Page
212 continues /
From
this 'now' perspective, we can look 'back' at our past,
hidden behind the 'southward' spacetime rim .Yet this is
illusionary , a hangover of the flawed way we look at time
through the ego-self window. The loop of time metaphor shows
that when we look forward into the future we are also
looking back into the past because the arrow of time traces
out the full circumference of the circle, eventually coming
back to itself.
In
this 'song of reality'. The distinction between past and
future vanishes. The process of 'seeing'is then symetrical
in both directions. In T.S. Elliot's apt
words:
Time
present and time past
are both perhaps present in time
future
and time future contained in time past
If
this is what consciousness 'sees' it is 'timeless' in a
deeper and different sense than we ever dreamed possible. In
real time, such a closing of the loop would play havoc with
our notions of causality, cause becoming effect and effect
cause."
"
The
unexpected feature of the loop of time metaphor is that a
signal from the future becomes a signal from the past.
Nothing is
/
Page 213 /
wholly
new, for information is always travelling where it has been
before. This is why I find the loop of time parable so
satisfying. It resonates deeply with a poem cited earlier
-
T.S. Eliot's 'Little
Gidding': we
shall not cease from
exploration
and the end of our
exploring
will
be to arrive where we started
and
know the place for the first
time through
the unknown, remembered
gate
when the last of earth left to
discover
is that which was the beginning
The
famous line 'know the place for the first time' is
critically significant in the context of this
book."
"
It
is said of the renaissance artist Michaelangelo that he
approached a block of marble believing that the perfect
sculpture he sought to create already existed in the unhewn
stone. The artistic act was thus an act of discovery not
creation, and the long hours of painstaking work were
devoted to revealing what was already there."
"
This
is I believe, the stamp of an authentically creative act :
one discovers what is already
true.
When
a human being 'sees' a pre-existing truth, already known to
/
Page
214 /
the
cosmos, in a very deep sense, the universe recognises part
of itself,comprehending it at a higher level of
understanding. This kind of incremental knowing is the
self-realization of the cosmos
In
other words, there is a deep knowing about consciousness
that is utterly distinct from mere intellectual
comprehension. This deep knowing is a remembering of what is
already there. One becomes, in the full sense, conscious of
what one has always subconsciously been aware of. In terms
Eliot's poem the 'gate'is remembered even though it is
unknown. We arrive before we started and know the place for
the first time!
We
do not create the future, we discover
it.
Roger
Penrose captures something of the flavour of the mode of
knowing in The Emperor's New Mind, when he
says:
Recall my proposal that consciousness, in essence, is the
'seeing'
of a necessary truth: and that it may represent
some
kind of actual contact with Plato's world of ideal
mathemati-
cal concepts. Recall that Plato's world is itself timeless.
The
perception of Platonic truth carries no actual information
and
there would be no actual contradiction involved if such
a
conscious perception were
even to
be
propagated backwards
in
time
The
loop of time metaphor goes a long way towards explaining a
puzzle that many readers will have picked up as they worked
their way through the pages of this book.
The
argument I put forward in Chapters
8
and 9
"
At
another moment in the now of know time the scribe
noted that the line
containing
'
The argument I put forward in
Chapters
8
and 9'
had 9
further words in the
line.
As
in
' that ego cages consciousness, is not a novel one
-'
Further
the scribe
added 8
x 9
is 72
Page
214 continuing /
"
The argument I put forward in
Chapters
8
and 9,
that ego cages consciousness, is not a novel one
-
it
is an ancient tenet of many religions. In particular, much
of what I said in those chapters could be described as a
scientific interpreta-tion of a set of beliefs
mapped out in the Hindu Upanishads thousands of
years ago. Hindu belief, for example, sees the ego as a
deception (maya) which seperates the ' I ' from the
ultimate. When the mirage of ego is dissolved, the
underlying union is made plain -
Thou
art That (tat tvam asi) is the illuminating
recognition of this oneness. This is essentially the message
of Chapter 8.
Even
the metaphor of the ego-smudged mirror of consciousness that
I have used repeatedly (
Chapter
8
to
10
)
has
a Hindu parallel. Yoga teaching uses the simile of wind
blowing across water to describe the
relationship
between
self and reality. While the wind blows , the water's surface
- the mirror -
is fragmented, shift-ing, the 'reality' it reflects
continuously disrupted into half-truths
/
Page
215 /
and
confusing images. However, when the wind stops, the
surface of the water like that of the mirror, becomes still
and perfect, reflecting the wholesome majesty of God, beheld
in motionless
serenity.
Hence,
the origin of the much misunderstood word 'nirvana', (
nir = beyond; vana = wind
).
Moreover,
Eastern religions seem to have arrived by mystical
contemplation and insight at an understanding of the deep
structure of physical reality that Western science has only
recently been able to formulate in empirical mathematical
terms . Consider these two descriptions of the nature of
time, as quoted by Fritjof Capra in his well-known text,
The Tao of Physics
It
is believed by most that time passes; in actual fact it
stays
where
it is.This idea of passing may be called time, but
it is an
incorrect
idea,for since one sees it only as passing,one
cannot
understand
that it just stays where it is.
Zen master
Dogen
This
passage captures the essence of the relativistic picture of
time.
A
further insight into time comes from a Buddhist
text:
It
was taught by the Buddha oh Monks that
the past, the
future
physical
space
and individuals are nothing but names,
forms
of
thought, words of common useage, merely superficial
realities.
This
passage not only encapsulates the modern scientific view of
our subjective sense of time , with its false tense
structure (past present future); it also aptly summarises
the formative role of language in the creation of the
ego-self.
Is
all I have done in this book retell, in the imagery of
science, a story of reality that has been known to mystics
for centuries? In one sense the answer is no. I have tried
to derive my argument entirely from known scientific
premises, attempting at all times to keep my logic
internally consistent. However, in another sense the answer
is yes. I have already said that the linear logic of the
left brain has, from one point of view, been compelled to
create science so that it could 'see' in its own conceptual
way, the image of unity that the right brain had, through
intuition, glimpsed aeons ago.
This
leads me to an adventurous speculation. The time when many
of the 'deep myths' of our species crystallised out - about
5000 to 3000 years ago in the West - corresponds remarkably
with the period of the Fall, the emergence of the ego-self.
At this
/
Page
216 /
transition
stage of human evolution, consciousness was by the
definition of my argument, ber in highly evolved individuals
because the confounding distractions of the still evolving
ego had not yet hardened into their final form. It is not
surprising that the visionaries or prophets of that period
possessed a more powerful insight than we do today,
submerged as we are in the fallacy of our tick-tock time.
What
I am suggesting is that the prophets who formulated the deep
intuitive insights common to the major religions of humanity
were in some sense tuned in to the future,'seeing the dim
and far-off image of knowledge still unborn, listening
perhaps to the holistic message of a science thousands of
years away, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries of
the modern era I propose that this is precisely what
consciousness recognises, not just a premonition of the past
but a memory of the
future.
Stephen
Hawking
Quest
for a Theory of Everything
The
story of his life and work Kitty Ferguson
1991
Page
95
"
A few physicits like to make a connection between an
observer-dependent universe and some of the ideas in Eastern
mysticism: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Tao-
/
Page
96 /
ism.
They get no encouragement from Hawking, who says "The
universe of Eastern mysticism is an
illusion."
When
they parted from Brother Reanney they did so with great
sadness, knowing his work was coming to an end.
They had talked well into the night, and, unless you had
actually been there you would never have known the joy of it
all. Remember how they had laughed, oh my goodness me, how
they had laughed, cried their eyes
out.
Then
he was gone.
Hence
the sadness.
The
scribe writ dog spells god backwards
Page
218
"
The father of the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation'of
quant-um mechanics , Niels Bohr speculated as far back as
1958 that key points in the regulatory mechanisms of the
brain might be so delicately balanced that they could be
affected by quantum me-chanical events. Significantly,
eminent brain biologist John.C.Eccles seems to agree. As
Eccles has observed
: If
one uses the expressive terminology
the 'ghost' (the
quantum mechanical event ) operates a
'machine' (the brain),
not of ropes and pulleys, valves and pipes, but of
microscopic spatio-temporal patterns of activity
in the neuronal net woven
by synaptic connexions of ten thousand million neurones, and
even then only by
operating on neurones
that
are momentarily poised close to a just-threshold level of
excitability.
This
means that the Y node choices that are almost
evenly
/
Page
219 /
balanced
between two outcomes are most likely to be susceptible to
quantum influences because it is only in these
near-equipoise situations that the quantum flunctuations are
the 'feather on the scale' that tips the balance one way or
the other."
"
Quantum
fluctuations could also express those thoughts that come to
us 'in a flash'or 'out of no where'. I wonder what role, if
any, they play in intuition. It is possible that the neural
centre that 'sees' unity, no matter how much it is
'perfected' by unselfishness, is incapable of determining
when it will have its deeper insights. That may well still
be a matter of complete chance, or, on the above hypothesis,
of quasi-chance and non-causal cross-linkaging. If some Y
node choices were quantum in nature,
a
profound and enduring link would be established between the
dynamics of con-sciousness and the structure of
the cosmos itself.
It is not in the sense of a presently available
scientific
theory
that I intuitively sense a 'rightness' in Hoyles idea but in
the sense of a song of truth, an insight. It may take
science years to formulate such a concept in a mathematical
way that will win acceptance.
However
one prediction does seem possible now. The con-straints
placed on quantum events by the need to maintain
consistency
in the loop must constitute one of the great ordering
principles of nature. Such an ordering principle
could require a profound modi-fication of the laws of
quantum mechanics which are rooted in and dependent on the
statistical principals of probability and randomness. (It
was this indeterminate character of quantum mechanics that
caused Einstein to complain that God 'did not play dice with
the world'.) To maintain consistency in the loop, many
quantum events could not be random: they would have to be
linked, in the non-local way so characteristic of quantum
mechanics. Could this linkage correspond to (and explain)
the principle of synchronicity formulated by
psychologist Carl Jung and quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli
and others ? "
The
scribe felt like writing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
.
Page
219
"
Synchronicity refers to the apparently inexplicable
coincidences that crop up from time to time. We all have
experiences of this type.
Page
220
For
no apparent reason you may suddenly think of a friend you
have not seen for years at the very moment
When
the phone rings and you discover he/she has just landed in
town and wants to visit The quantum event that
caused you to think of the person at the very instant he/she
was thinking of you may result from the need to preserve the
internal consistency of a quantum world closed back upon
itself to form a loop of time.
The
self-consistency concept may also help to explain what
scientists call the anthropic principle. This
refers not just to the coincidences of human life, but to
cosmic
coincidences.
"
If
the fundamental constants of physics were readjusted by just
a tiny fraction, the universe would become inhospitable to
life
"
"Physicists
from Paul
Dirac to Paul
Davies
have also pointed out that the cosmos seems to be
sensitively built on a number of quite amazing coincidences.
In particular, the large number10/40 crops up in some of the
most basic relationships in
physics."
"
The
letters and numbers on the left refer to qualities or
relation-ships that have fundamental importance in physics;
their meaning need not concern us
-
it
is the fact that the number 10/40 crops up so regularly in
the context of the parameters which determine the structure
of the universe that is so remarkable.
The
anthropic principle says that all these 'coincidences'create
the special kind of cosmic conditions needed to produce
us. The puzzle this presents dissolves, however if
consciousness inter-
/
Page
221 /
acts
with matter by means of quantum events in the brain because
the spacetime loop can then only maintain its self-
consistency by creating and preserving just those conditions
which permit consciousness to
flourish.
Consciousness,
in this context, does not mean the average mode of human
consciousness at this moment in evolution, it means whatever
completed limit consciousness may reach in future time.
The cosmos then emerges as the ultimate feedback loop
and consciousness is a created product of its own antecedent
activity.
This
idea has many similarities to the bootstrap principle
formu-lated by physicist Geoffrey Chew (which defines all
basic constituents of the real world in terms of their
mutually self-consistent relation-ships) It is also a cousin
of John Wheeler's concept of the universe as a 'self-exited
circuit' in which the cosmos comes into being by retroactive
causation, that is by events in the future propagating
backwards in time to cause events in the
past.
This
is a very bold, almost rash speculation and it invites the
obvious criticism from a scientific cynic, 'if these
synchronicities which underpin consistency are real, if they
exist they must show up somewhere as mathematical
regularities. OK where are they
?'.
To
explore this issue, we must look at the mathematics of
randomness. And up front, we encounter a suprising
fact.
It
is difficult, if not impossible, to say with confidence that
a given number sequence that appears random in any one
context is in fact random in an absolute sense Most
seemingly random numbers when compared, for example by
adding or subtracting, would give further numbers which
themselves would seem to be
random.
However,
consider the sequence 31415926535897
(1)
This
passes all currently-available tests for
randomness.
Now com-pare it with the sequence 20304815424786
(2)
Which
also qualifies as a wholly random number. On the face of it,
we simply have two random numbers. However, if we
subtract the lower sequence (2) from the higher (1), with
the 'wrinkle' that if we get a negative number we add 10 to
the result, we obtain the
sequence 111111111111111
This
is strikingly non-random.These two 'random' numbers thus
have a special property. Heinz Pagels,who gives this example
in his book The Cosmic Code, draws from this
illustration a conclu-
/
Page
222 /
sion
that goes to the heart of my argument about synchronistic
cross-linkaging . He says:
This illustrates that two random sequences can be
correlated-
each
is individually chaotic
but,
if properly compared by
using
some rule, then a non-random
pattern appears.
As
Brother Reanney continued his tale the scribe looked on in
some amaze though not as mazed as
some
If
I am right, analgous cross-linkages at the quantum level may
be the fine gossamer threads, fragile in themselves, but
indestructible in their collective strength, that hold the
cosmos in a self-consistent loop of
becoming.
Y
nodes, choices, thus emerge as the determinants of the
pattern of our psychological development. Because of them,
we
create our own heaven, our own hell, we create ourselves, we
create the very fabric of the
world."
With
this discussion of synchronicity and self- consistency, we
have arrived at the point where we can begin to see the
strange relation-ship between consciousness and the
universe, between the 'thought' within and the 'thing'
without.
We
have established that consciousness cannot be treated
sepa-rately from the 'reality' it observes. We can assert
this confidently. It is now a (virtually) unchallengeable
maxim of quantum mechanics that each act of observation
causes
the ripple of possibilities of the quantum wave to
'concretise into entities with an observable and measureable
existence. In Chapter 9, I postulated that consciousness is
that unifying activity in the brain that 'sees' one in
many.
However,
conscious-ness is not just a passive reciever. By its
choices, it creates unities. Indeed, its very essence is
that it acts as a nodal integrator between the quantum
ripples of possibility that emanate from both past and
future. It is if you like, the reality slit into which
multiple ripples
/
Page
223 /
of
possibility enter, leaving the temporally symmetric quantum
world and 'falling' into the one-way world of matter which
decays with
time.
Wolf has summarised this viewpoint
admirably:
Our
minds [i.e. consciousness] are thus tuned
to
multiple realities. The freely associating mind is able to
pass across time barriers, sensing the future and
reap-raising the past. Our minds are time machines, able to
sense the flow of possibility waves from both the past and
the future. In my view, there cannot be anything like
existence without this higher form of quantum reality.
All
this sounds highly abstract, remote from the kind of
consciousness you and I experience now. So let
me
bring
the message closer to home. Think back again to a moment
when you suddenly felt you really understood something you
had not understood before.It may have been a mathematical
problem you had been a mathematical problem you had been
wrestling with for days. Suddenly, after hours of
frustration, the answer was there-complete and
perfect.
This
is the essence of insight. Things hitherto separate and
unconnected suddenly 'click together'. The pieces of the
jigsaw slide into place. As I have stressed, this
integrative faculty is the hallmark of
consciousness The understanding that follows a 'Eureka'
moment is not a surface comprehension; it is a 'deep
knowing' with you for life precisely because it
is part of a wider multiform consciousness, of which your
mind is but a single unit. In deep knowing you become part
of the self unfolding of the cosmos.
Think
about this in terms of time.The answer you sought existed
prior to your discovery of it. What
happened in your flash of understanding was that your
individual consciousness suddenly 'caught up'with a truth
already 'known'. It tapped into the completed, unitive
consciousness that underpins the closed feedback loop of
becoming . What you experienced was a faint fore-taste of
the final act in the evolution
of
Consciousness,
a memory of total togetherness, when the distinction between
observer and observed vanishes
completely.
One
of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Werner
Heisenberg, said of his subject 'The common
division of the world into subject and object, inner
world and outer, body and soul, is no longer adequate'.
In saying this he, a scientist found himself using
/
Page 224 /
the
language of mysticism. Compare Heisenberg's words with those
of the Dominican monk Meister Eckart, 'the knower and
the known are one'. or the words of the Indian
philosopher Krishnamurti, 'consciousness is its
content'and ' there is neither the outer nor the
inner but only the whole. The experiencer is the
experienced
the thinker is the thought'.
"
Here
then is the longed -for end of the age old road. Here
science and religion speak with the same voice, each
subtending and validating the other. Here confusion ends and
contradictions cease. All things are
one.
Even
the distinction between the inner and outer, singer and song
fades in the full light of completed
consciousness.
Even
now, today, here, still trapped in time, if we strain our
ears to their limit, we can just hear the strains
of that different music'from the far shore the final chorus
sounding' as Whitman said Awhisper of tomorrow reaching into
today. More than a beacon of hope, more than a promise of
things, a commitment from our higher selves to their lowlier
foundations, a conviction that the creative evolution which
fashioned man from microbe will fashion God from man,no,
has fashioned God from man.From round the closed
arc of time, the time free God speaks to his time trapped
children, who are both his parents and his
heirs.
|