In this article we will travel from large to small in two ways; for the first, we will travel on the thoughtship of philosophy; for the second our minds will hurtle down to almost nothing on the abstract vehicle of particle physics. On the first journey the last stop is transcendence; on the second it is the theory of everything (TOE).We will finish by interpreting where we've been.
1. Almost Nothing, The Journey of Simone Weil
Simone Weil (1909-1943) is very hard to categorize. She was a social activist, and was sometimes referred to as "the Red Saint,"although she never joined the Communist party, and eventually became highly critical of communism. She is best known for her religious philosophy. Some refer to her as a Christian mystic, although she never converted to Christianity and would probably have objected to the term, "mystic." Albert Camus held her in the highest regard, for him she was "the only great spirit of our times." In contrast, Charles de Gaulle thought she was "crazy." Still others refer to her as the greatest female philosopher who ever lived.
The aphorisms about life, nature and God, collected in a book after her death entitled, "Gravity and Grace," are astounding--at least that's this author's opinion. Inwardly she experienced God; she was well aware of the outward absence of God as well. In this essay, our journey begins with the following aphorism: "Every order which transcends another can only be introduced into it under the form of something infinitely small."
This pithy statement might seem inconsequential at first, but that would be incorrect, for this aphorism contains a great and essential truth. Weil did not elaborate; the sentence came from her notebooks and was not "fleshed out" for publication. Putting muscle onto this skeletal framework results in a body whose message is of great philosophical and religious import.
Let us first consider the largest order to be transcended: space. (Space is something and is never empty; what we refer to as "empty space" is the vacuum, a volume containing no or very very little matter. This vacuum is seething with activity at the magnitude at which space breaks down, the Planck scale, which is unimaginably small.) From our perspective, space is the void. If we refer to substance as matter, the universe is much much much more space than substance. Even our own solar system is mostly space; all the known planets could easily fit into the space between Earth and the moon. Earth is 93 million miles from the sun; this is defined as one astronomical unit. Neptune, the farthest away from the sun of the eight known planets, is over thirty astronomical units from the source of its faint day. Recently, there has been convincing evidence, based on the gravitational behavior of planetoids father away than Neptune, of a ninth planet. Its calculated orbit extends to 100 astronomical units! Beyond that, the huge stretches of interstellar space begin.
To gauge the size of the visible universe, distance is calculated in light-years. The human mind can only mathematically comprehend a light-year. Light traveling 186,000 miles per second covers a lot of space in one year. Yet as a measure of the size of the universe a light-year is very, very small. Our own galaxy imeasures 100,000 light-years across! Andromeda, the closest galaxy to us is about 2.5 million light-years away! The light from the galaxies farthest away from us has taken over 13 billion years to reach our eyes! Invisible to the naked eye, these large bodies appear as mere specks even to the Hubble telescope--to put it mildly, there is a lot of space between them and us that from our non-mathematical perspective, it might as well be considered an infinite distance. It doesn't stop even there, however--the visible universe is thought to be only a fraction of the actual universe, invisible to us because not enough time has elapsed since the universe came into being for it to reach our eyes. Yes, it doesn't stop even there; many scientists assert--string theory demands it--that there might be other universes, perhaps an infinite number of them. Space, Space, space!
Yet to us space is made negligible due to an "infinitely small" element that transcends it. When we look at the night sky, it is not space which impresses us, but the sparsely dispersed stars which shine through it. The volume of space taken up by suns and planets compared to the volume of matterless space is truly infinitesimal. Yet it is this matter--(we exclude here dark matter which is about five times the mass of the total amount of planets and stars in the universe, since we cannot see it)--which gives space definition. Space for us is the background. The infinitely smaller element of heavenly bodies transcends it.
We could view habitable planets as the next small order which transcends a larger one. There might be billions of them, but their total mass compared to the total mass of stars and uninhabitable planets is infinitely small. But let's skip to the reason why we are so interested in hospitable planets: life. The bio-mass of Earth is infinitely small when compared to the mass of the entire planet, not to mention the total mass of suns and planets in the universe. We would all agree that from our perspective life is a smaller yet higher order which transcends the vast order of inanimate matter.
Once again, we can consider the next higher order as intelligent or multicellular life, but let's jump to the most important one for us: human life. It comprises a fraction of the Earth's bio-mass and has only been on the planet for a million years or so of the four and a half billion years of Earth's existence.
That human intelligence is the highest order known is demonstrated by the fact that the universe does not understand itself; a stone has no science; the tremendous size of the universe fits, as it were, snugly inside the human skull--an astonishing "miracle!"
Simone Weil did not intend for us to stop with human intelligence; for her, the supernatural being called God, is behind all existence. The divine is an infinitely small element because it would overwhelm human existence if it were any larger. For Weil, this ultimate higher order gives everything else definition. It is so small that it is almost nothing; there is, in fact, no evidence for it.
This is the ultimate God-of-the-gaps position. It is non-falsifiable, meaning that it is not a scientific view. It is, however, a respectable view, it is natural to intuit that God exists. In our summary, we shall discuss whether this view is necessary for one to consider oneself religious.
Addendum: Almost Nothing
Simone Weil had a great influence on me, especially in the past. Here is a poem I wrote twenty-five years ago, excerpted from my first collection of poems, Dance Fire Dance, which demonstrates how important Weil's axiom was--and is--for me:
Almost Nothing
Every order which transcends another can only be introduced into it as something infinitely small--Simone Weil
Compared to nothing, what is matter?
A few grains in an empty silo;
a few flecks of dust scattered
here and there through a deep tarn;
seen cosmically or quantumly,
nearly everything is space,
almost everything's nothing at all.
Compared to mater, what is life?
A lichen patch on surface rock;
upon vast, ancient inorganics,
a few unstable molecules
propagating selves on top,
a fraction of this tiny planet's,
almost nothing compared to the sun.
And, capable of self-removal,
an inch on evolution's scale,
compared to the rest of life,
what are we? Almost nothing;
there are more germs in you now
than the number of people in China,
ancient and modern, combined.
(June bug on a mountain stream
approaching a vast waterfall,
what is an individual?
Almost nothing; can one blame you
if you wish to close your eyes
and wish to create yourself, a god
stalking the primeval forest?)
When has the power of prayer
cut through death's closing-in vines
to lead us where spring water falls
in the jungle of necessity?
What is superhuman grace
compared to the world of blind force?
Again, almost nothing at all.
ll. Effective Theory--The Journey of Physics
This journey is similar to the first in that the road leads us from largest to smallest; it differs, however, in a very significant way: it is a scientific journey. The description of each realm we pass through must be proven by the scientific method, that is, by (direct or indirect) observation; if it isn't we can proceed no farther. The string theory has devised a plausible path for the last steps toward the Theory of Everything; although eloquent, many questions remain. It is unproven and remains a theory. (Einstein's theory of general relativity which asserted that the mass of an object bends light wasn't demonstrated until 1919. The position of Mercury appeared closer to the sun than it actually is, due to the bending of its light by the mass of the sun. Breaking news: today, February 11, 2016, it was announced that LIGO--the laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory-- confirmed the existence of gravitational waves--101 years after Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted their existence!) Exploration of the final steps are impossible; the distances are too small necessitating an unimaginably huge amount of energy to explore them. However, a piece of the puzzle might be found at the energy level of CERN or at another collider in the near future. This would be of tremendous importance and is a top priority. It would be a good indication that the string theory actually describes the way nature works.
We will now travel from huge to tiny via effective theories. What is an effective theory? It is a technical term. An effective theory is one that describes the workings of nature without explaining why nature works in a specific way. It is necessarily incomplete--the theory of everything, however, is not an effective theory, it is the final theory.
A good example is cosmology. To understand the movement of all heavenly bodies you need to know only two things: mass and gravity. Newton discovered the laws of gravity in the seventeenth century. Utilizing them, Kepler determined the orbits of the planets with great accuracy. Once the mass of an object is known--even the entire mass of a galaxy can be determined--its movements can be demonstrated and observed to be in perfect accord with Newton's laws. (Stars do not move in accordance with the gravity supplied by heavenly bodies; there has to be a huge amount of unseen matter to explain their movements. This invisible matter is dark matter; scientists have theories of what dark matter might be; none of them has as yet been proven.)
Newton, however, had no idea how gravity worked. For the effective theory of cosmology this knowledge is not necessary. To help explain a particular effective theory, we need more information; this is called input, which corresponds to the "higher order" of Weil's maxim. What is the underlying structure of mass?
The next effective theory on our way to the final theory is the theory of atoms. You don't have to know anything about the inner structure of atoms at this level. All we need know are the elements and the electromagnetic force, which enables atoms to form molecules. It makes no difference if one knows about the existence of quarks for the effective theory of atomic behavior.. An important question, however, remains unanswered: What is the structure of atoms which causes them to behave the way they do? As we proceed from the effective theory of the behavior of atoms, we need quantum input. The particles which compose the quantum world are referred to in aggregate as the Standard Model. The essential and last piece to be discovered was the Higgs boson, which occurred in 2015. The Standard Model is now complete.
The Higgs boson gives mass to quantum particles. But why are the masses just what they are; what is the cause of the mass of the electron, for instance? For this we need the input of the final theory, the Theory of Everything. At this level, bosons, various examples of which are responsible for the four forces of nature, (gravity, the electromagnetic, the weak and the strong forces), are very different from fermions, the matter particles. In the final theory, fermions and bosons are interchangeable. Absolute unity exists at this level; no further explanation is necessary or scientifically possible. Absolute unity simply is.
Weil's journey is plausible--from our point of view; many would agree that the hierarchy of existence culminates in God. The scientific leads to a theory which explains why things are the way they are. God of the one voyage and absolute unity of the other are not the same thing, unless God is viewed in an absolutely impersonal way. Weil's "infinitely small" higher order ("extremley small" would be a better term) corresponds to the input of each effective theory all the way down until unity is reached and effective theories are no longer needed.
One is a journey of the heart; the other is a journey of the mind. But what is the source of both the heart and the mind in which both journeys exist?
Conclusion
We will answer that question shortly. First, I must assert that my Weltanschaung, my world-view, has changed somewhat over the years. I can no longer follow Weil's journey to its last step, at least the last step as she envisioned it. For her, God is a supernatural phenomenon, that is, God exists out there, and is able to intervene, however sparingly, in human history. In other words, God exists beyond consciousness and not only within it. I do not find a shred of evidence for this. For me the source of both the heart and the mind is consciousness, and consciousness alone.
Buddha believed that when anyone asserts a dogmatic statement about ultimate reality, the only proper response is, "Nahi, nahi," "no, no" that is, "not this, not that."
Jesus is the only begotten Son of God? Muhammad is the final prophet? The Lord presented the Jews with the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai? Nahi, nahi, nahi! Such assertions are metaphors--and can be very meaningful as such--but they are not facts. I don't understand how any twenty-first century mind can believe the contrary--although some very educated people, much smarter than I am, still do. But they are apparently becoming rarer and rare.
The all is not lost, however. It can indeed be asserted that God exists within. As Jesus of Nazareth said, "The Kingdom of God is within you."
As the great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Zen teaches that a diamond of pure consciousness exists within us. One can access it through meditation as one rises about superficial concerns. We eventually not only realize but fully experience, at least in our best moments, that everything is connected. This is wisdom. One puts wisdom into practice through selfless action. This is love.
Mind you, I stated that "it can be asserted that God exists." It is not necessary. One may call the God within the inner light, as the Quakers do, or "the still small voice" or the core of conscience, or well, cosmic consciousness. Call it any awesome name you like, it does not matter. That you access it and act upon it, however, matters a great deal.
One might object that a God that exists merely (in Shakespeare's time "merely" meant "entirely") in consciousness is not the living God, but just another idea, a fantasy, albeit a noble one. For God to be real, according to this view, God must have an objective existence. But what does objective existence man?
Modern physics can help us here. Like the ancient Hindus, some scientists are convinced that it is consciousness that in a very real sense creates the world. Many top physicists assert that there is no objective reality without the observer. (There is, of course no observation without consciousness.) John Wheeler, one of the greatest scientists of the past century, was convinced that observation has a central role in the nature of reality. I will close with a quote by the eminent particle physicist, Andrei Linde, as quoted in Michio Kaku's wonderful book, "Parallel Worlds":
For me, as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers...The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I can't make any sense of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...In the absence of observers, the universe is dead.
Another way of saying this: consciousness creates "objective" reality by interacting with the ghostly quantum world which cannot be called objective in any real sense. (Caveat: observation cannot choose which quantum outcome arises. Volition has nothing to do with it; it is an entirely impersonal process. You can't win the lottery with the "power of positive thinking!") Therefore, what is outside us is not independent of what is inside us. In a real sense, therefore, outside is inside. Thus, the Kingdom of God within us is also the Kingdom of God in our world. It takes a leap of faith to believe in an external God, that is, a deity with an independent existence beyond consciousness who controls everything; there is, as we have asserted, absolutely no evidence in the material world that supports this view. This belief, however, as we have is unnecessary. Wisdom is ultimately all we need to know; love is ultimately all we need do. What we experience is consciousness, and it is enough.
In my view, this is the only way to be deeply religious without coming in conflict with science.
Addendum: The Actual Apple
Everything is connected with everything else; a fully separate existence is an illusion. As we have asserted, this is wisdom. I would like to conclude with a poem by Michael Ende, which I translated years ago. It is the same journey as the two we took in this article, except in reverse, namely, from the small to the large. Feel free to substitute yourself for the apple!
The Actual Apple
A writer and a realist, well known
1. Almost Nothing, The Journey of Simone Weil
Simone Weil (1909-1943) is very hard to categorize. She was a social activist, and was sometimes referred to as "the Red Saint,"although she never joined the Communist party, and eventually became highly critical of communism. She is best known for her religious philosophy. Some refer to her as a Christian mystic, although she never converted to Christianity and would probably have objected to the term, "mystic." Albert Camus held her in the highest regard, for him she was "the only great spirit of our times." In contrast, Charles de Gaulle thought she was "crazy." Still others refer to her as the greatest female philosopher who ever lived.
The aphorisms about life, nature and God, collected in a book after her death entitled, "Gravity and Grace," are astounding--at least that's this author's opinion. Inwardly she experienced God; she was well aware of the outward absence of God as well. In this essay, our journey begins with the following aphorism: "Every order which transcends another can only be introduced into it under the form of something infinitely small."
This pithy statement might seem inconsequential at first, but that would be incorrect, for this aphorism contains a great and essential truth. Weil did not elaborate; the sentence came from her notebooks and was not "fleshed out" for publication. Putting muscle onto this skeletal framework results in a body whose message is of great philosophical and religious import.
Let us first consider the largest order to be transcended: space. (Space is something and is never empty; what we refer to as "empty space" is the vacuum, a volume containing no or very very little matter. This vacuum is seething with activity at the magnitude at which space breaks down, the Planck scale, which is unimaginably small.) From our perspective, space is the void. If we refer to substance as matter, the universe is much much much more space than substance. Even our own solar system is mostly space; all the known planets could easily fit into the space between Earth and the moon. Earth is 93 million miles from the sun; this is defined as one astronomical unit. Neptune, the farthest away from the sun of the eight known planets, is over thirty astronomical units from the source of its faint day. Recently, there has been convincing evidence, based on the gravitational behavior of planetoids father away than Neptune, of a ninth planet. Its calculated orbit extends to 100 astronomical units! Beyond that, the huge stretches of interstellar space begin.
To gauge the size of the visible universe, distance is calculated in light-years. The human mind can only mathematically comprehend a light-year. Light traveling 186,000 miles per second covers a lot of space in one year. Yet as a measure of the size of the universe a light-year is very, very small. Our own galaxy imeasures 100,000 light-years across! Andromeda, the closest galaxy to us is about 2.5 million light-years away! The light from the galaxies farthest away from us has taken over 13 billion years to reach our eyes! Invisible to the naked eye, these large bodies appear as mere specks even to the Hubble telescope--to put it mildly, there is a lot of space between them and us that from our non-mathematical perspective, it might as well be considered an infinite distance. It doesn't stop even there, however--the visible universe is thought to be only a fraction of the actual universe, invisible to us because not enough time has elapsed since the universe came into being for it to reach our eyes. Yes, it doesn't stop even there; many scientists assert--string theory demands it--that there might be other universes, perhaps an infinite number of them. Space, Space, space!
Yet to us space is made negligible due to an "infinitely small" element that transcends it. When we look at the night sky, it is not space which impresses us, but the sparsely dispersed stars which shine through it. The volume of space taken up by suns and planets compared to the volume of matterless space is truly infinitesimal. Yet it is this matter--(we exclude here dark matter which is about five times the mass of the total amount of planets and stars in the universe, since we cannot see it)--which gives space definition. Space for us is the background. The infinitely smaller element of heavenly bodies transcends it.
We could view habitable planets as the next small order which transcends a larger one. There might be billions of them, but their total mass compared to the total mass of stars and uninhabitable planets is infinitely small. But let's skip to the reason why we are so interested in hospitable planets: life. The bio-mass of Earth is infinitely small when compared to the mass of the entire planet, not to mention the total mass of suns and planets in the universe. We would all agree that from our perspective life is a smaller yet higher order which transcends the vast order of inanimate matter.
Once again, we can consider the next higher order as intelligent or multicellular life, but let's jump to the most important one for us: human life. It comprises a fraction of the Earth's bio-mass and has only been on the planet for a million years or so of the four and a half billion years of Earth's existence.
That human intelligence is the highest order known is demonstrated by the fact that the universe does not understand itself; a stone has no science; the tremendous size of the universe fits, as it were, snugly inside the human skull--an astonishing "miracle!"
Simone Weil did not intend for us to stop with human intelligence; for her, the supernatural being called God, is behind all existence. The divine is an infinitely small element because it would overwhelm human existence if it were any larger. For Weil, this ultimate higher order gives everything else definition. It is so small that it is almost nothing; there is, in fact, no evidence for it.
This is the ultimate God-of-the-gaps position. It is non-falsifiable, meaning that it is not a scientific view. It is, however, a respectable view, it is natural to intuit that God exists. In our summary, we shall discuss whether this view is necessary for one to consider oneself religious.
Addendum: Almost Nothing
Simone Weil had a great influence on me, especially in the past. Here is a poem I wrote twenty-five years ago, excerpted from my first collection of poems, Dance Fire Dance, which demonstrates how important Weil's axiom was--and is--for me:
Almost Nothing
Every order which transcends another can only be introduced into it as something infinitely small--Simone Weil
Compared to nothing, what is matter?
A few grains in an empty silo;
a few flecks of dust scattered
here and there through a deep tarn;
seen cosmically or quantumly,
nearly everything is space,
almost everything's nothing at all.
Compared to mater, what is life?
A lichen patch on surface rock;
upon vast, ancient inorganics,
a few unstable molecules
propagating selves on top,
a fraction of this tiny planet's,
almost nothing compared to the sun.
And, capable of self-removal,
an inch on evolution's scale,
compared to the rest of life,
what are we? Almost nothing;
there are more germs in you now
than the number of people in China,
ancient and modern, combined.
(June bug on a mountain stream
approaching a vast waterfall,
what is an individual?
Almost nothing; can one blame you
if you wish to close your eyes
and wish to create yourself, a god
stalking the primeval forest?)
When has the power of prayer
cut through death's closing-in vines
to lead us where spring water falls
in the jungle of necessity?
What is superhuman grace
compared to the world of blind force?
Again, almost nothing at all.
ll. Effective Theory--The Journey of Physics
This journey is similar to the first in that the road leads us from largest to smallest; it differs, however, in a very significant way: it is a scientific journey. The description of each realm we pass through must be proven by the scientific method, that is, by (direct or indirect) observation; if it isn't we can proceed no farther. The string theory has devised a plausible path for the last steps toward the Theory of Everything; although eloquent, many questions remain. It is unproven and remains a theory. (Einstein's theory of general relativity which asserted that the mass of an object bends light wasn't demonstrated until 1919. The position of Mercury appeared closer to the sun than it actually is, due to the bending of its light by the mass of the sun. Breaking news: today, February 11, 2016, it was announced that LIGO--the laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory-- confirmed the existence of gravitational waves--101 years after Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted their existence!) Exploration of the final steps are impossible; the distances are too small necessitating an unimaginably huge amount of energy to explore them. However, a piece of the puzzle might be found at the energy level of CERN or at another collider in the near future. This would be of tremendous importance and is a top priority. It would be a good indication that the string theory actually describes the way nature works.
We will now travel from huge to tiny via effective theories. What is an effective theory? It is a technical term. An effective theory is one that describes the workings of nature without explaining why nature works in a specific way. It is necessarily incomplete--the theory of everything, however, is not an effective theory, it is the final theory.
A good example is cosmology. To understand the movement of all heavenly bodies you need to know only two things: mass and gravity. Newton discovered the laws of gravity in the seventeenth century. Utilizing them, Kepler determined the orbits of the planets with great accuracy. Once the mass of an object is known--even the entire mass of a galaxy can be determined--its movements can be demonstrated and observed to be in perfect accord with Newton's laws. (Stars do not move in accordance with the gravity supplied by heavenly bodies; there has to be a huge amount of unseen matter to explain their movements. This invisible matter is dark matter; scientists have theories of what dark matter might be; none of them has as yet been proven.)
Newton, however, had no idea how gravity worked. For the effective theory of cosmology this knowledge is not necessary. To help explain a particular effective theory, we need more information; this is called input, which corresponds to the "higher order" of Weil's maxim. What is the underlying structure of mass?
The next effective theory on our way to the final theory is the theory of atoms. You don't have to know anything about the inner structure of atoms at this level. All we need know are the elements and the electromagnetic force, which enables atoms to form molecules. It makes no difference if one knows about the existence of quarks for the effective theory of atomic behavior.. An important question, however, remains unanswered: What is the structure of atoms which causes them to behave the way they do? As we proceed from the effective theory of the behavior of atoms, we need quantum input. The particles which compose the quantum world are referred to in aggregate as the Standard Model. The essential and last piece to be discovered was the Higgs boson, which occurred in 2015. The Standard Model is now complete.
The Higgs boson gives mass to quantum particles. But why are the masses just what they are; what is the cause of the mass of the electron, for instance? For this we need the input of the final theory, the Theory of Everything. At this level, bosons, various examples of which are responsible for the four forces of nature, (gravity, the electromagnetic, the weak and the strong forces), are very different from fermions, the matter particles. In the final theory, fermions and bosons are interchangeable. Absolute unity exists at this level; no further explanation is necessary or scientifically possible. Absolute unity simply is.
Weil's journey is plausible--from our point of view; many would agree that the hierarchy of existence culminates in God. The scientific leads to a theory which explains why things are the way they are. God of the one voyage and absolute unity of the other are not the same thing, unless God is viewed in an absolutely impersonal way. Weil's "infinitely small" higher order ("extremley small" would be a better term) corresponds to the input of each effective theory all the way down until unity is reached and effective theories are no longer needed.
One is a journey of the heart; the other is a journey of the mind. But what is the source of both the heart and the mind in which both journeys exist?
Conclusion
We will answer that question shortly. First, I must assert that my Weltanschaung, my world-view, has changed somewhat over the years. I can no longer follow Weil's journey to its last step, at least the last step as she envisioned it. For her, God is a supernatural phenomenon, that is, God exists out there, and is able to intervene, however sparingly, in human history. In other words, God exists beyond consciousness and not only within it. I do not find a shred of evidence for this. For me the source of both the heart and the mind is consciousness, and consciousness alone.
Buddha believed that when anyone asserts a dogmatic statement about ultimate reality, the only proper response is, "Nahi, nahi," "no, no" that is, "not this, not that."
Jesus is the only begotten Son of God? Muhammad is the final prophet? The Lord presented the Jews with the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai? Nahi, nahi, nahi! Such assertions are metaphors--and can be very meaningful as such--but they are not facts. I don't understand how any twenty-first century mind can believe the contrary--although some very educated people, much smarter than I am, still do. But they are apparently becoming rarer and rare.
The all is not lost, however. It can indeed be asserted that God exists within. As Jesus of Nazareth said, "The Kingdom of God is within you."
As the great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Zen teaches that a diamond of pure consciousness exists within us. One can access it through meditation as one rises about superficial concerns. We eventually not only realize but fully experience, at least in our best moments, that everything is connected. This is wisdom. One puts wisdom into practice through selfless action. This is love.
Mind you, I stated that "it can be asserted that God exists." It is not necessary. One may call the God within the inner light, as the Quakers do, or "the still small voice" or the core of conscience, or well, cosmic consciousness. Call it any awesome name you like, it does not matter. That you access it and act upon it, however, matters a great deal.
One might object that a God that exists merely (in Shakespeare's time "merely" meant "entirely") in consciousness is not the living God, but just another idea, a fantasy, albeit a noble one. For God to be real, according to this view, God must have an objective existence. But what does objective existence man?
Modern physics can help us here. Like the ancient Hindus, some scientists are convinced that it is consciousness that in a very real sense creates the world. Many top physicists assert that there is no objective reality without the observer. (There is, of course no observation without consciousness.) John Wheeler, one of the greatest scientists of the past century, was convinced that observation has a central role in the nature of reality. I will close with a quote by the eminent particle physicist, Andrei Linde, as quoted in Michio Kaku's wonderful book, "Parallel Worlds":
For me, as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers...The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I can't make any sense of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...In the absence of observers, the universe is dead.
Another way of saying this: consciousness creates "objective" reality by interacting with the ghostly quantum world which cannot be called objective in any real sense. (Caveat: observation cannot choose which quantum outcome arises. Volition has nothing to do with it; it is an entirely impersonal process. You can't win the lottery with the "power of positive thinking!") Therefore, what is outside us is not independent of what is inside us. In a real sense, therefore, outside is inside. Thus, the Kingdom of God within us is also the Kingdom of God in our world. It takes a leap of faith to believe in an external God, that is, a deity with an independent existence beyond consciousness who controls everything; there is, as we have asserted, absolutely no evidence in the material world that supports this view. This belief, however, as we have is unnecessary. Wisdom is ultimately all we need to know; love is ultimately all we need do. What we experience is consciousness, and it is enough.
In my view, this is the only way to be deeply religious without coming in conflict with science.
Addendum: The Actual Apple
Everything is connected with everything else; a fully separate existence is an illusion. As we have asserted, this is wisdom. I would like to conclude with a poem by Michael Ende, which I translated years ago. It is the same journey as the two we took in this article, except in reverse, namely, from the small to the large. Feel free to substitute yourself for the apple!
The Actual Apple
A writer and a realist, well known
for his literality,
searched for something found at home
to delineate from A to Z:
an apple, for instance, an organic bit,
and all that goes along with it.
He described the core, the pulp, the skin,
the stem, the leaves, the branch, the tree,
the roots, the ground the roots grew in,
and Newton's Law of Gravity--
But that wasn't the actual apple at all;
he must include spring, summer, winter, and fall,
the sun and the moon and the stars--
He filled enough paper to paper a wall,
yet the ending seemed farther than quasars:
for actually he belonged there too,
this man of prose who hated verse,
and Adam and Eve and I and you
and God and the whole universe--
Finally he became fully aware
that apples are just indescribably there;
neither he nor another shall ever define
something so common, something so sublime--
He lifts his apple to the light;
smiling now, he takes a bite.
Michael Ende
--translated from the German by
Thomas Dorsett
Your comments are most welcome!
Your comments are most welcome!
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