Just A Thought

In the heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls, so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way, each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact is everything else.

Here’s an idea.  The universe is contained in our consciousness.  That is to say, the relationship between one’s physical brain and one’s mental brain is a model for how the universe relates to itself.  The interface between the physical brain and non-physical mind is the universe’s mirror it uses to “see” itself.

Still too vague?

The physical brain is also made up of the very particles which obey the  laws of quantum physics.  The subatomic particles all have their anti-matter “dancing partners” with whom they dance so well they appear to be contained within one another.   May it not be then said that the physical brain also has a corresponding dancing partner in the form of consciousness?  “Units of consciousness” like thoughts, memories, feelings, perceptions (called  “psychons”) also have their corresponding units of the material brain (called “dendrons“). These elements are not separate and discrete from one another.  They, too, dance in a matrix of instantaneous nuclear  dance reactions; in  a matrix which extends throughout the universe.

What that means is:  Each seemingly spatially separate part of the universe is instantaneously correlated with every other part of the universe.  Like Indra pearls.

Of course, there is this world we actually DO see.  We  measure it all the time when we quantify most anything in the concrete world.  We can do that because there are spatial differences between the concrete objects in the everyday world.  They can be related to one another linearly.  The apple that fell on Newton’s head is an example of this.  It fell down.  The apple had a beginning location (tree)  and an end location (Newton’s peruke).  Most all of the advances in technology exist grace to Newton and the giants that both preceded him and succeeded him.  But there is a hidden world as well, a dimension which is implied and not exposed or “implicate” and not “explicate”.

The physicist David Bohm came up with an excellent analogy of what he called the visible world which may represent the physical brain (explicate) and the hidden world of consciousness (implicate).  Here it is paraphrased:

Consider a large cylindrical glass container of glycerin mounted on a turntable. One places a spot of black ink in the glycerine.  The  container is slowly rotated, and the ink gradually disperses throughout the glycerin. If one then slowly rotates the cylinder in the opposite direction the spot of ink gradually re-forms. When the ink is dispersed it is in an implicate state: it exists throughout the glycerine. When the ink is a spot it is explicate: it exists in one part of the glycerine but not in the other parts. If one continues rotating the cylinder in this opposite direction the spot disperses again.

One can expand upon this.  One  places the spot of ink as before and slowly rotates the cylinder one revolution, and the ink again has begun to disperse. Then one places a second spot of ink just beside where the first spot was, and rotates for one more revolution. A third spot is placed beside where the second was, one more revolution, and one continues this for a few spots. Then one continues slowly rotating the cylinder until all the ink is fully dispersed throughout the glycerin. When one reverses the direction of rotation one sees the last spot coalesce, then the next to last one right beside the last one, and so on. One could interpret what one is really seeing is a single spot of ink that appears to be moving. So in the implicate fully dispersed state,  the appearance of motion is enveloped  in the space and time of an object as it exists throughout the glycerin.

In classical physics, humans mirror the objects of the every day world.  They observe it. They are able to do so since they are spatially separated from those objects.   In biological systems this classical interpretation prevails as  quantum principles are not largely accepted.  Most scientists still operate in the explicate and linear  Newtonian world when it comes to things like the brain and consciousness.  Indeed in the whole of the rest of the body as well.  Consciousness in this model is seen as merely a “byproduct” of the spatially distinct elements of the functioning brain.  Consciousness is only an epiphenomenon, an accidental companion.  It is odd that although there are quantum physics and quantum chemistry, quantum biology which is a constellation of physics and chemistry  is not seen as possessing quantum behaviors.

Old notions of “God” are based on that linear, reductionistic, deterministic model that if one were to tease out all the minute particulars it will lead somehow to an understanding of the bigger picture (my personal belief is that most scientists have a degree of obsessiveness and that attention to detail gets them lost in the minutae) and that there is a mechanical, spatially separated God behind some cosmic curtain making things move in locations, making judgments, admitting people to heaven, casting people into hell or the junk drawer that is purgatory.   A newer notion would be:  It’s not mechanical at all but much more magical and miraculous in that “God” exists in all places at all times, i.e. “non-local”,  reflecting all places at all times through the mirror of quantum physics.

It is the mirror of quantum physics that one is able to see the self both as a physical entity with all the attributes therein  and mentally- consciously  in the larger setting of the universe as a whole… instantaneously.

Just a thought.