contemplate the power of our Creator simultaneously to experience the subsistence and existence of each one of us subjectively, to know us as subjects, in the same way we know ourselves, but to a degree of unfathomable wisdom that far exceeds anything we can imagine. This is a comforting thought: that there is Someone Who knows and loves me just as I know myself, but much more deeply. So I can never be alone.

Some people say that to claim that God created everything explains nothing. I would rather say that to deny that God created everything explains nothing. God can be recognized either as a fact or an hypothesis. Creation by God also can be recognized as a fact or an hypothesis. To deny it cannot be anything more than an antithesis. But these two facts or hypotheses cannot be explained in terms the mortal mind can fully understand. What we try to understand, however  incompletely, is how and why God creates. Just because we cannot understand everything about it does not mean than we cannot understand anything about it. If we apply our mind, we can understand more and more about it, and that is a soul-satisfying process.

St.Thomas goes back to the 13^th century. You could call him old hat. But I think the bellow of that old ox will never be silenced.

Consciousness in the Urantia Book:

Paper Nine – by a Divine Counselor

6. The Mind-Gravity Circuit

9.6.1 The Third Source and Center, the universal intelligence, is personally conscious of every mind, every intellect, in all creation, and he maintains a personal and perfect contact with all these physical, morontial, and spiritual creatures of mind endowment in the far-flung universes. All these activities of mind are grasped in the absolute mind-gravity circuit which focalizes in the Third Source and Center and is a part of the personal consciousness of the Infinite Spirit.

9.6.2 Much as the Father draws all personality to himself, and as the Son attracts all spiritual reality, so does the Conjoint Actor exercise a drawing power on all minds; he unqualifiedly dominates and controls the universal mind circuit. All true and genuine intellectual values, all divine thoughts and perfect ideas, are unerringly drawn into this absolute circuit of mind.

9.6.3 Mind gravity can operate independently of material and spiritual gravity, but wherever and whenever the latter two impinge, mind gravity always functions. When all three are associated, personality gravity may embrace the material creature — physical or morontial, finite or absonite. But irrespective of this, the endowment of mind even in impersonal beings qualifies them to think and endows them with consciousness despite the total absence of personality.

(JRT) I repeat: “But irrespective of this, the endowment of mind even in impersonal beings qualifies them to think and endows them with consciousness despite the total absence of personality.” There goes my field mouse, hand in glove with the Holy Spirit.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

This is an excerpt from my book God and Reality.

Signed by John Robert Thwaytes at Malbazar on January 13^th 2012.

Labels: Steven Hawking, David Bohm, Nick Herbert, John von Neumann, Jagdish Chandra Bose, Luther Burbank, Ronnie Knox, Robert Lanza, Jacques Maritain, Thomas of Aquin, a Divine Counselor, the Holy Spirit, a field mouse.