The Tao of Physics on Superphysics

Modern Physics: A Path with a Heart?

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Modern physics has become the basis of natural science.

The combination of natural and technical science has fundamentally changed life on our earth, both in beneficial and detrimental ways.

Today, there is hardly an industry that does not make use of the results of nuclear physics.

The Philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus

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The parallels to Eastern thought are even stronger in the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus.

Heraclitus believed in a world of perpetual change, of eternal ‘Becoming’.

For him, all static Being was based on deception and his universal principle was fire, a symbol for the continuous flow and change of all things.

The Philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus

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In contrast to the mechanistic Western view, the Eastern view of the world is ‘organic’.

For the Eastern mystic, all things and events perceived by the senses are interrelated, connected, and are but different aspects or manifestations of the same ultimate reality.

Knowing and Seeing

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Before studying the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism, we have to deal with the question of how we can make any comparison at all between an exact science, expressed in the highly sophisticated language of modern mathematics, and spiritual disciplines which are mainly based on meditation and insist on the fact that their insights cannot be communicated verbally.

Beyond Language

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The notion that all scientific models and theories are approximate and that their verbal interpretations always suffer from the inaccuracy of our language was already commonly accepted by scientists at the beginning of this century, when a new and completely unexpected development took place.

Emptiness and Form

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The classical mechanistic world view was based on the notion of solid, indestructible particles moving in the void.

Modern physics has brought about a radical revision of this picture.

It has led not only to a completely new notion of ‘particles’, but has also transformed the classical concept of the void in a profound way.

The Dynamic Universe

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The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality is seen as the essence of the universe, underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we observe. The Hindus call it &&man, the Buddhists Dharma- kaya (the Body of Being), or Tathata (Suchness), and the Taoists Tao; each affirming that it transcends our intellectual concepts and defies further description. This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its multiple manifestations. It is central to its very nature to manifest itself in myriad forms which come into being and disintegrate, transforming them- selves into one another without end. In its phenomenal aspect, the cosmic One is thus intrinsically dynamic, and the appre- hension of its dynamic nature is basic to all schools of Eastern mysticism. Thus D. T. Suzuki writes about the Kegon school of Mahayana Buddhism, The central idea of Kegon is to grasp the universe dynamic- ally whose characteristic is always to move onward, to be forever in the mood of moving, which is life.’ This emphasis on movement, flow and change is not only characteristic of the Eastern mystical traditions, but has been an essential aspect of the world view of mystics throughout the ages. In ancient Greece, Heraclitus taught that ‘everything flows’ and compared the world to an ever-living fire, and in Mexico, the Yaqui mystic Don Juan talks about the ‘fleeting world’ and affirms that ‘to be a man of knowledge one needs to be light and fluid.‘*

The Phenomenon of Waves

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The exploration of the subatomic world in the 20th century has revealed the intrinsically dynamic nature of matter.

It has shown that the constituents of atoms, the subatomic particles, are dynamic patterns which do not exist as isolated entities, but as integral parts of an inseparable network of interactions.

The Phenomenon of Waves

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The subatomic world is one of rhythm, movement and continual change. It is not, however, arbitrary and chaotic, but follows very definite and clear patterns.

To begin with, all particles of a given kind are completely identical; they have xactly the same mass, electric charge, and other characteristic properties. Furthermore, all charged particles carry electric charges exactly equal (or opposite) to that of the electron, or charges of exactly twicethat amount.

The New Physics

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According to the Eastern mystics, the direct mystical experience of reality is a momentous event which shakes the very foundations of one’s world view.

D. T. Suzuki has called it ‘the most startling event that could ever happen in the realm of human consciousness . . . upsetting every form of standardised experience’. He has illustrated the shocking character of this experience with the words of a Zen master who described it as ‘the bottom of a pail breaking through’.

Quantum Physics

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Faraday produced an electric current in a coil of copper by moving a magnet near it. This converted the mechanical work of moving the magnet into electric energy.

Space and Time

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The concepts of space and time are so basic for the description of natural phenomena that their modification entails a modification of the whole framework that we use to describe nature.

The Subatomic World

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Soon after the emergence of this ‘planetary’ model of the atom, it was discovered that the number of electrons in the atoms of an element determine the element’s chemical properties, and today we know that the whole periodic table of elements can be built up by successively adding protons and neutrons to the nucleus of the lightest atom-hydrogen*-and the corresponding number of electrons to its atomic ‘shell’.

The Atomic World

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In this immensely rich world of atomic phenomena, the nuclei play the role of extremely small, stable centres which constitute the source of the electric force and form the skeletons of the great variety of molecular structures.

Relativity and Dirac

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Relativity theory has had a profound influence on our picture of matter by forcing us to modify our concept of a particle in an essential way. In classical physics, the mass of an object had always been associated with an indestructible material substance, with some ‘stuff’ of which all things were thought to be made. Relativity theory showed that mass has nothing to do with any substance, but is a form of energy. Energy, however, is a dynamic quantity associated with activity, or with processes. The fact that the mass of a particle is equivalent to a certain amount of energy means that the particle can no longer be seen as a static object, but has to be conceived as a dynamic pattern, a process involving the energy which manifests itself as the particle’s mass.

Hinduism

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The philosophies to be described are religious in essence.

Their main aim is the direct mystical experience of reality. Such an experience is religious by nature.

More than for any other Eastern tradition this is true for Hinduism*, where the connection between philosophy and religion is particularly strong.

Hinduism

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Maya, therefore, does not mean that the world is an illusion, as is often wrongly stated.

The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds. Maya is the illusion of taking these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with the territory.

Buddhism

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Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism goes back to a single founder, Siddhartha Gautama.

Chinese Thought

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Buddhism arrived in China around the 1st century AD when Chinese culture was more than 2,000 years old.

Chinese philosophy had reached its culmination during the late Chou period (c. 500-221 B.C.), the golden age of Chinese philosophy, and from then on had always been held in the highest esteem.

The Tao

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What, then, are the patterns of the cosmic Way which man has to recognize?

The principal characteristic of the Tao is the cyclic nature of its ceaseless motion and change. ‘Returning is the motion of the Tao,’ says Lao Tzu, and ‘Going far means returning.‘6 The idea is that all developments in nature, those in the physical world as well as those of human situations, show cyclic patterns of coming and going, of expansion and contraction.

The I Ching

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At the centre of the Confucian commentaries, as of the entire I Ching, is the emphasis on the dynamic aspect of all phenomena. The ceaseless transformation of all things and situations is the essential message of the Book of Changes:

Taoism

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Taoism is mystically oriented and thus more relevant for our comparison with modern physics.

Like Hinduism and Buddhism, Taoism is interested in intuitive wisdom, rather than in rational knowledge.

Acknowledging the limitations and the relativity of the world of rational thinking, Taoism is, basically, a way of liberation from this world and is, in this respect, comparable to the ways of Yoga or Vedanta in Hinduism, or to the Eightfold Path of the Buddha.

Zen Buddhism

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When the Chinese mind came in contact with Indian thought in the form of Buddhism, around the first century A.D., two parallel developments took place. On the one hand, the translation of the Buddhist sutras stimulated Chinese thinkers and. led them to interpret the teachings of the Indian Buddha in the light of their own philosophies.

Naturalness and Spontaneity

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Zen’s emphasis on naturalness and spontaneity certainly shows its Taoist roots.

But the basis for this emphasis is strictly Buddhistic.

It is the belief in the perfection of our original nature, the realization that the process of enlightenment consists merely in becoming what we already are from the beginning.

Unity in All Things

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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.

The Interconnectedness of the Universe

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The statistical formulation of the laws of atomic and subatomic physics does not reflect our ignorance of the physical situation, like the use of probabilities by insurance companies or gamblers.

Beyond the World of Opposites

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The Eastern mystics experience all things and events as manifestations of a basic oneness.

This does not mean that all things to be equal.

They recognize the individuality of things.

Tantric Buddhism

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In Tantric Buddhism, the male/female polarity is often illustrated with the help of sexual symbols.

Intuitive wisdom is seen as the passive, female quality of human nature, love and compassion as the active, male quality, and the union of both in the process of enlightenment is represented by ecstatic sexual embraces of male and female deities.

The Phenomenon of Waves

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The phenomenon of waves is encountered in many different contexts throughout physics and can be described with the same mathematical formalism whenever it occurs. The same mathematical forms are used to describe a light wave, a vibrating guitar string, a sound wave, or a water wave.

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The information about the particle’s state of motion is contained in the wavelength and frequency of the wave. The wavelength is inversely proportional to the momentum of the particle, which means that a wave with a small wavelength corresponds to a particle moving with a high momentum (and thus with a high velocity). The frequency of the wave is pro- portional to the particle’s energy; a wave with a high frequency means that the particle has a high energy. In the case of light, for example, violet light has a high frequency and a short wavelength and consists therefore of photons of high energy and high momentum, whereas red light has a low frequency and a long wavelength corresponding to photons of low energy and momentum.

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The quantum numbers, then, are used to arrange particles into families forming neat symmetric patterns, to specify the places of the individual particles within each pattern, and at the same time to classify the various particle interactions according to the conservation laws they exhibit. The two related concepts of symmetry and conservation are thus seen to be extremely useful for expressing the regularities in the particle world.

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To explain the symmetries in the particle world in terms of a dynamic model, that is, one describing the interactions between the particles, is one of the major challenges of present-day physics. The problem, ultimately, is how to take into account simultaneously quantum theory and relativity theory. The particle patterns seem to reflect the ‘quantum nature’ of the particles, since similar patterns occur in the world of atoms. In particle physics, however, they cannot be explained as wave patterns in the framework of quantum theory, because the energies involved are so high that relativity theory has to be applied. Only a ‘quantum-relativistic’ theory of particles, therefore, can be expected to account for the observed symmetries. Quantum field theory was the ‘first model of that kind. It gave an excellent description of the electromagnetic inter- actions between electrons and photons, but it is much less appropriate for the description of strongly interacting particles. As more and more of these particles were discovered, physicists soon realized that it was highly unsatisfactory to associate each of them with a fundamental field, and when the particle world revealed itself as an increasingly complex tissue of inter- connected processes, they had to look for other models to represent this dynamic and ever-changing reality. What was needed was a mathematical formalism which would be able to describe in a dynamic way &great variety of hadron oatterns: their continual transformation into one another, their mutual interaction through the exchange of other particles, the formation of ‘bound states’ of two or more hadrons, and their decay into various particle combinations. All these processes, which are often given the general name

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So far, our exploration of the world view suggested by modern physics has repeatedly shown that the idea of ‘basic building blocks’ of matter is no longer tenable. In the past, this concept was extremely successful in explaining the physical world in terms of a few atoms; the structures of the atoms in terms of a few nuclei surrounded by electrons; and finally, the structures of the nuclei in terms of two nuclear ‘building blocks’, the proton and the neutron. Thus atoms, nuclei and hadrons were, in turn, considered to be ‘elementary particles’. None of them, however, fulfilled that expectation. Each time, these particles turned out to be composite structures themselves, and physicists hoped that the next generation of constituents would finally reveal themselves as the ultimate components of matter. On the other hand, the theories of atomic and subatomic physics made the existence of elementary particles increasingly unlikely. They revealed a basic interconnection of matter, showing that energy of motion can be transformed into mass, and suggesting that particles are processes rather than objects. All these developments strongly indicated that the simple mechanistic picture of basic building blocks had to be aban- doned, and yet many physicists are still reluctant to do so. The age-old tradition of explaining complex structures by breaking them down into simpler constituents is so deeply ingrained in Western thought that the search for these basic components is still going on. There is, however, a radically different school of thought in particle physics which starts from the idea that nature cannot be reduced to fundamental entities, such as elementary particles or fundamental fields. It has to be understood entirely through

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The Eastern religious philosophies are concerned with timeless mystical knowledge which lies beyond reasoning and cannot be adequately expressed in words. The relation of this knowledge to modern physics is but one of its many aspects and, like all the others, it cannot be demonstrated conclusively but has to be experienced in a direct intuitive way. What I hope to have achieved, to some extent, therefore, is not a rigorous demonstra- tion, but rather to have given the reader an opportunity to relive, every now and then, an experience which has become for me a source of continuing joy and inspiration; that the principal theories and models of modern physics lead to a view of the world which is internally consistent and in perfect harmony with the views of Eastern mysticism. For those who have experienced this harmony, the sig- nificance of the parallels between the world views of physicists and mystics is beyond any doubt. The interesting question, then, is not whether these parallels exist, but why; and, further- more, what their existence implies. In trying to understand the mystery of Life, man has followed many different approaches. Among them, there are the ways of the scientist and mystic, but there are many more; the ways of poets, children, clowns, shamans, to name but a few. These ways have resulted in different descriptions of the world, both verbal and non-verbal, which emphasize different aspects. All are valid and useful in the context in which they arose. All of them, however, are only descriptions, or representations, of reality and are therefore limited. None can give a complete picture of the world. The mechanistic world view of classical physics is useful for