Unity in All Things

The worldview of the spiritual traditions mentioned are essentially the same.

It is a view which is based on mystical experience-on a direct non-intellectual experience of reality- and this experience has a number of fundamental characteristics which are independent of the mystic’s geographical, historical, or cultural background.

A Hindu and a Taoist may stress different aspects of the experience.

a Japanese Buddhist may interpret his or her experience in terms which are very different from those used by an Indian Buddhist;

but the basic elements of the world view which has been developed in all these traditions are the same.

These elements are the fundamental features of the world view emerging from modern physics.

The essence of the Eastern worldview is:

• the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events
• the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness.

All things are:

• interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole
• different manifestations of the same ultimate reality.

The Eastern traditions constantly refer to this ultimate, indivisible reality which manifests itself in all things, and of which all things are parts.

It is called:

• Brahman in Hinduism
• Dharmakaya in Buddhism
• Tao in Taoism.

It transcends all concepts and categories. Buddhists also call it Tathata, or Suchness, as the oneness of the totality of all things, the great all-including whole.’

In ordinary life, we are not aware of this unity of all things, but divide the world into separate objects and events. This division is, of course, useful and necessary to cope with our everyday environment, but it is not a fundamental feature of reality.

It is an abstraction devised by our discriminating and categorizing intellect. To believe that our abstract concepts of separate ‘things’ and ‘events’ are realities of nature is an illusion. Hindus and Buddhists tell us that this illusion is based on avidya, or ignorance, produced by a mind under the spell of maya. The principal aim of the Eastern mystical traditions is therefore to readjust the mind by centering and quietening it through meditation.

The Sanskrit term for meditation-samadhi-means literally ‘mental equilibrium’.

It refers to the balanced and tranquil state of mind in which the basic unity of the universe is experienced:

Entering into the samadhi of purity, (one obtains) all- penetrating insight that enables one to become conscious of the absolute oneness of the universe.*

The basic oneness of the universe is not only the central characteristic of the mystical experience, but is also one of the most important revelations of modern physics. It becomes apparent at the atomic level and manifests itself more and more as one penetrates deeper into matter, down into the realm of subatomic particles.

The unity of all things and events will be a recurring theme throughout our comparison of modern physics and Eastern philosophy. As we study the various models of subatomic physics we shall see that they express again and again, in different ways, the same insight- that the constituents of matter and the basic phenomena involving them are all interconnected, interrelated and inter- dependent; that they cannot be understood as isolated entities, but only as integrated parts of the whole.

In this chapter, I shall discuss how the notion of the basic interconnectedness of nature arises in quantum theory, the theory of atomic phenomena, through a careful analysis of Physics the process of observation.* Before entering this discussion, I haveto come back to thedistinction between the mathematical framework of a theory and its verbal interpretation. The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena. The verbal interpretation, on the other hand-i.e. the metaphysics of quantum theory-is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model.

The following discussion is based on the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory which was developed by Bohr and Heisenberg in the late 1920s and is still the most widely accepted model. In my discussion I shall follow the presentation given by Henry Stapp of the University of California which concentrates on certain aspects of the theory and on a certain type of experimental situation that is frequently encountered in subatomic physics.** Stapp’s presentation shows most clearly how quantum theory implies an essential interconnectedness of nature, and it also puts the theory in a framework that can readily be extended to the relativistic models of subatomic particles to be discussed later on. The starting point of the Copenhagen interpretation is the division of the physical world into an observed system (‘object’) and an observing system. The observed system can be an atom, a subatomic particle, an atomic process, etc. The observing system consists of the experimental apparatus and will include one or several human observers. A serious difficulty now arises from the fact that the two systems are treated in different ways. The observing system is described in the terms *Although I have suppressed all the mathematics and simplified the analysis considerably, the following discussion may nevertheless appear to be rather dry and technical. It should perhaps be taken as ‘yogic’ exercise whichlike many exercises in the spiritual training of the Eastern traditions-may not be much fun, but may lead to a profound and beautiful insight into the essential nature of things.

**Other aspects of quantum theory will be discussed in subsequent chapters, of classical physics, but these terms cannot be used consistently for the description of the observed ‘object’. We know that classical concepts are inadequate at the atomic level, yet we have to use them to describe our experiments and to state the results. There is no way we can escape this paradox. The technical language of classical physics is just a refinement of our everyday language and it is the only language we have to communicate our experimental results. The observed systems are described in quantum theory in terms of probabilities. This means that we can never predict with certainty where a subatomic particle will be at a certain time, or how an atomic process will occur. All we can do is predict the odds. For example, most of the subatomic particles known today are unstable, that is, they distintegrate-or ‘decay’-into other particles after a certain time. It is not possible, however, to predict this time exactly. We can only predict the probability of decay after a certain time or, in other words, the average lifetime of a great number of particles of the same kind. The same applies to the ‘mode’ of decay. In general, an unstable particle can decay into various combinations of other particles, and again we cannot predict which combination a particular particle will choose. All we can predict is that out of a large number of particles 60 per cent, say, will decay in one way, 30 per cent in another way, and 10 per cent in a third way. It is clear that such statistical predictions need many measurements to be verified. Indeed, in the collision experiments of high-energy physics tens of thousands of particle collisions are recorded and analysed to determine the probability for a particular process.