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1. Introduction. What is reality and how to fight it
2. Dreams of disappointed physicist
3. Traditional notions of reality
4. Human world and world of God
5. World of society and world of God
6. Norma, madness, creativity
7. The quantum world: the end of classical causality
8. Tale of two: the complementarity principle and the language problem
9. Sacred text and the world
10. Left and right: the dualism of knowledge and understanding
11. Measurement, decoherence and the Schroedinger cat
12. EPR paradox and non-local quantum world
13. Symbols of the way and the issue of freedom
14. Observer of the universe
15. Irreversibility, entropy, and the problem of evil
16. Conclusion. The wind blows where it wishes
Summary
The authors, both distinguished theoretical physicists, discuss the philosophical and ethical problems of modern science. In particular, they attempt to find a correspondence between concepts of spiritual teachings and the scientific worldview, and to consider Ultimate Reality as a quantum reality where classical notions breakdown. To this end they use both the canonical texts of different religions and modern works in quantum mechanics, as well as numerous poetical illustrations. A review of biblical and indo-buddhistic traditions is presented. Various connections between science and developments in psychology, theology and linguistics are investigated. Commentaries on sacred texts are given in terms of "quantum mythology".
A number of problems are treated which are typical for contemporary philosophy of science such as the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) and Zeno paradoxes, Schroedinger's cat, Bohr's complementary principle and the structure of scientific language. Besides that, the authors consider the difference between computer "thinking" and human consciousness and more general "traditional" issues such as freedom and causality, time and eternity, sin and salvation, entropy and death, the world of humans and the World of God, female and male symbols, scripture, and creation. Ethical and axiological problems connected with the impact of modern science on the individual are discussed, as are the personal and social aspects of gaining spiritual experience and intellectual progress for scientists. New interpretations of mythological and poetical symbols might be of interest for humanitarians.
The book can be useful and facilitate spiritual growth for a wide circle of readers who seek truth in any form, or are simply interested in modern science and its relations to psychology, art and religion or just open to new knowledge.
***
And behold a bird circling before the sun, about nine cubits away. And I said to the angel, What is this bird? And he said to me, This is the guardian of the earth. And I said, Lord, how is he the guardian of the earth? Teach me. And the angel said to me, This bird flies alongside of the sun, and expanding his wings receives its fiery rays. For if he were not receiving them, the human race would not be preserved, nor any other living creature. But God appointed this bird thereto. And he expanded his wings, and I saw on his right wing very large letters, as large as the space of a threshing-floor, the size of about four thousand modii; and the letters were of gold. And the angel said to me, Read them. And I read and they ran thus: Neither earth nor heaven bring me forth, but wings of fire bring me forth. And I said, Lord, what is this bird, and what is his name? And the angel said to me, His name is called Phoenix. (APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH)
Chapter 1.
Introduction. What is reality and how to fight it
If you think about it, it all looks like a circus.
(Huikay. Outpost without gates)
Among the Soviet technical intelligentsia, worn from Narzan and state examinations in Marxism-Leninism, the word "philosophy" and its derivatives (such as "philosophizing"), to say the least, are not in high esteem. At the same time the life of this layer, as well as life in general, continued to be the testing ground for philosophical experiments. Say, what comes first - the matter or spirit? In other words, having a vodka on the open market or wanting to drink? The experiment carried out across the country in 1985-87 was conclusive proof of the correctness of philosophical idealism. Unfortunately, from millions of people standing in queues of wine departments, only few could make relevant philosophical conclusions (see, e.g., "Moscow-Petushki" by Ven. Erofeev or "Yawning Heights" by Zinoviev, related, however, to the historically earlier period). Next matter prevailed - bought vodka was drunk, and the world magically changed. In particular, there occurred an acute interest in philosophical problems, which finished often by severe hangover - to the delight of the positivists, always cautioned to discuss these issues as "unscientific." One and the same person, who before drinking did not cause any particular feelings, in booze became the best friend, and the next morning one look at his face could lead to serious consequences. Naturally the question arises - what is really this man? That is the reality? Moreover, immediately after the hangover state that reality changed again, usually for the better...
Incidentally, Russia continues to prove secondary nature of matter, in particular, the lack of any economic laws to understand anything which was happening in Russia - unfortunately or fortunately (depending on the attitude to these laws). To present long and tedious arguments over this controversial issue would be probably not very reasonable (and not tedious ones the more so, because, as stated by John K. Jerome, that the eye can not see, it is not harmful to the stomach). So we merely refer to the greatest, according to the authors' opinion, work of Russian literature of the second half of the XX century - to a Ven. Erofeev's poem "Moscow-Petushki" - everything is written there. Maybe it (Russia, not a poem, though the poem, perhaps, too ...) is truly unique, as believe many Theosophists. But then the inapplicability of economic laws to understand everyday life in Russia is just the highest manifestation of reality (say, well given to us in sensation).
You - the land not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of wrath! Conspiracy of her prophets in the midst of them - like a roaring lion ravening the prey; devoured souls, property and robbing jewelry, many widows.
(Ezekiel 22:24-25)
As we have repeatedly observed during the Russian XX century, at first, indeed, they have devoured souls, and then later robbed property and valuables. Well, multiplying the number of widows is already almost by itself, automatically. In any case, we will not find responsible for this even afternoon with fire. And, importantly, prophets do all these (Ezekiel does not say - false prophets); true prophecy is also a thing unpleasant and dangerous, and the truth (and even the Truth) can mow people down better than the plague. But the path to salvation, too, can be found only through the Truth, so that is not bad to know more about it. We're going to talk something here to the best of our more than modest forces and capabilities.
Speaking of conspiracies... Consider another example for non-obviousness of everything associated with the concept of reality (by the way, what does this word mean? Vladimir Nabokov wrote in the epilogue to "Lolita", that it does not mean anything at all without the quotes, and he was absolutely right). An example follows. A person piously believes that the whole world is under the control of nefarious conspiracy - well, let's say, of red. The obvious nonsense? But it is confirmed experimentally, and always. Say, TV showed some senior red - that's he, my dear! TV does not show any sort of red - a conspiracy! Then, for some reason, red are showing clear hostility to a person (and some, on the contrary, in their nefarious purposes pretend wishers). All of this is very real, almost like the law of gravity. This can determine life and death - in a drunken brawl with a particularly brazen red or a heart attack if you suddenly found out what color was the hair of your beloved grandfather, when they were at all. So, is the red plot real or not? For this particular person - by far! We can also imagine the combined case - when red brutally rule the world, or, on the contrary, are the sweetest people - depending on the dose. Oh, it's complicated!
So we come to the question, that is important for every human being that claims to rationality - what is the reality (as well as - and how to fight it when things are bad). First of all, we emphasize non-obviousness of concept of reality (even if you are sure of its existence). Just by this reason, philosophy is possible as something separate from art, science, ethics; disclosure of "reality" is just one of its main objectives:
I want to say that the internal beat nerve of Kant thought is the problem: I am not a ghost in this world. Or, in other words, the problem of reality. Very strange thing. Based on my experience of living and reading I have the firm conviction that the so-called idealists had some zeal, some fruitful passion to prove the reality of the world, to prove the reality of things outside of us. Whereas materialists ... had not such a zeal. This seemed self-evident for them. Therefore, very often their imagination demonstrates dull silence, the thought did not move. The hand does not get tired of beating flint metal, but the spark is not carved. This is an example of how dangerous is something taken for granted. On the other hand, in the presence of fools, it is dangerous to show zeal, proving the reality of the external world, because during the proof you make much at issue, things become uncertain and too many restrictions are imposed on human cognition and consciousness, on its ability to say something about things.
(M.K. Mamardashvili. Kantian variations)
From this point of view, Lenin's famous definition of matter (objective reality that exists apart from our consciousness and is given us in sensation) is incomplete. Sensation is a tricky thing, which is known not only to philosophers, but also to writers of anecdotes (a new means of anesthesia is developed: wool in surgeon ears... ha ha). But this is not the point. When a new concept is introduced, for example, in mathematics, it must, as a motivation, be accompanied by proof that there is at least one object with the appropriate properties. Is it possible to prove the existence of an objective reality that exists apart from our consciousness? It is unclear even as to start in such a proof. Mathematics tells us the way: if you can not, but really want, we can postulate - then the existence of an objective... etc. becomes axiomatic. This axiom is the basis for modern science in Europe (or rather, natural science), but it is rejected by almost all the rest of the developed views in the world. The definition by Lenin (at least its first part) is equivalent to the following: matter is that studied by science. At least this was the case in 1908, when "Materialism and Empiric" was written.
According to many authors, the creation of quantum physics in the first half of the twentieth century changed radically the situation, leading to a revision of the scientific understanding of reality. Around the same time, Western philosophy and theology have experienced the crisis of catastrophic XX century, especially with the First, and still more in the Second World War. For example, the mass killing of people by ethnicity (Holocaust) was widely perceived as the collapse of traditional European values. At first glance, the comparison of these revolutions (we use this word, abstracting from any evaluative sense to describe any abrupt changes in the foundations; in this sense, revolution and counter-revolution is for us one and the same) seems odd and perhaps even blasphemous. After all, the revision of the foundations of theoretical physics, as one might think, is important for few specialists (actually, this is not true, especially considering such a manifestation of the scientific revolution, like a hydrogen bomb), while political disasters of XX century cost the lives of dozens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. But it all starts always with a fairly innocuous (because "words, words, words") "metaphysical" paradoxes. Nietzsche's cry of despair, "God is dead" is transformed by imitators into intellectual exercises, followed by a loss or destruction of vital things. Truly, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has been and remains the only unforgiving sin. Science, however, from the XVIII century, more and more claims to be a closed world. Anyway, almost any philosophical or even theological construct of the last two hundred or three hundred years, are designed with an eye to the natural scientific picture of the world, even if caution means repulsion (like the attempt not to think about the black monkey from the famous story by Hodja Nasreddin).
Opening green book of sciences
I wept, and then
closed it and threw it into the river.
Science are harmful to man.
(D. Harms)
Fortunately for themselves, very, very many people actually decide insoluble problem and do not think of a monkey (i.e., the picture of the world of natural science). The simplest solution is to not think about anything, being guided by socially useful instincts and reflexes (in XX century many and convincing, although quite insulting, famous mystic and occultist Gurdjieff spoke of the "sleeping man" like clockwork machine, and he is not alone, of course). Why "fortunately"? This becomes quite clear if you think about what it is to believe for a person who takes seriously all that is taught in school. He must believe that he lives in a tiny part of the universe, which is enemy, and, in general, not adapted to the life; he does not just live on a small planet, but in the thinnest layer on the surface of this planet between space, deprived of air and riddled with deadly radiation, and compressed hot magma. Environment around him and his own body are swarming with vermin, acting at the molecular, cellular, and all other levels; at any time, they can tear it to death - if this death does not occur for any of a billion other reasons.
Slaughter works reliably,
All who need are always with the knife -
So, in the potency each is the dead,
With the exception of those who are already.
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
Also do not forget about such trifles as the inevitable transformation of the sun into a red giant with a complete incineration of closely spaced planets, and then into a white dwarf, which will be followed by a dull "peaceful" cooling or explosion. And the whole universe according to any of scientific physical models sooner or later comes to end - either to compression point and the destruction in the flame of the apocalyptic fire or to decay of matter (proton instability), eternal darkness and absolute space cold. And then all ends. At all. And, worst of all, the whole thing makes no sense. People which are really smart and sensitive, as Blaise Pascal, felt the horror of natural-scientific picture of the world even at the time of its inception in the XVII century. That feeling was not lost also later, for example:
Damned science lies
What people do not have immortality.
It's lying! And in my bail,
That science will soon kaput.
Because there is no science,
And people have immortality.
I've seen these signs.
I heard this news.
(D. Harms)
In recent history, metaphysics is closely intertwined with ethics, which defines the relationship between people and of person with God (the way of salvation). Traditional ethical teachings originated in Christianity, which was and remains the foundation of the Western world ("Western" in the broad sense, including Russia). Unfortunately, in their old forms (as in the teachings of the Fathers and in the constructions of Hegel or Kant, also originating in the end from the Christian tradition), they turned out not quite ready to give answers to the questions in a new sounding at every historical turn and tear of modern thinking person. XX century also burned by absolute scientific approach (attempting to organize personal and social life on "strictly scientific" or, in any case, strictly rational basis), and by the costs of a hysterical reaction to this approach on the part of militant irrationalism (for example, the revival of the black occult or primeval paganism with the cult of blood and semen).
The matter is that no articulated "doctrine" is generally sufficient for reliable orientation in this world. In contrast to the fallen Adam, God has complete freedom. "Divine" and the reality of God's will break all the schemes and do not fit into any framework of human tradition and, more, of the humanistic constructions.
We could say many things and never say enough. The final word is: The Lord is "the All."
(Sirach 43:29)
Praise is to your Lord, the Lord of glory, He is above what they attribute to Him!
(Quran 37:180)
Sensing this, medieval scholastics, Russian writers, classics (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) and religious philosophers of the Silver Age (Solovyov, Berdyaev, Shestov...), Western European existentialists, the following lines of Pascal and Kierkegaard, and modernist theologians fought and continue to fight on the "intractable" ethical issues. Also not surprising is growing interest in the origins of the traditional religious teachings, especially the Holy Scripture, which includes in its meaning the fullness of divine revelation and seems be the only reliable antidote to both these extremes of materialism and paganism. For the new (and correct) interpretation and understanding of the Bible one has to cry again for help to St. Spirit.
We must say that the mere reference to religion, that is, ultimately, to the "mystical" experience does not eliminate any problems. This experience confirms that the world is much more complex than the physical Universe, studied by science, but, generally speaking, it is even more terrible.
It is terrible to live in this world,
There is no comfort -
Wind howls at dawn,
Wolves bite spot.
(N. Oleinikov)
It is not too hard to feel the icy wind, showing through some holes in each point of space, and to smell after all this the fuss of monsters incomprehensible to human. You can, just as one of the heroes of the tireless promoter of all "kind of" V. Pelevin, to feel that the whole universe is stinking by fish (actually just repeating and simplifying metaphor by Pascal). Then it's better (safer) to understand nothing at all:
To tell him about the properties of the perfect man is the same as to ride a mouse in a carriage or to fun a quail by drumbeat: the one and the other will die of fright.
(Chuang Tzu)
But obviously this does not lead to any output - to recognize and act is still necessary. The path to salvation lies behind these frightening (or otherwise) images. "The one who endures to the end shall be saved" (Matthew 10:22).
Insight in the Supreme Reality is found not only in the scriptures of various religions, but also in some formally "secular" texts, especially in poetry.
I do not believe premonitions, and
I'm not afraid of signs. Neither backbiting, nor poison
I run. There is no death in the world:
Immortal is everybody. Immortal is everything. Do not
Fear of death or the age of seventeen,
Neither of seventy. There is only reality and light
No darkness, no death there in this world.
We all are on the seashore,
And I am one of those who choose the network
When there is a shoal of immortality.
(Andrei Tarkovsky)
In turn, high poetry, optimism and faith in the high destiny of man, which gave rise to the Christian culture can be found in the revelations of theologians and philosophers who belong to different traditions:
Man is universal in absolute and true sense, for he accepts the totality of existing things, both eternal and temporal. Still other existing things do not accept it ... Man fully possesses two relationships: with the first one he takes in the Divine Presence, and due to the second - in the presence of the created world. About him it is said: he is a slave, due to the religious duties assigned to him, and, like the world, at first he did not exist, and then found being. But about him it is said: he is the Lord, for he is the vicar of God on earth, has a divine and created the "best composition" (Quran 95:4). He is like "isthmus" between the real world and the True, which connects the creature and the Creator.
(Ibn Arabi)
CHAPTER 2.
Dreams of disappointed physicist
Goose are on back.
Mortals are slinking...
And the whole business was what I
wake up!
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
In this book we, on the one hand, rely on the scriptures of different traditions, and on the other - try to show that advances to the Ultimate are possible on the basis of some quite scientific texts and ideas, however, given in the appropriate (that is, seeming appropriate personally for us) interpretation. Quantum picture of the world is much more "open" than the classical natural science paradigm. Its objects have so strange properties as compared to the "everyday" quantum world is a real Wonderland. For example, there are permanent magical transformations, and one can easily meet the mythical centaur, and all that transcends all human imagination.
Not only such oddities happen in Wonderland!
It has no boundaries, one does not need to swim, run, or fly,
To get there is not difficult, not prohibited to anyone,
You can be there - just if you want.
And if someone tries to get back all of a sudden
In magic Wonderland in beautiful good sleep -
Even that it seems, that only appears
He will find in his mysterious and magical country.
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
Notions about the properties of material bodies, space and time, familiar to us, are incorrect in quantum mechanics. At passing to a microcosm, all hard objects lose shape, blur and disappear, and the time is in a sense absent. At the same time, as compared to the "old" physical world, more profound comparison of the quantum description with the sacred texts and the results of the mystical experience is possible.
If the gates of understanding were opened, people would open infinity. But the people took refuge from the world and see it only as a narrow slit of the caves.
(William Blake. Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
In a sense, Lenin, like many other materialists, both conscious and spontaneous, violent and peaceful, was after all right. The world has always existed. Atoms, waves, quantum have existed apart physicists. "Physicists" (in the broad sense of the word, that is, naturalists, scientists, natural philosophers) are obtained from "ordinary" people who perceive the world in unsophisticated principle of "I sing about whatever I see " when they grow crystals of notions of the external world, searching in Temple and debris of his mind; that garbage is brought by the river of time - by thinking. In other words, quantum physics is the fruit of seeking mind, and it is inseparable from the deep laws of consciousness. This physics arises in the minds of researchers at the will of the Giver - the source of intelligence, attention and interest to essence of things. Therefore, the history of science is at the same time the history of the deep (really deep!) psychological processes, and when the process of giving and receiving new knowledge stopped, development of physics also stopped. Once a cornucopia of facts and ideas (especially, ideas) opened again, science was moving forward in undeterred pace.
Since the world was created by the idea (and here Lenin, to say the least, would argue with us), and is presented in its hierarchy by different levels of coarsening, he physics is no more than an approximation to the knowledge of this creative idea, or, in other words, a setback to the origins of the mind - the focal points of the unconscious. The main creative idea of the world is set out in various canonical scriptures. They are not directly related to physics, but in the "upside down" state (in the mirror) they are the body of laws of physics, and at the level of realization - also the physics and natural philosophy of the world. Quantum physics with the right understanding is also the Word of God, which is the key point of thermodynamics of good, fire, love and victory over death cold. On deep meaning we have here the identity, and on shape - a kind of the opposite, inversion, mirror. People, learning nature, actually removes obstacles to understanding the deep essence of the world, whose soul (anima mundi) is just the country of ideas, not interconnected, but full to the brim, and at the same time free; we perceive it as the Looking Glass. This person can avoid the worship of idols, only finding One God within.
Everyone has his own God. But it will soon
clear to everyone (and I'm in their choir)
that in an infinite conversation,
intuitions, crying, strict dispute,
in the phenomenal being-space
single God is free as wave.
(R. Rilke)
Alles meines Blutes Welle,
Alles heilig, alles gut!
[All is wave in my blood
Everything is sacred, all is good!]
(H. Hesse)
The task of this book is quite not to give a new popular science material, which is in the literature already abound, but to lay, perhaps, some new (at least for the scientific and technical community) principles of thinking . Now, we will state another seditious thought. In essence, the accumulation of "interesting" (i.e. relevant for the layman) experimental facts in science is over. Physics of the first half of the XX century have dealt with the basic laws of the universe: the existence and nature of the atoms, the physical mechanisms of chemical and biological processes, the nature of space, time and gravity... On the other hand, modern researchers (including, of course, and the authors, when they act in a professional capacity) as usual are happily splashing in the warm and comfortable pools of private problems. From this perspective, we can speak about a crisis of science as a crisis of meaning. Whereas the main issue of classical science was how, now one has increasingly to think of another question: what for. The problem and the cause of the crisis is the preservation of the old conceptual study system, the old set of logical categories. Usual "classical" rational thinking freely (and, as it is clear now, too directly and inappropriately) connects or separates the concepts. We need a new language, which would be (another sedition!) closer to the language of teachings, traditional in the highest sense of the word. In this sense, the language of spiritual revelation gives an analogue of the mathematical formalism. (Dixi, we can feel free, we currently do not do worse to ourselves...)
However, it is possible that the "new" tool set, including consciousness, was just lost in the modern age - it was in the use, e.g., for the alchemists. True ethics of scientific knowledge is a division of the higher and lower and appeal to higher through gnosis (which just means knowledge). Physicists, being humans, have to look for the truth in the first place through self-discovery, but they are still not capable of such a turn, but only refer to the "external" experiment. Of course, this "only" is basis for all the successes of our technical civilization, but we are talking about knowledge in order of salvation ...
In fact, all scientific categories are categories of consciousness, and quantum mechanics deals, in a sense, only with the psychology of the physicists. The word "only" once again has no derogatory meaning. The kingdom of God, as we know, is within us, and "He who is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 Jn. 4:4). Physicist is to awake to a new interpretation of the nature of reality, but we still continue to see the same old dream of the quantum and classical as external matters.
Yes, a deep insight into the new picture of the world requires a painful change of the conceptual framework and expansion of "permissible" for a respectable member of the scientific community. But "it's worth."
Thus says the Lord of hosts, if it is in the eyes of the remnant of this people seem miraculous in these days, should it also be marvelous in Mine eyes?
(Zechariah 8:6)
The vision of the individual truths, perceived as discrete ideas, and vision of continuous, that is of the whole, are different. Knowledge of quantum physics by God and human knowledge of its manifestation in the world are different things. The people in this case are the physicists, the "founders" of human knowledge, "the scientific community." In fact, modern scientists do not know (or rather, do not understand) the quantum ideas, as opposed to the One who is its true Creator and Incarnation.
This book does not add anything to such knowledge of quantum physics, which could be formalized and accepted by "physical community". However, we hope, the book will clarify personal views about it and point to the direction of private understanding of quantum states that are beyond science. They are described not in physics, but in some body of knowledge, given by not people, but by God - in the canonical texts. Physicists are forced to rely on their canon - previous sum of knowledge in the form of scientific articles. Thus, there is the human knowledge about the "marvelous" quantum physics and true, whatever knowledge of the world, where there is no cause-and-effect relationships.
Away, obsession, away! Close the pages, oh the book
To each other, so they are not counted..
It wearies as rage, anger and revenge.
It does not honor the cause. It is of a similar size
When there is no reason, when the cause exists.
(David Samoilov)
Being aware of the existence of the quantum world and trying to describe it, people can only rely on their only knowledge - knowledge of themselves. They grasp only that they can skip through their five senses which are created, like the rest of the physical tools. The integration of this knowledge is also made by these senses, isolated from the quantum states.
To go into the quantum world, you need to turn your head measuring tool - consciousness or thinking - into a new measuring device working on new principles of comprehension. To do this, one needs not the development of physics as a science, but a change of physicists themselves, so that they can work with quantum categories. Being on the old position, not forward pass is possible, quantum physics requires new Gnostic base. The main thing here is the work of "the field of consciousness," rather than the usual measuring instruments. Where there is a measurement, the true study of quantum physics ends, because we are in the local measuring system with its fragmentation and readability, the prerogative of low intelligence, even "scientific." Quantum physics is a idea of higher Gnostic morality, ethics of spiritual path, the transition to the heights of the spirit, where any "human" language is to be surpassed.
Key issues in quantum physics are "entangled" with the fundamental question about the nature of irreversibility and entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, including its information aspects. Physicists have yet to comprehend the idea of reversibility (cycling), characteristic of the spiritual traditions. Perhaps everyone will have to do it yourself, making a revolution (inversion) in his mind. Then an individual is on the threshold of the realm of freedom and enters into the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, experiences enlightenment. However, this process can be extremely painful: recall suicide of Boltzmann who evolved concept of irreversibility (as always in such cases, the "social" explanations which lie on the surface may be not sufficient).
Of course, we categorically reject in advance any accusations of trying to "drag mysticism to science." In science, we have no such drags, and in any case do not call upon the reference in scientific articles on dreams and inspiration. Being restricted in its methods, approaches and objectives, science is self-sufficient. At the same time, psychologically, we are discussing the similarities and links that may be (or may not be! Depends on the person...) useful, including for research. The matter is that almost everyone (not only physical and professional) is able to perceive and use classical mechanics intuitively. In fact, when the footballer forces the ball to fly into the goal or the driver is driving, they decide in their mind and body complex equations of motion, even though neither one nor the other, in most cases, do not have the slightest idea of their mathematical formulation. However - we emphasize once again - in fact, they do just that. And if the ball after the kick flew into the goal (other command's, not own), then the equations are solved correctly. At the same time, for the rational mind of modern person the only road in the quantum world is through the mathematical formalism. We can not imagine the process in the quantum world with the same immediacy with which the player imagines the consequences of hitting the ball. That is what had in mind one of the greatest physicists of the second half of the XX century Feynman, when he stated that "no one understands quantum mechanics " ("Character of Physical Law"). This problem cannot be solved within the framework of science itself, just like the players would not hit the ball better because of the recent appearance in the classical mechanics of new concepts, such as' strange attractors. "
On the other hand, the man, as it is now known to many (or at least some), consists not only of the physical body and the logical mind, and he dares to claim salvation and eternity. Thus, some natural connection structures of human consciousness with the quantum reality is not excluded (recall that the latter, after all, is the foundation of the structure of matter). So one can try (and this is what we're going to do) "implant" quantum physics in the human psyche, including into the work its irrational layers - the most powerful and profound, as we know from the time of Freud.
There are two worlds - the animate and inanimate. Although a physicist himself belongs to animate world, the subject of his research is the inanimate world. The laws of the animate (subtle) world in their higher manifestations are studied by priests, those of the lower world (gross body) by philosophers-physicists. They both use consciousness. The laws of both worlds are essentially identical, but they use different languages, different ways of encoding. Therefore, at study of the underlying issues of "gross" body, which are engaged in experimental and theoretical physics, only comparison and identification of certain similarities between the languages of the "subtle" and "rough" is possible. Since this work occurs in the mind, its effectiveness depends on the level of development of the main measuring instrument of the physicist - his mind. As there is a hierarchy (descent from the subtle to the dense) in manifestation of the laws, the study of the laws and the priority of knowledge should be long routine - from the highest to the lowest. Physicists were always confined in their work to the field of coarse matter and phenomena, giving the most important manifestations of the "subtle" laws to botanists, zoologists and priests. Thus, the thermodynamic system, which is on the desk of physicists, is only a small poor part of the Over-Local system. More simply, the laws of life animate and inanimate are alike, identical. Physicists do not need to ride for a fall, throwing the most effective tool to study quanta - acute, discriminating, knowing weapon of attention.
The fool who knows his foolishness, is thus already wise and the fool, who imagines himself wise, is indeed, as they say, "a fool."
(Dhammapada)
If someone was saved from folly, therefore, we can.
(William Blake. Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
Once a physicist understands this, he immediately goes on fertile cornfield of acquisition of higher knowledge, of understanding the spiritual. Consciousness of physicist is not adequate to problems put by quantum physics until he moved on to work with him. New physics is an area of unknown problems, the other name of his stupidity.
However, the increase in labor productivity of quantum theorists is not any serious purpose for us. In contrast to the good and happiness of all beings.
CHAPTER 3.
Traditional notions of reality
And LORD is a God of truth
(Jeremiah 10:10)
The reality of the world around us, and of the earthly things above, the sky and the land was proclaimed in the Bible. The world was created by God as "very good", which means the value of all created things.
Thyself with light as with his garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent, wrought over the waters of the Mining Your palaces, do the clouds his chariot, walketh upon the wings of the wind. Thou doest thine angels spirits [winds], thy servants - the fire blazing. You set the foundations of the earth: it shall not be moved for ever and ever.
(Psalm 103:2-5)
At the same time, the concept of hardness and resistance, at first glance, being self-evident, need interpretation and understanding. The apparent stability of the terrestrial forms is provided by a blazing fire of pervading Divine Love, which is sometimes hidden but sometimes manifested in menacing appearance. "Above" the earthly world, usually perceived by the senses, there are countless angelic worlds, which, however, are only the foot of the throne of God. Heaven and the heaven of heavens can not contain God (Isaiah 66:1, 1 Sam. 8:27), being not pure in His sight (Job 15:15).
In the texts of the biblical tradition, we can found puzzling pictures of highest worlds, for example, the description of the Chariot and the heavenly city (Jerusalem) in the prophecies of Ezekiel and in Revelation, the vision of cosmos in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, etc. These topics are elaborated in the Jewish Kabbalah, Gnostic writings and Christian tradition ("Celestial Hierarchy" of Dionysius the Areopagite). God, who is eternal truth, gives the statute to the luminaries and the stars, and is always free to "shake the heavens and the earth" through His word (see Heb. 12:26-28, Mt. 24:35, Sire. 16:18-19). According to Jewish tradition, the angels (they are fragments of human lives and thoughts) are created every day by God in great quantities, and then rush down to the fire (Ps. 103:4, Dan. 7:9-10). Thus, the problem occurs of distinguishing between human (visible) and divine (true) reality. God himself giving life to the universe, is just considered in different traditions as the only or ultimate reality behind our visible world:
Who besides him over the earth? And who the whole world? If He had your heart to Him, and took unto him, her spirit and her breath - suddenly all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.
(Job 34:13-15)
As taught by medieval theologians, all created things have the mark of nothingness; its being is again and again restored by God. Corresponding "mystical" sense of time becomes accessible and understandable even for non-religious person.
Theologians assert: if the Lord is distracted for a moment and forgets about my right hand - I'm writing by it - and it, as if swallowed by oblivion mouth, sinks into the void. Therefore, they say, the preservation of our world is an act of perpetual creation; mutually contradicting verbs retain and create are synonyms for heaven.
(JL Borges. History of Eternity)
The Jewish Midrash says, "God believed in the universe and created it." As Karl Barth wrote, faith is to first place characteristic of God, not of man (cf. Rom. 3:3). It is faith that makes sense to all that exists. Not only for the believer, but also for the vast majority of philosophers, except materialists (i.e., taking the axiom of the existence of objective reality independent of consciousness), the concept of reality is based ultimately on the belief in God:
Nature of philosophical thinking, therefore, is to argue that God is in the world, that there is such a thing called God, or an object, called by One or All.
(MK Mamardashvili. Kantian variation)
However, for practical purposes, this "objective" (ontological) position is still insufficient. Religious position requires more - not faith in something (an object, thing), but a personal, subjective belief. The existence of God in some form can be grasped empirically, that is, through the circumstances of life and destiny. "Faith" in the dogmatic system is all the more so easily accessible to human psychology, and often turns to the worship of idols, the later including all external, rather than internal, and, of course, not the ultimate. But most important is the faith to Him, in Himself, in spite of all the obstacles and complexity of relationships with a formidable and unpredictable biblical God.
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me [or: believe in God? And in me]. (John 14:1)
Such faith unites man and God in the dialogue, making their mutual relations. As Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh said, "people believe in God, and God believes in man."
Similar problems arise in any tradition. For example, we quote from the authoritative Hindu text.
There are two types of kshetra-jna [field of knowledge]: the individual soul and the Supreme Soul - the Supreme Lord.
(Bhagavata Purana 5.12)
In addition to the Supreme Soul (God), there is the individual soul - discrete consciousness, which contains all the forms of this world and all the manifestations of personality. In Christianity, this is the Christ, the Son of God, by whom, "He created the worlds" (Hebrews 1:2), and b through which only knowledge of the Father is possible (cf. Jn. 1:18). Regardless of religious affiliation He speaks to each person in his life as an inner voice, the conscience. When dual forms of clouded consciousness are born, man grows in thought as grass (Isaiah 51:12, 53:2), and Christ becomes thrown in a manger as animal feed.
The truth of the Christian faith is not "formalized", but personal, while the abstract question of Pilate, "What is truth?" remains unanswered.
And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas said to him, Lord, do not know where you're going, and how can we know the way? Jesus said unto him, I am the way and the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
(John 14:4-6)
Finding faith in Christ as the basis of his personality, a person can believe in himself.
Whoever believes in the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar.
(1 John 5:10)
Unfortunately, the interpretation of religious faith as a set of correct answers in some strange testing [God exists: (1) Yes (2) No, delete non-appropriate] is very common just for the Soviet and post-Soviet scientific and technical intelligentsia with "spiritual requests." The requests can coexist with direct devilry in full compliance with caution of the Apostle James: "You believe that there is one God do well the devils also believe, and tremble" (James 2:19).
For demons, the existence of "invisible world" (invisible to the human!) is quite indisputably, and demons hardly hold materialistic and atheistic views. ...) Almost everyone faces the "home" mysticism (coincidence, prophetic dreams. Although many disregard this, in principle, it could lead one to think seriously about what the world is not as easy as it seems. The same feelings become quickly available on their own will for those who are trying to move on the spiritual path. Seekers who are not familiar with major spiritual traditions and can not find a good mentor, often resort to the simplest form of "work" - occult exercises taken from popular books or received from homegrown teachers. These classes are rapidly developing psychical abilities (e.g, "extrasensory" perception), and the world of aerial beings (spirits) is open. But pretty soon the practitioner (if he luckily escaped serious dangers) becomes convinced that such "expanding horizon" does not lead to radical advances in the understanding of truth, just one scheme is changed by another. In ancient times such powers were available to a wide range of people, and their loss was the cost of building a technical civilization. Neither one nor the other did not bring people happiness and salvation.
Nowadays it is hard to feel by the soul that one experienced wit respect to elements and planets the people with their still very rudimentary inner life (not accidentally, faces in the early images still look empty). Also in our culture over the last 200 years there were decades, marked by a special sensitivity to the moon in calm weather or to the wind, now being obscure. We are almost insensible and unable to catch the mood of the nature of such a game. What to say about hearts, open to other elements and planets! Yet for Misty and mystics - as before, and now - achieving the main goal, the contemplation, half depends on the right attitude, on its subtle nuances.
(D. Lauenstein. Eleusinian mysteries)
However, the historical trend is clear. Becoming atheistic, Western civilization, with its steady "progress" is moving to a new, more serious dangers.
How could we choose instead of the gods, unable to
curry favor with us, steel production,
not knowing them, following trial
calculations, to look for the old friends on the map?
Our powerful friends, who took instead of a tribute
dead, do not touch our wheels.
Like our baths, we removed
our feast from them, and in the discordant pandemonium
we are ahead of their messengers, we live in a crowd,
being strangers to each other, with each other, dig in the trash,
prefer (instead of winding paths)
tracks; under steam boilers are
old lights, hammers and heavier;
and we, as swimmers, become weak, we are not spared.
(R. Rilke)
Focusing on the external effects, superficial and fickle causal relationships, culture loses its footing in the eternal and unchanging.
And populace, that reigns over all
they quickly turn into money
or purge machine.
(R. Rilke)
Metals (or steel) represent here the physical laws, their level being even lower, than the laws of life as biological creatures. Populace, in the context of our conversation are adherents of classical physics, technology, transforming something high (golden sunshine) in non-precious tool materials. The human world, living as a crowd and digging in the trash is a world of primitive logical constructs, creations of the mind, the world of machinery. Through the person the old classical mechanics appears in technology that gradually captures all the power in the world. All this progress revolves around money, personal material benefit of man. In this case, as is well known to everyone from personal experience, "we are not spared." Crown of progress i- an attempt to build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth - is just the main sign of the end of the world. In the limit of development of classical physics and related technology, human consciousness merges with the computer, which supposedly allows one to simulate celestial bliss (the man, turned into an appendage of the machine, is no more worthy of another bliss, and unable to accept this). This coalescence reaches such a degree that there are cases of deaths at random turn off the computer during a learning game. A new ideology of computer networks starts to work. Now, God, salvation, and other ultimate categories already "do not touch our wheels", leaving the created world, as people do not need them: they are imitated on the earth by magic. Surrogate of God is the most terrible of surrogates.
What did I know at the time about God
At the quiet dawn of a life?
I sculpted arms and legs
And I fashioned head.
...
When he did faded, this long
Day of fears, hopes and sorrows,
My god, who was created from clay,
Said to me: Go and kill!
(A. Galich)
In contrast to the Western tradition, the East reality of God's existence is questioned very rarely (and if it happens, as in Buddhism, in quite different meaning). Here one never forgets that God is within us. This is, however, told by many texts of Judeo-Christian tradition.
Lord, where will I find Thou?
Thy place is high and hidden.
And where can I find Thou?
This world is full of Thy glory.
I was looking for Thy nearness,
With my whole heart I cried to Thee;
And going out to meet Thou,
I saw Thou coming to me.
(Yehuda Halevi)
Eastern man always feels that he is in close relationships with Him, which are embodied in the ecstatic religious rituals, and in eastern poetry, always ultimately talking about the love of God. Ways to worship God through His many manifestations and personifications adopted here seem often to Westerner unacceptable as pagan. However, in the Eastern tradition, there is no shortage in the sublime and abstract philosophical and theological constructs that speak of the One.
Most canonical East texts are devoted to the description of the otherworldly, ethereal reality (the world of the gods, not people), so that in the following they will be valuable to us in a conversation about the quantum world. Illusory and unreal nature of the normal life as compared to the ultimate reality is emphasized in Hindu-Buddhist tradition:
Who looks at the world, as one looks at the bubble, as one looks at a mirage, is not seen by the king of death.
(Dhammapada 170)
Noble Truths of the Buddha proclaimed the existence of suffering (dukkha, burden), that is transiency of the world, the lack of permanent and immutable things. We are at a point of transition - in the intermediate state between here and there. There is no past, present and future - there are alternating combinations of sleep, mosaic kaleidoscope, changing image illustrations.
All things have no reality, so you need to get rid of the idea of the reality of things. He who believes in the reality of things, lives in a completely unreal world. Whoever can find the true reality in himself, becomes free from the illusory nature of the phenomenal world, finding true consciousness.
(Sutra of the platform)
Ultimate world, that does not belong to us, is just an enduring reality. There all the troubles and sufferings end, there is no being there, this is a real non-being, the only desired state. Eternally existing human consciousness will always look for this state, trying to connect with it. This connection is possible for those who have previously received a certificate through contact with Nirvana, and then come a long way to achieve, to remember the past.
The doctrine of "non-existence", or illusion, of the phenomenal world was thoroughly developed by Nagarjuna in Mahayana Buddhism, and in Hinduism by Shankara (his teachings - Advaita Vedanta - is considered as a top of Hindu theology):
Ubiquitous, inside and outside, Who makes the whole moving world to seem [that it is], He, being eternal, is shining like the heat in the hot iron ball. The Eternal is not moving world, He is separated from it. However, all that is not He is nothing and is not real in itself. All that seems anything other than the Eternal, is a fraud, like a mirage in the desert.
(Shankara. Atma Bodha)
According to Shankara, the only real God permeates everything, but is distinct from the world. Teaching of contemporary Indian mystic Sri Ramana Maharshi belongs to the same tradition:
Vedanta says that the universe comes into view at the same time with seer... Without seeing, there is no vision object. Find the observer, and the creation will be included in it ... Shankara was criticized for his views on maya [illusion], not understanding the point. He showed that (1) Brahman is real (2) the universe is unreal, and (3) the universe is Brahman. Shankar did not stop specially on the second statement, for the third explains the other two. It means that the universe is real if perceived as the Atman, and unreal, if understood separate from the Atman (Self). Consequently, the Maya and the reality are one and the same.
(Be who you are. SPb., 1994)
Or, to put it simply, in the words of Sri Ramakrishna, "The world is illusory, only God is real." God is opposed to the Maya - the illusion of the material world, which, however, is inseparable from Him as His female alter ego and energy. The doctrine of the uncreated divine energies was developed in detail in the Christian (Orthodox) tradition by St. Gregory Palamas. Ultimately, any development of religious doctrine must address the question of how God is present in the world. Later, we will demonstrate the profound relevance of the concept of divine energy in discussing the philosophical problems of quantum physics, and now our conversation is about the true reality, which is very difficult to get to. There exists an interpretation of the complementarity principle, which is different from Bohr's one: during the experiment the device does not affect the world, and the quantum system "damages" the device. If we go to a less technical language, the world is full of magic and mystery. The woman Maya (witch) creates the magic and deception. Directly interacting with the real ("quantum") world, containing inexhaustible dark depths, we can only give rise delusion and illusion for ourselves.
Monk ought not abut by the thought at neither material nor spiritual, at no other, perceiving an effect of, albeit brilliant, external properties ...
Therefore, when thinking, do not abut by the thought at that has a shell, enticed by the external, even brilliant, properties! Monk ought not to feed his mind by that has a name, a shell, etc., for herding his thought on the material, spiritual and other things is already in this world, the world of perceived dharmas, are drawn to destruction! So it is better, O monks, burn own eyes with hot iron!
(Putimamsa Jataka)
We will give a detailed comment to this quotation. No one did ever see God (John 1:18). Any manifested thought form, image or concept of God is not God, but a distracting discrete factor. Manifested forms (building "empirical" universe) are related to discrete, fractional, separated from the whole properties.
Without His mystery, His revelation happening in time would not be real. That's why He does not have an image: the image is the fixation of a manifestation of divinity, hindering God to conceal himself: the image does not allow Him to be at any time Who is He (Exodus 3:14), the image does not allow Him appear as He Himself desires!
(M. Buber. Two images of the faith)
Son of Man, limited in space (in the shell) and incarnated. is the Creator of this world. In detail. the process of fragmentation and individualization is described in the comments for the sixtieth Hexagram Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching), called jie (restriction). The variety of discrete becomes known by dividing single stream of consciousness, which in its entirety is God (the symbolism of discrete and continuous, which is a key for us, is discussed in detail in Chapter 10). When a person examines the law, he meets the brilliant, but external, i.e., private, discrete qualities, physical and spiritual. The law says about the highest, but is realized through primitive categories.
The monks are all gods - manifested functions and forms of God, which reach higher states through asceticism. These heavenly states mean being included in the highest law. It can be grasped only through implementing practice of own action (marxists, ay! Practice is a criterion of truth, how else? But it is important to understand this correctly ...). One has to transcend all discrete categories of law, although being very "long-lived", and move further. This requires a transition to higher, continuous categories. Then the law is reduced to a secondary place that just befits it from the point of view of God's plan for man.
Classical physics only fights way up, but one can establish himself only by means of quantum physics, which overcomes in its treatment the entire set of dharmas - morbid factors of existence - time, space... Through the shell of classical physics, as we shall see, quantum physics speaks, which is not bound by classical, rigidly deterministic laws. These theories are related, using Buddhist terminology, as manifested and unmanifested. The one who was stayed on the laws - on Dharmakaya, outer mortal shell of God, goes to the death that is inevitable in the classical world. To go from law to grace, one has to "burn own eyes with hot iron," become blind to the "non-essential" discrete realities of the phenomenal world.
I have declared, and have saved, and shewed, not you, and you - are my witnesses, saith the Lord that I am God before the day was I am He.
(Isaiah 43:12-13)
The Midrash says: when you are my witnesses, I am God, and when you are not my witnesses, I am, as you can see, not God. Witnesses are the laws of classical physics, where there is an invisible source; Unmanifested emerges in the manifested. Moreover, without the Unmanifested, the invisible, the "empty" the very existence of the phenomenal world is unthinkable.
Thirty spokes in the wheel converge to hub,
whose center is empty
and due to this, you just can use the wheel.
When the clay is shaped, on making vessel from it,
do it so the middle is empty,
and due to this, you can use the vessel.
When building a house, we make doors and windows,
leaving the middle empty,
and due to this, and you can use the housing.
(Tao Te Ching 11, trans. by A. Kuvshinov)
Thirty is here a symbolic number of elements in the pleroma (fullness of being).
Notions of the illusory world (perceived with varying degrees of depth and usually through third parties) has become conventional wisdom in West and (more recently) in Russian popular culture, from the acclaimed film "The Matrix" to novels by V. Pelevin. However, even in such a diluted form, and adapted these views often meet strong opposition, sometimes very funny for a person who is familiar with the relevant tradition. Thus, the standard claims to Pelevin, based on the fact that he wrote about "nothing", a Buddhist would sound the highest praise. "Nothing," or "emptiness" (shunyata), in the teachings of Nagarjuna just means a higher reality.
If we move away from anecdotal genre, shunyata means general relativity and the connection of phenomena (in contrast with the cause and effect categories, which are so important in the western philosophical tradition), and not a void in the literal sense.
If an effect is already real in a cause and becomes [again] a product, there will be an infinite regress. If an effect is that which is not yet produced and becomes a product, then that which is already produced should have a product again. Why? Because they are originally real in a cause. Even the effect of that which is already produced should have production again. So there will be an infinite regress.
The causality lacks self-existent, and therefore I am talking about emptiness.
(Nagarjuna. Twelve Gates)
Nirvana, as well as the Bible Sabbath, does not mean total destruction. This is the existence (or non-existence, or both, or neither one nor the other ...) in a iridescent by "all colors" dynamic shape, which cannot be represented through visual images. Ultimately, it is stated that nirvana is identical to samsara - the world where ordinary people live, and Buddha is outwardly indistinguishable from the usual person. The comprehension of these categories is given by serious spiritual work, and not by philosophical definitions. The latter, however, have also been developed in Buddhism with great care and sophistication. Buddhist thinkers achieved already in antiquity great successes in the dialectic (perhaps more than Hegel). According to the famed Buddhist logic Dharmakirti, there are four levels of reality: an imagined reality (parikalpita) - concepts, dialectics; interdependent reality (paratantra) - causal laws; the absolute reality (parinispanna), where there is no subject and object; and, finally, the reality as pure feeling, where thing in itself and the unity become known (see F.I. Tsherbatskoy. Buddhist logic).
Despite seemingly "subjective" approach, Buddhist texts mention explicitly the existence of the true reality, which always exists and is reproducible on any spiritual path. Nihilism of Buddhist interpretations is only seeming. The role of God here belongs to the Buddha - the Tathagata (Thus Coming), embodying Suchness, the true reality.
What is meant by an eternally-abiding reality? The ancient road of reality, Mahamati, has been here all the time, like gold, silver, or pearl preserved in the mine, Mahamati; the Dharmadhatu abides foreover, whether the Tathagata appears in the world or not; as the Tathagata eternally abides so does the reason (dharmata) of all things; reality foreover abides, reality keeps its order, like the roads in an ancient city. For instance, Mahamati, a man who is walking in a forest and discovering an ancient city with its orderly streets may enter into the city, and having entered into it, he may have a rest, conduct himself like a citizen, and enjoy all the pleasures accruing therefrom. What do you think, Mahamati? Did this man make the road along which he enters into the city, and also the various things in the city?
Mahamati said: No, Blessed One.
The Blessed One said: Just so, Mahamati, what has been realised by myself and other Tathagatas is this reality, the eternally-abiding reality (sthitita), the self-regulating reality (niyamata), the suchness of things (tathata), the realness of things (bhutata), the truth itself (satyata). ...
(Lankavatara Sutra)
In spiritual practice, ethical considerations are at the forefront. For a Buddhist, human suffering are more real than the world (according to the same Nagarjuna, "compassion is above emptiness"). Since awareness of the true reality is not available for the ordinary person, to describe it in a "pragmatic" goals (getting rid of the burden of peace, liberation and salvation) one has to operate in stages. Masters resort to "tricks" (technical methods, skillful means) to give to every sentient being, faced in the Way, the Dharma (teaching) in a form, understandable for him personally.
It is simply that I use this expedient means to teach and convert living beings and cause them to enter the Buddha way... Tathagata perceives the true aspect of the threefold world exactly as it is. There is no ebb or flow of birth and death, and there is no existing in this world and later entering extinction. It is neither substantial nor empty, neither consistent nor diverse. Nor is it what those who dwell in the threefold world perceive it to be. All such things Tathagata sees clearly and without error.
Because living beings have different natures, different desires, different actions, and different ways of thinking and making distinctions, and because I want to enable them to put down good roots, I employ a variety of causes and conditions, similes, parables, and phrases and preach different doctrines. This, the Buddha's work, I have never for a moment neglected.
(Lotus Sutra 16)
Despite the great differences (not only external!) between Biblical and Hindu-Buddhist pictures of the world, their common feature is disagreement to identify the "empirical" (physical and astronomical) universe and reality. According to the Buddha,
If only what is perceived by our senses, existed as the only reality, the ignorant by birth would have the basic truth. What would then be all searching to know the essence of things?
This statement is in fact common to all traditional teachings. Strictly speaking, it in itself does not impede a fruitful comparison of tradition and science, if the latter did not claim the fullness of its world view. To justify logically those claims is, of course, impossible. Furthermore, scientists are real people and are not guided by them in everyday life. "Love, for example, is not a science" (Feynman). But then one... is guided by them. Who? A "Spirit of Science"? And does it exist? What is it then the difference from the Great Bear or personified Death with a scythe and a shroud? Or the matter is, without any mysticism (hooray!), the corporate interests of the scientific community? Such a completeness is characteristic for the picture of the world of one of the heroes of the "Cat's Cradle" by K. Vonnegut, a manufacturer of bicycles - he was sure that the people exist only to make his bikes. Well, for him it was reality. Thus, there occurs not only interesting, but also the most important question of the relationship of the Supreme Reality with the "human" reality.
CHAPTER 4.
Human world and world of God
God is awake. He opened the eye
took a grain of sand thrown at us.
We woke up. Went sleep.
We feel the morning. We hear a moan ...
We catch shadow by caps,
glorify the new day.
(D. Harms)
The True Reality is accessible to man only occasionally, and always only for a moment, the moment of truth, the moment of the invasion of the Supreme in our world, a turning point when a person can change his fate. The importance of this point is especially emphasized by the existential philosophy of the XX century, the immediate predecessor of which is considered to be XIX century Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. (By the way, remember that his philosophy had a great influence on the world Bohr and helped formulate the idea of quantum jumps). There are certain mathematical images and analogies to describe this point (the singularity of a function, discontinuity, disaster point...). There are also psychological approaches, which interpret in "science" language the religious conversion (Greek metanoia is repentance, change, revolution) and acute spiritual crisis, turning the life of man, and the state of the prophetic and mystical ecstasy. In modern transpersonal psychology it is usual to speak of "altered states of consciousness" (see, for example, numerous books of Czech-American psychiatrist S. Grof, particularly "Beyond the Brain", "Psychology of the Future," "Call of the Jaguar"). However, any "worldly" description is hardly quite adequate here.
So I can understand that the strength and the energy and freedom of spirit is necessary to make infinite movement of self-denial, I just can understand that it can be done. But the next step takes me by surprise, my head is spinning, but now, after the movement of self-denial done, get all the power of the absurd, a full and unconditional fulfillment of desires - the understanding that goes beyond human strength, it is a miracle ... To recant, do not need any faith, because what I gain through renunciation, is my eternal consciousness, and it is essentially - a purely philosophical movement that I will undertake to do this when it is required, and for which I take to prepare for any time any circumstance disproportionately grows in front of me, then I begin to torture himself to death, I begin to bring themselves to the extreme - until you do this movement, for my eternal consciousness is my love for God, and it is worth to me above all else. To recant, do not need any faith, but faith is needed in order to get at least negligibly smaller than my eternal consciousness - this is the paradox.
(S. Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling)
Described "movement" is beyond human concepts and reason, it is not subject to any ordinary effort, not achieved by the ultimate spiritual and ascetic practices. It is always unpredictable (it is interesting that we face a similar situation of non-causality, unpredictability when trying to understand the events that occur in the micro-world - for example, the collapse of the nucleus). We emphasize once again that this state of "enlightenment" is always unpredictable. The greatest mistake (with many severe consequences - from spiritual to medical) is to assume that it may be caused by technical means, ranging from drugs and shamanic sИances to Buddhist meditation and practice of the Orthodox "clever doing". Zen texts, by the way, also mention methods like surprise attacks on the head with a stick, and so on:
Meeting one having insight on the road,
Do not talk to him and do not be silent,
Do not hesitate to hit him harder,
And that you need to understand will be understood.
(Huikay. Outpost without gates)
To especially nasty results here may lead desire (so typical of modern civilization) for efficiency and "constructivity", that is to simple (e.g., technical) solutions to complex (i.e., spiritual) problems. There are various ways to treat "the acid culture" of the 60's, but, in any case, no breakthrough in the spiritual development of humanity (such as described in the Grof's "psychedelic" utopia "Call of the Jaguar") as a result of the wide mass experimentation with psychedelics was not happened. And it is not just the inability to solve spiritual problems by chemical and physiological methods. "Spiritual" means (prayer, fasting, ...) are actually much more powerful, and therefore potentially more dangerous. They require very strict observance of "safety" (in the language of the Orthodox, the protection of the "delight"). However, there are no recipes in principle. Too reliable protection leads to risks to shut tightly just those channels through which a person can come to grace. In the book " Elder Silouan" containing life and teachings of the Athonite Orthodox ascetic of XX century, the principle "Do not deny and do not take" is affirmed with respect to spiritual phenomena, which sounds also in Buddhism ("let me not accept and not reject anything that I meet on the way "):
"Not accepting", Christian defends himself against the risk to take demonic activity or suggestion for a divine... "Not rejecting" one avoids another danger, namely, to attribute divine action to demons, and through it to fall into the sin of "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" ... The second danger is more terrible, for the soul can get used to reject grace, and hate it, and so to acquire a state of opposition to God, so that it will be determined in terms of the eternal, and this sin "will not be forgiven either in this age or in the future" (see . Matt. 12:23-33).
In the world after the fall, any attempt to penetrate into the divine world is extremely risky, "but if you do not move and do not realize, you inevitably end up in a wild fox hole" (Zen).
To break through to a higher reality, one needs faith and love that are given directly by the elusive God.
It is faith that is required because He [God] just does not exist. He is at the only one flashed moment ... At the point in which we are, we can not move for the future. If it makes sense - only here.
(M.K. Mamardashvili. Psychological topology of path)
High voltage of that moment is fraught for human with physical and spiritual dangers, from which God lovingly covers us in the created world.
But God, sparing and measure just knowing
At one moment, touching human habitation,
Protects us ...
But it is too difficult to accommodate this gift,
After all, if the Giver was generous,
Hearth, long blessed by Him.
Turned to ashes our roof and walls...
Not always gift [more precisely: fullness, abundance] of God,
Can abide in a weak vessel,
Sometimes a man can take down it.
(F. Holderlin)
High creative impulses often lead to devastating consequences in the form of physical and mental illness (e.g., madness of HЖlderlin himself). The entry of spirit in a person's life may be very painful, but in the end, being realized by means of the inner workings of man, leads to the restoration of its integrity and to solution of psychological problems. These issues were investigated by Swiss mystic and psychiatrist C.G. Jung, who himself rather successfully passed through these tests.
Can, in fact, the fullness of God fit a weak vessel - the human body and soul? It is easy to understand risks of both possible unambiguous answers. If yes, man is in fact God, and the other is not needed. If no, then there are no chance of saving too, quite nobody has a chance. Then our prayers are in vain, and our faith is in vain. In the Orthodox tradition, this complicated problem is solved on the basis of the doctrine of the divine (uncreated) energies, developed St. Gregory Palamas. Palamas postulated distinction of essence and energy of God ("the energy is God himself, but God is not his energy"):
However, the glory and shine even in created nature can be never called essence; how, then, can we consider the divine glory as the essence of God - the God who, being non-common, invisible, intangible, due to over-essence force, becomes available in the community sacrament and becomes in contemplation one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17) with a pure heart.
(Triads For The Defense of Those Who Practice Sacred Quietude, 02/03/66)
Thus the Holy Spirit is higher than acting in Him and from Him God-acting life as his own natural energy, which is similar to him, but not exactly.
(Triads 3.1.9)
Divine energy perform the contact between the human world (generally, created world) and the world of God, because they operate in the created world, but do not belong it. Statement of the world (if you like, the physical universe) being principally not closed is very important for us in the discussion of the quantum description of the universe as a whole (see Chapter 14).
In Islam, a similar to some extent concept was developed by Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), the most important thinker of the Sufi tradition, which received from his followers the title "The greatest teacher." In addition to the Absolute Being - Allah - and the "second thing" - the created world, Ibn Arabi introduces a "third thing" that is "not characterized by either being or non-being."
It is the foundation of the world, the basis of the elementary particle (!) and the area of life, and it has been preceded to all the uncreated ... This thing is a comprehensive nature of the world, apprehended by the mind (as opposed to Allah.- Auth.), manifested in the eternal as the eternal, and in transitory as a transient. You will right when you say that this thing is the world, but you will also right in stating that it is neither the world nor God - exalted be He! - and that it is some additional concept ...
For example, if we want to create a triangle, we have a special way of connecting individual parts, and there occurs a figure with three sides. Then we say, "This is a triangle." So it is with other images, shapes, colors and objects that are learned in some universal, comprehensive whole...
The eternal knowledge is attached to entity consisting of a set of individuals, containing the third thing ... This is reminiscent of the process of the application of our knowledge to a particular detail: it is attached to the undifferentiated combination of individual parts, sharing it whenever likes.
(Imagination of circles covering the similarity of human to Creator and the created world)
It is easy to see that the "third thing" of Ibn Arabi, like divine energies of Gy. Palamas, is similar to Plato's ideas. This is the medium through which God works in the world, bringing to it the meaning and order. A sense of harmony and meaning can be experienced also when reading texts of other traditions:
Tao is empty
but because of it all exists and is not full.
Oh, unfathomable!
You, as head of the family, and your race is all the darkness of things.
You retain its sharpness,
do not give go into chaos
to its innumerable threads,
fills its shine by harmony
equalizes among themselves all its mortal beings.
Oh, great, storing life!
(Tao Te Ching 4)
"Technically," contact of human with God is difficult because of practically full inconsistency of human time and time of God. We as humans live in time, but for God there is no time. For the perception of Reality one needs in a way to "get out" of time - where there is no time - in the "eternal present." That is the point about which Mamardashvili writes. Conversely, a person of modern civilization obsessed with time. "posessed" is not said to be witty; posession with time can really be understood literally, in the same sense as demon possession.
Like a small cathedral,
Hanging firmly on a nail,
Clock was screaming for a long time,
How the star has to move.
Endless time chest.
Clock is the creation of hell hands!
And all this knowing full well
Thomas said, helping to thought
"I would suggest to destroy the clock!"
And twisting his mustache,
He looked at all by the calm eye.
Woman shone by her iron pelvis.
(N. Zabolotsky, Time)
Living in progressively developing world is often quite nice, but the price paid for the time obsession is an increase of entropy and, ultimately, death. The clock was running at the time of the Fall and will be shut down at the end of the world, after which "the time will not exist", as for God:
Thou was not in time before the time, otherwise Thou would not have been before all time. Thou had been prior to all the past on the heights of always abiding eternity ... Thy years do not come and go, but ours, to come to all of them, go and go ... Thou created every time, Thou had been prior to any time, and there was no time when time was not at all.
(St. Augustine. Confession)
Allah precedes in the sense of being just as yesterday comes prior to today, but He does not precede in time, for He is the time ... However, the imagination presents the matter as between the Creator and His creation a temporary extension took place. This is explained by the custom of sensory perception to assume the existence of temporary lag between priority and transient things.
(Ibn Arabi)
For comparison with the quoted text, belonging to the Biblical tradition, we present excerpts from Eastern religious and mystical texts
Thou art without beginning, beyond time, beyond space. Thou art He, from which three worlds occured.
(Yajurveda)
Thou art neither far, nor near, neither in heaven, nor in earth, neither in samsara nor in nirvana. Praise to Thou, not abiding anywhere! ... Who can praise Thou, devoid of origin and not liable to death, who has no end, no middle, no perceiver and perceived? Praise the Buddha and who knows how to walk (Sugata), and who leaved the way, who did not go and did not come!
(Nagarjuna. Chatuh-stava)
There is something that exists before Heaven and Earth, which has no form, buried in silence. It is master of all phenomena, and is not subject to the change of seasons.
(Zen)
According to the book of Proverbs (8:22-30), Wisdom (Sophia), which according to tradition connects the images of Christ and his god-mother, was created first of all beings. Christ was present in the Garden of Eden (in Gnostic mythology - as a snake, cf. Jn. 3:14).
Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and for ever the same.
(Hebrews 13:8)
Through Christ, overcoming time as a consequences of the Fall is possible also for man (1 Cor. 15:21-22). Details of these very difficult questions - about the time, sin and entropy - will be discussed in Chapter 15.
So, God dwells in eternity. But man lives in time and because - in his own world, which he created. If we compare (in the spirit of biblical symbolism, especially in the Apocalypse) God's world with a city - the heavenly Jerusalem, we can say: the man, not daring (or unable, after the Fall) to enter the city gates, prefers to build his (own! This is the mater!) miserable hut outside the city walls.
And, wretched sorcerer before the magic world,
Created by me, I stand. without faith.
(F. Tyutchev)
Irresolute hand
Brought these clouds
And the sad eyes met
Their dimmed pattern.
Unhappy and quiet,
I am the creator of the mine worlds
Where sky is artificial
And crystal dew is asleep...
(Mandelstam)
In the heavenly Jerusalem there is no time, the "laws of nature" do not work too (of course!). Compared with the Divine world, human worlds ("the artificial sky and sleeping crystal dew") are inevitably flawed, but certainly not to the same degree. Sometimes it is very sad and absurd world (say, the worlds of " red conspiracy ", alcohol or drug dreams, which were discussed in the first chapter). At the same time, remember that a person's ability to create worlds inherently belongs to him as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), as a "creature ordered to be God" (St. Basil the Great). This ability gets most striking forms in the literary and artistic works, as will be discussed further. It is important to emphasize, however, that the ability to create worlds is essential for everyday life.
For it is good to feel that all that gripped her with such a force was not free from the constant hint that this is only an appearance. But the sight undoubtedly contained liquefied, diluted reality - perhaps not yet becoming the earth really, - Agatha thought. And in one of those marvelous moments when the place where she stood, seemed dissolved in limbo, she was able to believe that beyond her, in the space in which you can never look in, it may be wise God!
(R. Musil. Man Without Qualities)
Thesis, which we are trying to prove is this: everyone lives in his own world created by him; challenge of a man is go to the world created by God, and live there. That's how a persistent emphasis of illusory world (in Hindu and Buddhist texts cited in Chapter 3) can be understood. The world in which you live is illusory. You made it up. "In fact, it is not so, as in fact." With this statement, statements of different people belonging to a variety of traditions (and highlighting the different sides to the problem concerned) can be compared:
Know that there is a hidden reality that is revealed to us as the supreme beauty, to know and to feel it - that is the core of the true religion.
(A. Einstein)
Anyone creates by an illusion and his power of imagination that does not exist thereof; this is the general state of things. Who knows - does not to co-create the energy that has is and is beyond energy container...
(Ibn Arabi)
Fantasy remains a human right: we create as we can, for we are also created - not just created, but made in the image and likeness of the Creator.
(J.R.R. Tolkien)
Unfortunately (very mildly, unfortunately!), a man after the Fall almost lost the ability to perceive the divine reality directly, a veil appeared between God and man - clothing leather, which, according to the book of Genesis, God made for Adam and Eve.
Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have held back from you what is good.
(Jeremiah 5:25)
Traditional religions speak of the "gap", break and even abyss between God and the created world. In this gap a man just creates "secondary" worlds. They form a kind of veil, or veil that separates man from the ultimate reality, which now becomes unbearable for him (in fact, this is the tragedy of the Fall)
Did not you see the one who took his passion for Allah, and Allah knocked him out of the way of His knowledge and put the seal on his hearing and his heart, and laid veil on his vision. Who will lead him after Allah? Do you not come to your senses?
(Quran 45:22 (23))
In the treatises by Dionysius the Areopagite, the world hierarchy is likened to a system of mirrors and curtains, passing ultimate light each to other:
It is impossible to God-created beam beamed for us differently than mystically shrouded by medley of sacred veils and correspondingly and suitably prepared for us by Father Providence.
(Celestial Hierarchy 1.3)
World, fallen away from God, is no longer able to bear His majesty. This motif has been known already in Greek mythology: for example, Zeus kills his lover Semele, coming to she in visible appearance, while her son was born - the god Dionysus.
Truly, there are seven thousand veils of light and darkness that hide the Lord. If He allowed to take these curtains, light of the greatness of His countenance would destroyed and wiped out all life.
(Islamic hadith)
In the quantum world, as will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6, we again encounter the "veil" that separates us from the true reality that is too terrible for the mind of the ordinary man to contact it directly. Tht modern philosopher writes:
Condition that must be satisfied ... is the presence of a screen ... If you do not meet these conditions, the meeting itself leads to what I call the annihilation, that is disappearing both the subject of human attention, desire, interest, and the man himself ... The field [of seeing] ... is the screen, which isolates us from seeing the dance of electrons in our eyes ... If we saw by a miracle, say, in a state of epileptic,- electrons, which are transformed in our field of vision ... we would cease to see things, and moreover, we would have simply gone mad.
(M.K. Mamardashvili. Boom of knowledge)
Only occasionally divine reality penetrates all veils in some images, shows itself through them, passing in the mind of man. Sufferings of man at this point can not be compared to anything else. It is these "moments of truth" (very distorted and incomplete, of course) are sources of high poetry:
But we, poets. Should. standing under God's
Terrible storm with head uncovered,
Catch rays of Father Himself
And bear heaven gifts in hands
In your language
Wrapping them in songs.
(F. HЖlderlin, cf. 2 Cor. 3:12-18)
To eetain, comprehend and understand the prophetic revelation is another problem, often even more difficult than the actual revelation. Therefore it is very common for people to refuse to even attempt to approach it - even glimpse the truth is too scary (Matt. 13:15). At the same time, as the biblical prophets say (see, e.g., Is. 29:10), God himself closes eyes and ears of the people.
From the wheel and the drift of Things
Deliver us, Good Lord,
And we will face the wrath of Kings,
The faggot and the sword!
Lay not thy Works before our eyes
Nor vex us with thy Wars,
Lest we should feel the straining skies
O'ertrod by trampling stars.
Thy Path, thy Purposes conceal
From our beleaguered realm
Lest any shattering whisper steal
Upon us and o'erwhelm.
A veil 'twixt us and Thee, Good Lord,
A veil 'twixt us and Thee--
Lest we should hear too clear, too clear,
And unto madness see!
(Rudyard Kipling)
The desire to withdraw into his own world, isolated from God and from the tragedy of existence, in fact, entails a new tragedy.
- Denmark is prison.
- Then is the world one.... We think not so, my lord.
- Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
- Why then, your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your mind.
- O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
(William Shakespeare. Hamlet)
Bad dreams - this is very important. What other dreams may come to a man who rejected God's world and is enclosed in a nutshell of his (not really existing) personality? It is that sleep of death, referred to in the monologue "To be or not to be..."?. In addition to suicide, considered by Hamlet, the progress of science and technology provides additional opportunities to withdraw into a nutshell - to go into virtual reality, the world of their own dreams and desires. Sleg from the "Prey items of the century" by Strugatsky is, if science fiction, the " passing range fiction", very slightly superior with respect to today technology. Remaining within the materialistic and atheistic worldview , it is not easy to explain what is, in fact, wrong in slang (if we exclude the possible harm to health and so on, i.e. a technical rather than metaphysical problems). Probably not coincidentally, Boris Strugatsky, judging by his answers to questions from fans on the Internet, now will not find anything particularly awful in the world of "Prey items..." But we, after Shakespeare, know: bad dreams torment, bad dreams ... Reminder and punishment for creature forgetting its high purpose.
The gap between God and the world, which is the root cause of the world's evil, is presented in the Gnostic texts as a result of "mistakes" in creation.
The world came about through a mistake. For he who created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of attaining his desire. For the world never was imperishable, nor, for that matter, was he who made the world.
(Gospel of Philip 99)
Sophia, which is called Pistis, wanted to commit an act alone, without her comrades. And her act was the painting of the sky, [so that] the veil exists between the heavenly and the internal eons. And there occurred a shadow beneath the veil, and that shadow became a matter.
(The essence of the Archons)
Gnostics construct complex hierarchical schemes of the world structure (eons with the authorities-archons) and distinguish the god-creator (demiurge), who represents evil or ignorance, and the true unknown God. In the orthodox Judeo-Christian tradition, with its concept of sin, the responsibility for the gap rests on the human. However, closer analysis reveals that the two positions are not so opposed. Russian philosopher L. Karsavin, who deeply researched Gnosticism, gives a convincing psychological interpretation of its frightening images:
Think: each of us in his depths is Sophia. And do not appear our thoughts and feelings as something other? ... Did not you thought Yaldabaof, a terrible, evil and dark god?
(Earth and mountain Sophia)
In this interpretation, the role of the evil demiurge belongs to the man himself:
Each of us must recognize that he is the creator of all evil in himself.
(St. Basil the Great. Six Days)
Demiurge of your world is you, shifting the blame to the "archons" fails because archons appear as a personification of your own sinful desires. "Bachili ochi sho kupovali teper yishte huch povylazte." And because "who made the world (your own!) was not imperishable too", the world never was imperishable too.
We expect the truth, and find in ourselves one doubt. We are looking for happiness, and find only misery and death. We are to want the truth and happiness, but are unable to neither true knowledge, nor happiness. This desire is left to us as a punishment, and to give us a feel how much what height we fell.
(B. Pascal. Thoughts)
According to the Gnostic and Manichaean mythology, the soul of man plunges down into the evil-soaked material layers. In the traditional language, the soul is compared to a pearl; this symbolism is often found in the literature, starting from the ancient "Hymn to Pearl" to "Burdened with evil" by Strugatsky. The process of descent, immersion in the "lower" world wears by veils the spark a truly human (God's) spirit. Sparks of divine light are trapped in matter:
Such discoveries do not require bribes;
silence is in the whole district.
How much light is crammed into star splinter
at nightfall! - as refugees in a boat.
(Brodsky)
Stars are fragments:
I have built a world from them
(Friedrich Nietzsche)
A good illustration of these ideas can be found in a rather old (written in 1920) fantasy novel, which lies at the origins of the "fantasy" genre. The hero is able to see the light of something beyond visible world.
...The brook too had altered in character. A trembling radiance came up from its green water, like some imprisoned force escaping into the air.
His vision altered and he came to an automatic standstill. He was perceiving two worlds simultaneously. With his own eyes he saw the gorge as before, with its rocks, brook, plant-animals, sunshine, and shadows. But with his acquired eyes he saw differently.
The green sparks from the brook, when closely watched, could be distinguished individually, each one wavering up toward the clouds, but the moment they got within them a fearful struggle seemed to begin. The spark endeavoured to escape through to the upper air, while the clouds concentrated around it whichever way it darted, trying to create so dense a prison that further movement would be impossible.
As far as Maskull could detect, most of the sparks succeeded eventually in finding their way out after frantic efforts; but one that he was looking at was caught, and what happened was this. A complete ring of cloud surrounded it, and, in spite of its furious leaps and flashes in all directions--as if it were a live, savage creature caught in a net--nowhere could it find an opening, but it dragged the enveloping cloud stuff with it, wherever it went. The vapours continued to thicken around it, until they resembled the black, heavy, compressed sky masses seen before a bad thunderstorm. Then the green spark, which was still visible in the interior, ceased its efforts, and remained for a time quite quiescent. The cloud shape went on consolidating itself, and became nearly spherical; as it grew heavier and stiller, it started slowly to descend toward the valley floor. When it was directly opposite Maskull, with its lower end only a few feet off the ground, its motion stopped altogether and there was a complete pause for at least two minutes. Suddenly, like a stab of forked lightning, the great cloud shot together, became small, indented, and coloured, and as a plant-animal started walking around on legs and rooting up the ground in search of food...
The sphere was still there, but between it and the Muspel-world (in the novel - a world of true reality. - Auth.) in which he was standing he perceived a dim, vast shadow, without any distinguishable shape, but somehow throwing out a scent of disgusting sweetness. Nightspore knew that it was Crystalman (demiurge. - Auth). A flood of fierce light--but it was not light, but passion--was streaming all the time from Muspel to the Shadow, and through it. When, however, it emerged on the other side, which was the sphere, the light was altered in character. It became split, as by a prism, into the two forms of life which he had previously seen--the green corpuscles and the whirls. What had been fiery spirit but a moment ago was now a disgusting mass of crawling, wriggling individuals, each whirl of pleasure-seeking will having, as nucleus, a fragmentary spark of living green fire. Nightspore recollected the back rays of Starkness, and it flashed across him with the certainty of truth that the green sparks were the back rays, and the whirls the forward rays, of Muspel. The former were trying desperately to return to their place of origin, but were overpowered by the brute force of the latter, which wished only to remain where they were. The individual whirls were jostling and fighting with, and even devouring, each other. This created pain, but, whatever pain they felt, it was always pleasure that they sought. Sometimes the green sparks were strong enough for a moment to move a little way in the direction of Muspel; the whirls would then accept the movement, not only without demur, but with pride and pleasure, as if it were their own handiwork--but they never saw beyond the Shadow, they thought that they were travelling toward it... The Muspel-stream was Crystalman's food.
(D. Lindsay. Voyage to Arcturus)
We can try to interpret this passage in a "physical" language: climbing down from the beyond (quantum) world, quanta become unsightly classical laws and phenomena; this issue will sound again and again in the pages of the book.
For a detailed description of the Gnostic worldview, traditions of astrology, alchemy and hermeticism introduce special term hemarmen meaning tyrannical reign of supreme Archons-stars over the world of body and soul (but not spirit!) of people, universal fatum. The stars are strengthened by deities-creators between the firmament and the ground on a rotating stellar sphere (the Wheel). The flickering light of stars is a consequence of that archons own living soul particles, sparks of good light. Similar images can be found in the works of Carlos Castaneda (Giant Eagle, managing and eating consciousness).
Although usually one emphasizes the incompatibility of the gnostic doctrine and Christian orthodoxy, one has to recognize that the Gnostics struggled painfully with the very real problem - the problem of abandonment by God. One of the most authoritative Gnostic authors (from the orthodox point of view - heresiarch) Basilides repeated: "I am ready to admit all, but I do not accept the hardness of the Godhead" (see op. cit. by L. Karsavin and Irenaeus' "Against Heresies"). Modern man is not protected by traditional faith, and cannot even understand this impulse - not to mention the Christian "God is love" (1 Jn. 4:8).
God is a stranger to charity. Those who say that he is good, they just do not know him. There is nothing more inhuman than god. He is raged and cunning, like lightning. Similar to lightning from the clouds, from which one does not expect lightning. And then, suddenly, he hits - all of a sudden, suddenly, he brings down on the man hit and represents all his cruelty. Or his love. Or his brutal love. From he you can expect anything. He can manifest himself at any time and in everything.
(P. Lagerkvist. Sibyl)
The problem in question exists, of course, in most orthodox point of view too. It should be not ignored, but to be solves (by each person individually!) with the aid of faith, hope and love. In many places, the Bible says that God has hidden His face from people.
And my wrath is kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils befall them, and sorrow, and they will say in that day, that is not the reason why these evils come upon that not [the Lord] God among us?
(Deuteronomy 31:17)
According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions have I done unto them, and hid my face from them.
(Ezekiel 39:24)
By thy favor, O Lord, thou hast confirmed my mountain. Thou didst hide thy face, and I was embarrassed.
(Psalms 29:8)
I
In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a time, but with everlasting kindness have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.
(Isaiah 54:8)
Issue of God's face hiding was tragically relevant in the XX century, when the spiritual atmosphere was largely determined by the famous maxim of Friedrich Nietzsche, "God is dead" ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra"). Since the World War I, mankind seemed specially defined to demonstrate the capabilities of the creature, abandoned by the Creator (as spoken in the Soviet period, abandoned due to numerous requests of workers).
The whole mankind has
Mlligrubs and colic, -
And the whole story of it is-
History of the disease.
Sore one lives more cheerfully,
Fiercely, and more useless -
And enjoys its
History of the disease.
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
The horror of this Hiding was remembered by the Western Judeo-Christian philosophers and theologians again after World War II (the Holocaust). However, this issue is too serious to talk about it in passing. The whole XX century was the "century of Job" - without the visible (yet?) catharsis.
Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net. Now, I'm screaming, "Resentment" and not heard: I cry aloud, and no judgment. He blocked my way, and I can not pass, and set darkness in my paths. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me, and I am going away, and, as a tree, my hope hath he removed. Kindled his anger at me and thinks I'm one of his enemies. ... My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I was left with the skin of my teeth. Have mercy on me, have mercy on me you, my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me.
(Job 19)
According to the New Testament tradition, the promise uttered by the prophet Isaiah ("with everlasting kindness I have mercy on you") is performed by Christ, the prototype of which is Job. However, this does not negate the tragedy of human existence, but gives to it depth and inner meaning.
Therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.
(Hebrews 10:19-20)
The veil of the temple, which is torn at the death of Christ (Matt. 27:51, Mk. 15:38), just symbolizes the veil between God and the world:
He is our peace, who hath made both one, and has broken down the dividing wall, by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments and ordinances, that of the two to create in himself one new man, so making peace, and in one body to reconcile both to God through the cross, slain the enmity thereby.
(Ephesians 2:13-16)
Detailed comments given in the Gnostic Apocryphon:
The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the Holy in the Holy. The veil at first concealed how God controlled the creation, but when the veil is rent and the things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or rather will be destroyed. And the whole (inferior) godhead will flee from here, but not into the holies of the holies, for it will not be able to mix with the unmixed light and the flawless fullness, but will be under the wings of the cross and under its arms. This ark will be their salvation when the flood of water surges over them. If some belong to the order of the priesthood, they will be able to go within the veil with the high priest. For this reason, the veil was not rent at the top only, since it would have been open only to those above; nor was it rent at the bottom only, since it would have been revealed only to those below. But it was rent from the top to bottom. Those above opened to us the things below, in order that we may go in to the secret of the truth. This truly is what is held in high regard, (and) what is strong! But we shall go in there by means of lowly types and forms of weakness. They are lowly indeed when compared with the perfect glory. There is glory which surpasses glory. There is power which surpasses power. Therefore, the perfect things have opened to us, together with the hidden things of truth. The holies of the holies were revealed, and the bridal chamber invited us in. As long as it is hidden, wickedness is indeed ineffectual, but it has not been removed from the midst of the seed of the Holy Spirit. They are slaves of evil. But when it is revealed, then the perfect light will flow out on every one. And all those who are in it will receive the chrism. Then the slaves will be free and the captives ransomed.
(Gospel of Philip 125-127)
At the same time, the sacrifice of Christ does not remove the problem of the gap with God and, therefore, of being of "empirical" man in the evil (because abandonment by God!) World: the veil is torn at the moment of death of Christ, and the barrier can be overcome only for a moment - in the "eternal present ", which was already duscussed above. A person should get out of his own world, where he had locked himself playing the role of demiurge, and reunite with the world the Ultimate Reality.
Considering man as demiurge, it is natural to ask: to what extent are arbitrary, these "secondary" (man-made) worlds? Primary, that is true, world, created by God, could be anything (or non-existent - God did not have to create the world!).
God is love ... God does not need anything. He gives the fullness. The teaching that God "did not have to" make world is not dry scholasticism, it is very important ... It spawned unwanted creatures to love them and improve. He created the world, feeling (or feeling? Have no time for him), as swarming flies at the cross, it hurts to touch the tree scarred back as breath when sagging body as unbearably sore hands, when you have to breathe ... Here it is, love. There He is God, the Creator of all love.
(C.S. Lewis. Love)
Statement of arbitrary Divine act of creation is very important and, in fact, non-commom even within the Judeo-Christian worldview. In the Western Christian tradition, two lines are traced that go back ultimately to Aristotle and Plato. St. Thomas Aquinas, who synthesized in its system the Catholic dogma with the teachings of of Aristotle, stated: "Only that is excluded from the omnipotence of God, which contradicts the essence of the mind (!), namely, that something both exists and does not exist, or that the existing became non-existing." Thus, "the essence of the mind" is regarded as a restriction on divine omnipotence - which is not necessarily (or even impossibly!) to be understood in primitive "blasphemous" sense, because the human mind is itself created by God. In any case, God does not fit the created world, and creation is an act of self-limitation of God (belittling - Greek kenosis). By the very act of creation, God binds Himself. We are talking about the limits of self-restraint.
This idea is emphasized in the tales by C.S. Lewis (belonging to the Christian tradition), where Aslan acts - the embodiment of God in the form of a lion:
Lucy saw ... title: "How to make the invisible visible." She read to herself spell to ensure we stay on long words, uttered aloud, and immediately realized that it worked ... She ran forward with a little cry of delight and with her arms stretched out. For what stood in the doorway was Aslan himself, The Lion, the highest of all High Kings. ...
Oh, Aslan," said she, "it was kind of you to come."
"I have been here all the time," said he, "but you have just made me visible."
"Aslan!" said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. "Don't make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!"
"It did," said Aslan. "Do you think I wouldn't obey my own rules?"
(C.S. Lewis. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)
Under the law, the mighty lion Aslan is even forced to sacrifice humbly himself at the behest of an evil Witch, ruling in this world ("The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe").
In a somewhat vulgarized form the same idea is expressed by the well-known disciple of the mystic and occultist G. Gurdjieff
We talked a lot about the idea of a miracle, that the Absolute can not express their will in our world, and this is manifested only in the form of mechanical laws and may not appear in their violation. I do not remember which one of us came to mind the well-known, though not very respectful school history, in which we saw an illustration of this law. It was a seminarian-age ...
- Well, bring me an example of something which the Lord could not have done, - bishop examiner appealed to him.
- It's easy, Your Eminence - posted seminarian - even the Lord himself can not just beat ace of trumps by the deuce.
This ... silly story makes more sense than a thousand theological treatises. Rules of the game are the essence of the game, and their violation would ruin the whole game.
(P. Uspensky. In Search of the Miraculous)
On the other hand, many other medieval scholastics, and following them - also for the most profound thinkers of modern philosophy, God is certainly above the laws of logic and has nothing to do with them. Well-known scholar St. Peter Damian (1007-1072, the words "philosophy is the maid of Theology" can be traced to him) wrote:
See, to the claim that God can not restore the maiden after a fall, though consistently, one adds: can God make the being was not being? As if forever one established that if the maid is flawed, she is no longer able to be clean. That, of course, is true in relation to the nature, and it is correct to assert: it can not be that the same thing happened to be, and not be [both]. Indeed, the opposite of one another, so if one takes place, the other can not be ... However, this impossibility ... has nothing to do with the divine omnipotence. After all, the one who gave birth to nature, easily, if desires, removes natural necessity.
(On divine omnipotence)
Later, Descartes thought a lot about the relationship between divine omnipotence and human mind (see the book by Shestov "Athens and Jerusalem"). Here's how contemporary philosopher comments on Descartes thought:
The problem is whether God can create the world in such a way that its structure, its construction is superior to our ability to understand ... We can introduce the concept of God as a representation, as part of our structure of philosophical reflection, if we limit him in some way, and attribute to him the need to create only such a world, which we can understand. We have to assume that he can create any world, including one in which the three angles of the triangle would not be equal to two right angles, and where the mountains would be and valleys would not be. But in our world, by definition, if there is a mountain, then there is the valley ... But we can not ascribe the limitations of our thinking process to certain creation work or certain creative power. According to Descartes, if there is a blasphemy, the supreme blasphemy is try to think instead of God, to reason: this is possible, and it is impossible, or that has such and such a purpose.
(MK Mamardashvili. Cartesian thinking)
Any case, the world is created and can be seen as evidence of divine power (but not of omnipotence, as God is immeasurably greater than the world; we can know the divine omnipotence only from the mystical experience).
In the creation of the heavens and the earth, in the alternation of night and day on a ship that sails on the sea (so that it is useful to people), in the water (which Allah sent down from the sky, and revived the earth after its death, and scattered all animals on it), and in the wind change, and in the cloud subordinate, between heaven and earth - are signs for sensible people!
(Quran 2:159 (164), cf. Rom. 1:20)
Basic text of Taoism says about the manifestation of the Supreme Reality in the created world:
Tao is what drives things
its way is mysterious and unfathomable.
Such a vague, such vague!
But the essence of it has a form.
It is so vague, so unclear!
But its essence has existence.
So deep, so mysterious!
But its essence has the power.
Its strength s superior to anything that exists in the world,
and its essence can be seen.
From ancient times to the present day
his voice does not stop,
bearing the Father's entire host of things.
Where can I see the face of the Father of all things?
Everywhere.
(Tao Te Ching 21)
Tao, the essence and meaning of the world, literally sculpts it from the primordial Chaos, like from clay (this process does not happen in time, since Taoism claims eternity of the material world). Form is manifested in the world, giving structure to it. Exploring this structure, we can understand the Tao. Father's voice its the Word of the New Testament, the Logos, Christ, by Whom the world was created. The face of the Father is depicted the relationship of all things and events of the phenomenal world, that is, indeed, everywhere. An important aspect of the structure of the world order is expressed in a poem by Goethe:
When, in the vastness of nature,
Where, repeating, everything flows,
And each vault of heaven spins vault
Then the star and worm are
Equal before the power of being,
And the entire world throng
Seems to us rest in God.
God is reflected in each point of the universe, any slice of life includes all forms of wealth (in mathematics and physics this is called fractal); worm is a preimage of Christ (Psalm 21:7, Job 25:6). Self-similarity, characteristic of fractals, indicates the absence of a natural length scale. Because God is infinitely superior to all created things in the world, from the point of view of divine providence, there can be no "natural" yardsticks. System of wheels (a vault rotates vault), is the "transmission system", operating the world. This image of the wheels in the wheels occurs in the famous vision of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1).
In Kabbalah, the creation process is preceded by tzimtzum - release of empty space by God, which allows us to give place to something else but Him, the prohibition of the acceptance of the divine light. Thus, darkness, ignorance is created, and not light.
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation [more precisely: devastated], taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.
(Philippians 2:6-9)
A person, who creates his own world, can not transgress the laws of ultimate reality. In particular, he is willy-nilly forced to reckon with the laws of nature (established by God!), As described in the book of Job:
Do you give in life when their orders morning and indicated whether the dawn its place, that it has reached the end of the earth? ... Can display the constellations at the time and to ace with her children? ... Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover you? Can you send lightnings, which they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?
(Job 38)
However, these issues need not be considered rhetorical, if we remember that Job torments are torments of the God-man Christ, through whom the world was created. Something about the uneasy relationship between man and God can be found in the Jewish apocryphal:
And the prophet said, "Lord, I do not stop to sue with you."
And God said, "Calculate the flowers of the earth, if you can calculate them, you can sue with me too."
And the prophet said: "I cannot calculate, for human flesh is on me, I will not stop but for a moment to sue with you. I want, o Lord, to see the depths of hell."
And God said, "Come down and see."
(Rev. Ezra)
CHAPTER 5.
World of society and world of God
Well, I'm not busy by strange bliss.
It looks nice gesture.
I'm busy by inner perfection:
midnight - half a tin - a lyre.
For me, trees are morethan the forest.
I do not have a common interest.
But the speed of the internal progress
Is greater than the rate in the world.
(Brodsky)
Person lives among many living creatures on earth (and even, in a sense, in the universe and in many other worlds, we will be back these issues again and again). The question naturally arises, in what sense at all individual consciousness exists, because the word con-sciousness implies a collective nature of this phenomenon. Living in a society, one has to reckon its social laws.
The assertion of the collective nature of consciousness has a positive aspect: only through it stability and order in the society can be provided. Note that in quantum mechanics stationary and quasi-stationary states of the system are also introduced.
Morality is a coherence of each momentary state of of our lives with something lengthy.
(R. Musil. Man Without Qualities)
Matching of worlds, created by different people, is one of the most important functions of society. For this purpose, day cares, schools, universities, courts, prisons, the army, the Holy Office, the Commission to Combat Pseudoscience and other similar organizations are founded, books are written, newspapers are published, there is television, films, and so on. We quote in this context contemporary French philosopher:
Undoubtedly, individual is a fictional atom of "ideological" view about society, but it is also a reality, created by a specific technology of power that I have called "discipline." We must cease once and for all to describe the manifestations of power in negative terms: they say, it "excludes", "moves down", "performs censorship", "extracts", "hides", "conceals". In fact, power produces. It produces reality, it produces a field of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that can be obtained about the individual belong to its products.
(Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish)
By the end of XX century, in response to the collectivist (not to say - gregarious) ideology of fascism, communism, and modern "consumer society", a desire to overcome this dictatorship society becomes widespread. This process was expressed in hippie motion of 60s. Of course, it ended by nothing, since such a problem can be solved only on a personal level, not by a "movement", even the most anarchic. Recently, the books by American mystic Carlos Castaneda became greatly popular among young people. According to "his" doctrine (attributed to the yaks tribe Indian, Don Juan Matus, a representative of some ancient tradition), a man lives in the world, "assembled" by a society that rigidly fixes his assemblage point. But he can collect also other worlds by using different techniques that shift the assemblage point. The use of drugs is one of most crude techniques, it leads to an uncontrolled jump of assemblage point to another world, which can get grim (see, e.g., a remarkable story by H. Ellison "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin"). Controlled movement of the assemblage point is more instructive and safe, but this is achieved only by a serious spiritual work. The aim of this work is the liberation from society imposed illusion.
Similar task, among others, is solved (or, at least, was ever solved) also by traditional religion, and, in our opinion, much more successful. True Tradition implies a paradoxical formulation: it never reduces to blind imitation ("tradition of men"), but includes the participation of higher creativity.
Tathagata realized a sheer, but hiding, erased, divided, impassable, deserted path by his wisdom, and made it the paved road.
(Questions of Milinda)
In the spiritual history of mankind, all significant was created not by those who perceived himself as successors of present tradition or pioneers of a new one, but by those who know how to bind himself to a forgotten, lost tradition of the past, avoiding, rejecting the near (and this "near" can make up millennia).
(N. Bakhtin. Belief and knowledge)
And not only one treasure, perhaps,
Bypassing grandchildren, will go to great-grandchildren,
Again skald will compose another's song
And utter it as his own.
(Mandelstam)
Crucial role in the transmission of traditions in religion, as in science, belongs to requirement of "congruence" (consistency) of knowledge, which is difficult to formalize, but very important:
First, all brethren, the student can say: "Out of the mouth of the Blessed I heard, from him I accepted. This is the truth, that's - the law, the Master's teaching." Hearing a word spoken by brother, never, o brethren praise saying so, and never meet his words by blasphemy or mockery. Without blasphemy, without mockery, but carefully let every word and syllable be heard - and then take the Scriptures and check the said with specific regulations of the charter. And if the words do not agree with the Scriptures, if they do not coincide with the specific regulations of the charter, you accept a solution: "It is not the word of the Blessed and it is wrongly understood by a monk." Then, brethren, you abandon word. If, brethren, it is according to the Scriptures, and coincides with the specific regulations of the charter, you accept a solution: "It is a valid - it is the word of the Blessed, and it is truly understood by a monk." So, brethren, you learn yourself a valid relationship.
(Mahapapinirvana Sutra)
We note here that, of course, the condition of congruence can not be reduced to a flat and impossible in any important cases demand of logical consistency. On failure of "binary" logic in spiritual matters, we will discuss in detail below, in chapters 8-10.
To preserve the continuity, religious traditions used their techniques. At the same time, along with Scripture (fixed word), a large role was played by the oral tradition, which was not subject of recording (the keeper of tradition understood that rigid fixation leads here to unacceptable distortions and simplifications). Spirit and meaning, rather than the words were considered to be sacred in the tradition. Secrets of spiritual teachings passed down for centuries by word of mouth, through the religious orders, secret school and societies (of course, for the modern reader, these terms will cause only irony, largely justified). The danger of some knowledge of the physical and mental health of the uninitiated was emphasized, and sometimes the very initiation was associated with a fatal risk. "Closed" technologies transferred ability to reach specific states of consciousness and abilities that are not available to ordinary people and not clear for the "secular" psychology. In particular, the developed mnemonics allow the Buddhist monks to keep the memory of tens and hundreds of volumes of religious observance. More terrible methods were used by leaders of Islamic assassins sect, who personally demonstrated (perhaps not without the use of drugs) the promised state of heavenly bliss. However, outwardly violent actions, up to applying physical injury to the students, were used also by Zen (Ch'an, to use the Chinese term) teachers, guiding their students to the main goal - a state of enlightenment.
Whenever mentor Tszyuydi was asked what is Chan, he replied by lifting a finger. A young novice, in imitation of him began to raise his finger too when he was asked what he his teacher teaches. Hearing about this, Tszyuydi took a knife and cut off the finger of the novice. He cried out in pain and ran away. Tszyuydi called him and when he turned around again raised his finger. At that moment, the novice suddenly was enlightened.
(Huikay. Outpost without gates)
Unfortunately, the methods that are commonly used to achieve correlation (congruence) of worlds created by different people, give rise to feelings of disgust and protest for every normal (i.e., mindful of his dignity) man:
The result was fanatical freethinking, coupled with the findings that young people are deliberately deceived by the government, and this was a shocking conclusion. Such experiences gave rise to distrust to all kinds of authority and skepticism about the beliefs and convictions, abiding in the social environment surrounding me. This skepticism never left me, although it lost its sting later, when I understood better the causal connection of phenomena ... This forcing intimidated me so, that a year after the exam any reflection on scientific topics was poisoned for me... In fact, it is almost a miracle that the modern methods of teaching have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity ... It is big mistake to think that the sense of duty and coercion can help find joy to watch and look.
(A. Einstein. Autobiographical notes)
In fairness, we note that the above passage talks about the shortcomings (or the excesses?) of school, not Inquisition, the conclusion of dissidents in prisons and mental hospitals, etc. However, metaphysically (but, of course, not ethically!) it is about the same.
She-wolf tells her cubs, "Bite, like me," and that is enough, and she-hare teaches her cubs, "Get away, like me," and this, too, is enough, but a man teaches a man-cub, "Think as I do", and this is a crime.
(A. and B. Strugatsky. Ugly Swans)
To think is not fun, but an obligation.
(A. and B. Strugatsky. Snail on the slope)
To avoid any confusion it should be emphasized that the authors are not conscious anarchists at all and aware necessity of forced "congruentizationi" (the word is icky, as the very process!) of individual worlds for the existence of society. Without this, understanding of people (perceived themselves as being separate from the Supreme Reality) is impossible.
Chuang Tzu and Huizu walked across the bridge over the River Hao.
Chuang Tzu said, "How fun the fishes are playing in the water! That's joy of fish!"
- You're not a fish - said Huizu - how do you know what is the joy of fish?
- But you're not me, - said Chuang Tzu, - how do you know that I do not know what is the joy of fish?
(Chuang Tzu)
This is one of the differences, using the language of St. Augustine, between the City of earth and the City of God. The true solution is to reject the "personality" (which is by 99% the product of all these external influences) and surrender to the Will of God. In this, all the traditions agree (up to a terminology), emphasizing the inner meaning ("the kingdom of God is within you"):
With my soul have I desired thee in the night, and my spirit will seek thee my rising early.
(Isaiah 26:9)
Hypocrites! You can discern the earth and the sky signs, how do you not discern this time? Why do not you judge yourselves, what is right?
(Luke 12:56-57)
The opposition of the divine (which is the true self) and human (according to Marxist doctrine, "the product of social relations," that is a false identity) is met several times in the scriptures of various religions.
You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.
(Matthew 16:23)
It is important to emphasize that such a renunciation from oneself (in Christianity - humility) is in reality a return (conversion) to the true self. This statement (the identity of Atman, that is the true core of the personality, and the Brahman, that is, God) is particularly emphasized in the Indian Upanishads and comments on them:
I am the Atman, the Witness of all, I have the nature of Pure Consciousness. I am not Ignorance, nor even its expression, I am Brahman alone, Ever Pure, Ever Enlightened, Eternally Vigilant, Forever Free - Absolute Existence. I am the Absolute Bliss, the One without a second, and Deepest Consciousness.
(Shankara. Pancikaranam)
Based on this, we can try to give another answer to the question of "reality", delivered in the first chapter.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
(William Shakespeare. The Tempest)
A dream that we all see as so-called everyday life is, in fact, instructive, and contains enough information to tell us that this is just a dream.
The uniformity of the flow of time in all minds, more than anything else, proves that we are all immersed in the same dream, and moreover, that all who see this dream are a single entity.
(A. Schopenhauer)
Life in the manifested world has general principles, and its superior quality, as discussed in Chapter 3, is time. Time of life - it's the length of the meter, which is parallel to the event. Life and time, in that sense - it's the same thing. All the elements of a single dream in which we are immersed, that is, the events of human life, are identical. Just as the world can be divided into a number of identical atoms or primitive processes they commit, the elements of human destinies are the same, and only occur in different combinations. Discrete phenomenal world is the local system, which has a only a small set of items. There is no personality, there is only a general dream-like state, unreal in its nature - an illusion, Maya. Each creature in its "individuality" is actually a combination of all the rest. Realizing this, one realizes the emptiness and the relativity of all his principles, including the futility of selfishness. All is one at the quantum level, the main quality of the observer is illusority, mythical nature. Turning to the study of the quantum world, we come into contact with own dream-like state, and any specific idea of a man are washed away in his own mind. Dream by definition can not be measured, attempts to measure the human imagination are to be stopped. Maya has a tendency to universal measurements that give discrete and finite character to the world, and a twist to the smooth flow; stoppinng these processes, you can destroy it.
The one sound of song
In the world is poured.
(R. Rilke)
One is a single quantum state, the Atman, identical to Brahman (God), and all the rest is just sound.
My spirit would enthusiastically disappeared in nothingness,
To close own torments by senseless darkness.
- A! One will never be out of numbers, out of creating!
(Baudelaire)
The clearest manifestation of the illusion is just the standard notion of individuality. For a man, to lose his selfishness means disappear, to give up all his hopes, all the big world, fall into some pit. Liberation is seen by ordinary people as fear of the grave, hell, Satan, and that fear is expressed by Baudelaire in the word nothingness. Man does not know the quantum states of freedom. He calms himself that he still will not get into them, but only will make some laps in his limited local system of stay. With these blinders, physicist - researcher of classical mechanics, broken by its laws - will never get out of the old digital world. He's just afraid of a breakthrough in the quantum world, and can not break away from their devices, he does not want to lose the usual support and go to the state of absolutely free investigation. Thus he is doomed to make forever miserable jumps, without doing anything to get rid of the false me.
Human desire to preserve own (spuriously understood) personality in opposition to the dictates of the society leads to escapism - to escape from the "reality" in a fictional or virtual world. Of course, metaphysically this commitment is based on the terrible confusion: the very "personality", that one wants to keep from the public, is pretty much a product of it. Computer games or heroic fantasy worlds, in which a person is immersed, are usually more or less exact replica just from this reality formed by society - with some changes, usually for the worse. Say, in a "normal" life murder is punishable (at least in theory), but in the world of computer games, it is often important "constructive", and sometimes even plot-an element.
Fantasia is the disease of causes and effects,
Their rage, their lawless tyranny.
And inconsistency of consequences.
Fantasy! It is beginning of evil!
Fantasia is dethronement,
Dismembered world circles and spheres.
Invented by Lucifer for us.
Fantasia is blind rage of gender.
Breaking the horns and the roar of the male.
The collapse of the systems and theories.
It is the unreliability of all the stories
Up to the fatal absurdity of lead.
It is strange that the blue beauties
Are not drawn by the brush of imagination.
And only chaos, only destruction.
You will not find it in the dispensation of the honeycomb,
In idyllic bee honey flow,
Arcadian shepherds melodies ...
Unhappy is one who has experienced what is
Its indomitable temper.
(D. Samoilov)
Yes, it can be seen as easing for "gender blind rage" in socially acceptable ways. But the point is just that aggression should be not discharged, but sublimed. Animal in man (sex, aggression) is a powerful energy source:
The main cause of the current call to chastity is in the view of people that they are "owners" of their bodies, these deep and dangerous lands, where energy is pulsating, which created worlds.
(C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters)
Austrian zoologist K. Lorenz (one of the founders of ethology - the science of animal behavior) writes of the most complex and, if one may say so, altruistic behaviors of animals as modified aggression (see, e.g., his book "Aggression"). Man, "splashing out" his charge on innocent drawn monsters, used it not in the worst of all possible ways - but, to put it mildly, not very good.
The problem of escapism has another side, metaphysically even more important. As was discussed in the previous chapter, a human in any way is fenced off from God by his own worlds without grace, created in the "gap" between God and the world. However, plunging into the "virtual reality", he piles up a whole barricade of worlds, creating his own world in the framework of the world created by the developers of computer games, in the world created by the authors, say, a Hollywood movie, as part of the world created by the writer, in the world created by another writer (who borrowed the plot), and so on, almost infinitely. To break through this logjam to the true reality is almost impossible.
However, escapism is still better than a "creeping", "vulgar" materialism of everyday life. If a human is still not going to fulfill the commandment to "become God" (St. Basil the Great), then let he, at least, understands that the world of automobiles, gaskets, "proper" beer, political or business career - it's not all (see H.G. Wells. The Door in the Wall).
Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses-- and wolves... Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining--regaining of a clear view... We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity--from possessiveness... his triteness is really the penalty of "appropriation": the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them... In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic... In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.
(J.R.R. Tolkien. Tree and Leaf)
Psychologically, the desire for escapism is understandable in still another respect. The world is tragic, and live in it is scary, as detailed in the first chapter. Religion also does not promise to get rid of the tragedy of human existence. However, truly spiritual people just do not want to get rid of this. One may recall here the words of Osip Mandelstam, addressed to his wife: "Who told you that you have to to be happy?" (according to the memoirs by Nadezhda Mandelstam) or saying by Wiener "I never considered contentment and even happiness as highest human values" (the book "I am Mathematician"). Among other things, the continuation of last quotation deserves careful attention: "... and I had a fear that the aim of traditional psychoanalysis is to make the patient peacefully grazing cow." Mystical texts of different traditions emphasize the tragedy of man's relationship with God in very strong terms. We will not give here the numerous quotations from the Job book and the Old Testament Biblical Prophets (to whom God has touched); the tragedy continues in the New Testament, as the mourning of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and his cry on the cross.
Friends, Beloved blocked all exits:
we are lame deer, and he is lion hunting.
We are stymied by a ferocious and bloodthirsty lion
what we have to do? - just give up.
(Rumi. Masnavi. 6,576)
Exit of this impasse is given by love which leads to union with God:
God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him ... There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. Fearful is perfect in love.
(1 John 4:16,18-19)
But Divine Love is a formidable force, a fierce consuming fire:
for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.
(Song of Songs 8:6-7)
The tragedy of human existence does not cancel as long as the person remains "just" a man; on the other hand, society and simply can not be anything other than the public. Therefore, the tragedy of public life cannot be canceled at all, and any attempt to build the kingdom of God on earth never led and could not lead to anything but new tragedies. We can look for hope only in the address to the higher.
Let reflected on the bottom,
image blurred:
know it.
Only on that side
edge of eternity
was opened to us all
(R. Rilke)
In the world of classical physics (below, on the bottom), image of the quantum world is visible. Higher image is reflected in the lower world of people and other living beings in the manifested state. Initially the image is constant, but on reflection it becomes relative, discrete. Note that mathematics and information theory use the exactly opposite terminology - quantization is analog-to-digital conversion, that is, a description of the actual continual processes by discrete numbers of type 0 and 1, suitable for use in computers. In any case, we are talking about splitting and multiplication of the One, which is substituted in the manifested world by wordy and inevitably inaccurate descriptions. The appeal of the poet "to know the image" is a call to perform a reverse process - recovery of Ineffable from its projections, i.e. from reflections in the created world. To know the first principle of things, you need to turn to quantum concepts, it is not contained in classical physics. Edge of eternity and continuity, the joy of life is just on the other side, in quantum physics. However, physics and the doctrine of salvation are still different. The physical formulation of the quantum world is insufficent to join the eternity and be saved, to this end one needs to move from theory to practice, to realization.
All spiritual teachings are practical, they call for a real joy and freedom. Physicist, standing up on the spiritual path, gets a double benefit - he can use his theoretical knowledge and make a conscious transition through personal transformation, without which nothing true about the world of quanta can be said. If the physicist says about quantum mechanics truly, he has saved - gone to a high level of being, to a direct experience of high internal states. Promotional lectures of untransformed physicist will not benefit anyone. Progress in studying quantum states looks like a summation of the efforts of physicists that have achieved them. Moreover, one has to go beyond himself - there is no collective salvation. Collective is only mutual responsibility "of the scientific community," when other sheep do not allow alone sheep escape the herd, so it went to the higher being.
Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he goats before the flocks.
(Jeremiah 50:8)
When someone yet breaks, the whole herd together with the shepherds and dogs, helicopters and the army of the state, runs after him. They all want to return the "apostate" to plug the hole, resulting in the world order. In fact, this hole is saving, it is exit from the casemate. Buddha first turns the wheel of Dharma, and although he has the opportunity to go to nirvana immediately, he starts preaching that not only brings salvation to people, but is needed for all the gods headed by Brahma. In the Western tradition the Savior is Jesus Christ, paving the way for all - from the world of death in the world of the Ultimate Reality.
And he is the head of the body, the church, and he - the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he shall have first place in everything.
(Colossians 1:18)
Of course, salvation is possible only through the inner Christ, which is in us, "unless we are not what should be" (2 Cor. 13:5).
CHAPTER 6.
Norma, madness, creativity
Among the overgrown vacant lots
Our house has no walls, housetop has no roof -
We are as an outcast among men
Aliens from other worlds.
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
Standardization and anonymity reached in modern society, to say the least, a high degree. Unfortunately, we do not even notice nontrivial possibilities that are provided by documents, printed in millions of copies and issued to all citizens of the post-perestroika Russia:
"Certificate of insurance shall be exchanged in the following cases: a change of name, first name, middle initial, date of birth, place of birth or sex of the insured person; establishing inaccuracies or inaccuracy contained in it ..."
The contradictions of the individual and the team go to the extreme that people, whose worlds are too weakly correlated with the worlds of other people, are called crazy. Discussion of such examples can be found in the Taoist text:
The head of the family in the kingdom of Qin Pan had a son who as a child showed a remarkable mind, but growing up, lost his mind: he took singing for mourning, considered white as black, the fragrance as the stench, the sweetness as bitterness, and a bad deed as a good deed. What would he have thought, he understood for the contrary, be it heaven or earth, the four corners of the earth, water or fire, heat or cold. A man by the name of Ian advised his father:
- Why do not you ask for help from the noble men of the kingdom of Lu? Many of them are skilled people. Perhaps they will be able to cure your son.
Father of insane went in Lu, but passing through Chen he met Lao Tzu, and told him about the illness of his son.
- How do you know that your son is crazy? - Asked Lao Tzu. - Because now all in the Celestial Empire are wrong about what is true and what is false, what is useful and what is harmful. Because so many people suffer from this disease, no one notices that they are sick. Madness of one man is not enough to change the whole family, insanity of a family is not enough to change the whole village, insanity of a village is not enough to change the whole kingdom, madness of a kingdom is not enough for the entire world. But if the whole world went crazy, how crazy can change it? If everyone in the world were like your son, you would be considered insane, and not he. Who has the power to judge of the joys and sorrows, sounds and colors, smells and tastes, right and wrong? I'm not even sure that my words are not crazy, and even the speech of the noble men of Lu are the craziest in the world. You'd better go home, rather than unnecessarily spend money for treatment!
(Letszy)
From the highest point of view, "non-standard" worlds can be just more, rather than less valuable, that is, more accurately reflect the true reality. Sometimes these worlds are correlated with the worlds that are typical for the future (but not to contemporaries). Of course, the creators of these worlds get nothing particularly pleasant in life, at least, if we consider it outside. But for dead geniuses, monuments are erected, because, in the words of the pirate Billy Bones, dead (already) do not bite.
By tin soldiers system
By cord we are equal.
A little out of the ordinary minds come out:
"Death to a madman!" - We are crying fiercely
Raising mindless roar
We chase them, kill -
And then erect the statue,
Humanity glory seeing.
(P.J. Beranger)
Afraid of what the hell did you?
What cane one have against Pushkin?
His fist is forever chained
In copper calm to insults.
(Mayakovsky)
In the tales of the great romantic writers of XIX century one can find a description of the two limiting cases ("models") of interaction between man and society - Ugly Duckling (Hans Christian Andersen) and Baby Tsakhes surnamed Zinnober (E.-T.-A. Hoffman). Swan is really bad duck, while the baby Tsakhes (not a man but alraun - humanoid magical being, created from the root of the mandrake), owing to spell of good but shortsighted fairy, meets perfectly the expectations of others. Moreover, it only exists at this level: beyond the perceiving audience he is just stupid and spiteful freak. At the end of the story ontology triumphs over social psychology, and Knight of the Order of Green-spotted tiger with twenty diamond buttons is drowning in his own chamber pot.
In the story (pseudo-review) "Odysseus from Ithaca", S. Lem wrote about the "ugly ducklings":
First, ordinary genius go, that is of the third class, unable to step very far beyond the mental horizon of the era. They live more easily, they are often evaluated on merit, and even gain money and fame. Geniuses of the second class are much harder nut for contemporaries. Therefore life of such a genius is worse. In ancient times, they were usually stoned, in the Middle Ages were burned at the stake, later, in connection with the temporary softening of manners, they were allowed to die by a natural death from hunger, and sometimes they even fed at public expense in shelters for the half-witted ... Yet in the end the second class geniuses get recognition, that is, an after-life triumph ... But beyond that there are - since they should exist - the geniuses of the highest category ... Geniuses of the first class are known by nobody and never in life or after death. These are openers of truths so incredible, heralds od the truths so revolutionary that nobody can estimate them. So, strong oblivion is the usual fate of Topper Geniuses.
Such truths, of course, be understood by a person (not society as a whole!), which himself will do the same personal work, going his spiritual path.
It is important to go back to the key idea of almost all mystical and esoteric teachings about the relationship between the empirical time and "eternal present." Enlightenments of " Topper Geniuses " are out of time in the literal sense, because their source is not in time. "Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius." (William Blake. Marriage of Heaven and Hell). Humanity is in a (pragmatic) sense right in rejecting truly profound ideas, because they may be of value only for each individual, but not for society as a whole. A high level of truth can not be "discovered" by some genius, they just are, and each person must discover it for yourself again. With the depth and luster of his texts, Lem (and other writers - H.G. Wells, Jules Verne ...) still impoverishes the problem by reducing it to the social, intellectual, and ethical issues, and speaking of the place of genius (scientist) in society. In spite of their importance, these issues are not the most important ones.
For someone who understood the nature of heaven and earth, there is nothing that would be stealing and nothing that would not be stealing.
(Letszy)
On the other hand, for the prophets and founders of religions, which are able to rise above personal issues (at a certain level they have just left - bodhisattva or the Buddha is not quite a person), everything works. Certainly, it "works" for the prophets "just" doing their divine mission, worldly prosperity has nothing to do here, and Way of the Cross is always full of distress.
And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted. Three times I pleaded with the Lord that it might depart from me. But [the Lord] said to me: "It is enough for you my grace, for my power is made perfect in weakness." And therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that I may dwell in the power of Christ. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then I am strong.
(2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
Sometimes the failure of the prophetic mission can be predetermined, as for the Greek prophetess Cassandra, who vainly warned of the impending destruction of Troy, or the first Hebrew intellectual Jeremiah who saw the fall of Jerusalem predicted by him. And as concerns the public (and not personal) success of the saving mission of Christ, we can only confirm this with great reservations, looking back at the two thousand years of Western, formally Christian civilization. Constantly converted by official religion in the dead helpless idol, Christ is reborn again and again in individuals, and so lives in human history.
The ambiguity of the social impacts of Jesus mission is emphasized even in the Gospel, for example, in the prophecy of Simeon about Child Christ: "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign of contradiction" (Lk 2:34). Jesus did not justify Israel's dream referring to the Messiah, which brings prosperity for the people, and was rejected by them. The messianic idea is originally connected with the image of misunderstood and persecuted martyr (see Isa. 53). Also in the New Testament, Jesus is suffering heavily from misunderstanding of surrounding and betrayal. Despite the miracles revealed and resurrection itself, even his closest relatives and the apostles and do not understand him and do not believe in him, at least, before the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them.
Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat [at meal], and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believed not them that had seen him after he was risen.
(Mark 16:14)
However, even then, as St. Paul wrote in his letters, the Jerusalem apostles depart all the time from the gospel of freedom, engaging in the construction of the earth church. The teaching of Christ is too high for this world. Stories of modern times can give an example of Martin Luther, who also, to some extent, possessed the gift of prophecy. Although the Reformation - his life's work - achieved significant political success, at the end of life Luther realized that no one understood his doctrine (or rather, the gospel of Christ, which Luther was trying to preach, having experienced personal epiphany). Watching with horror the social impact of his activities, plunging Europe in a series of bloody wars, he wrote that it was better to leave the crowd in submission of papists.
What the savior he was, that wretch! How could he help you! And take away from me my burden! What Christ he was for the people! I realized, why should I serve you! Why you call me! I am your Jesus, with hangman's branded on the forehead! Down to you from beyond again! For the sake of hostility on the ground and bad will in men! You turned your god into stone! He's dead long ago. I, your Christ, I live! I am the fruit of his great thoughts, his son, conceived by him with you and born, when he was still great, when he lived, and he knew what he wanted, and he put sense this all! Now he stands motionless on the throne, wore away by the time, just as by leprosy, and deadening wind carries the ashes of his eternity in heaven desert. I, Christ, I live! For you may live! I am accomplishing in the world my way of arms and saving everyday you in blood! And you will not crucify me!
(P. Lagerkvist. Executioner)
In the long run, such a failure is worse than persecution, poverty, and even executions (because "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul") that befell "ugly ducklings" throughout the whole history. Controversies about the measure of responsibility of Marx for Pol Pot or Nietzsche for Himmler reduce, to some extent, the level of the problem, but, of course, contain a grain of truth: a lack of conformity of the worlds of of the "second class geniuses" with the social norm can be dangerous not only for geniuses, but also for society. This is concisely expressed by Russian proverb "Make a fool to pray - he hurts forehead" (and it is fine, we add, if only his forehead).
Divine Reality not only "provides material" for secondary human worlds, but also sets strict limits for them: God can, according to Descartes, can create a world where there are mountains, but no valleys, and the man not, - he cannot even imagine such a world. What is important, the secondary world should be as open to the Supreme Reality as possible. Fully sealed world in which there is quite no place for divine presence is just hell, is worse than hell, because Christ descended into hell. Fortunately, apparently a human cannot yet create such an isolated world. That is why each of us has hope. Moreover, the most valuable in the human worlds is owing to that theay are in principle not closed. Here belong, in particular, the inspirations of genius, scientific and artistic discoveries.
In vain, the artist, you thinks that
you are creator of works!
Eternally they floated above earth, being unseen for eye ...
No, not the great Goethe's had made Faust, which is
In ancient German dress, but
in deep universe truth
With its pre-eternal image iti is similar from word for word.
Or Beethoven when he found his funeral march,
Inconsolable crying of souls over the lost great idea
Plenfing of light worlds in a hopeless abyss of chaos?
No, the sound were always crying
in infinite space,
He, being deaf to the land, has overheard unearthly sobbing.
There is in the space many unseen form
and inaudible sounds,
A lot of wonderful combination of words and light,
But only one who knows how to see and hear, will give them
Who, having caught only the drawing line,
a harmony, a word,
Involves integral therewith into our world surprised.
Oh, poet, surround yourself with darkness, by silence,
Be alone and blind, as Homer, and deaf as Beethoven,
But enforce soulful rumor and spiritual vision.
And as over the flame of secret letters, colorless lines
Suddenly appear, so suddenly paintings come before you,
Brighter colors, tactile form come out of the darkness,
Graceful combination of words will bind in a clear value ...
And you at this moment give ear, and look, holding your breath,
And, then building, remember the fleeting vision!
(A.K. Tolstoy)
Artist is a creator, a free person, acting in the world and living by inspiration, uttering the sublime, divine and spiritual. However, the true God of creation is not he. Through the artist, only something comes from the world of the unconscious (extraterrestrial), and he is as a tool embodies these discoveries, often even beyond his own logic and reason, and he has no power over the process. A set of these ideas and laws (in Buddhism - dharmas), fragments of life and destiny is stored forever in the world; the artist (genius, a prophet), chosen for their recombination, only opens the door inside him, letting the words, sounds and images outside:
The secret of his [Dante's] capacity that not a single word, he does not bring from themselves. He is driven by anything - but not by fiction, not by nvention. Dante and fantasy - but this is not compatible! For shame, French romantics ... who lied about Alighieri. What is his fantasy? He writes under the dictation, he is copyist, he is translator ...
(Mandelstam. Speaking about Dante)
The soul experiences various associations of higher forms (dharmas) as his own coming into a state of ecstasy, but in reality this is only manifestation of maya - illusion. In this sense, there are no people, but there's only destinies known by nobody. Also a pioneer physicist pulls from the subconscious that is given to him in evolution, something that should at this time in history be born and brought to life through the work of people. The process of spiritual creativity and the development of science and technology are inseparable. Referring to the One through his intuition and taking the existing Word, a person receives only fragments of the truth after his verbal and logical unit has been running. To get closer to the highest continuity of knowledge, it is necessary to ignite the inner flame of the sacrificial aspiration cleansing the artist. Another way is to stop own mind and hold breath (in yoga - pranayama exercises). The most profound answers are received when turning deep inside, getting to know oneself, - then we will remember (if can!) Paradise Lost. According to Jewish tradition, the child in the womb has a complete knowledge (of the Torah), but at birth the angel strikes him on the lips, and he forgets all, to painfully remember the whole life.
Essentially, as regards the source of brilliant insights, one can only offer two distinctly different answers: sorting options (in the spirit of Darwin's natural selection for ideas), and "The Lord has advised." Even the people, who are in general far from religion, often pass to quite a mystical language, trying to understand the mystery. Austrian philosopher Karl Popper spoke of "the third universe," wherefrom come not yet written (but existing!) literary texts and scientific discoveries, which are translated into a second universe - human culture, the first universe being the material (physical and astronomical) world. The argument in favor of this idea is a well-known fact that such a "transfer" is performed often by more than one person at a time, when the time comes (for example, the periodic table of elements, the creation of non-Euclidean geometry, the formulation of the special theory of relativity ...). It happens that some geniuses are ahead of their time, and then, after many years, their unappreciated results are reopened by the whole group of scientists (for example, the story of Mendel's laws of heredity). In fact, the idea of the intangible content of external ideas is quite traditional and expressed already with complete clarity by Plato. It may be a question of terminology. I tis is natural to call " substantive" for the idea, which can not be obtained by choice of variants, that is, saying "operationally", can not be formulated by a computer loaded with the "whole body of knowledge accumulated by mankind." Then the question is, whether if there exist substantive (in this sense) ideas. Materialist, by definition must answer: no. In this respect (and all other ones), the authors, are of course, not a materialists.
We will not consider here "ontological" side of the question, such as "Lenin's theory of reflection", based on the hope that future science will understand how consciousness arose. (By the way, how is related the manner to justify the doctrines by future advances in science and the idea of causality so important for materialism?) As for the epistemological aspects, it seems that the only materialistic scenario for appearance of the new content (not only scientific ideas, but also of biological species according to Darwin) is a random search of the various possibilities. So work computers. In the study of man-made "models" of reality, such as playing chess, a "learning strategy" really is quite successful. However, even in this case, we have not to forget that "the function of the position estimate", although it can be correctd by computer, still can not be produced by it own, but is given by human programmer. If we talk about the study of "objective reality", that is, about the scientific work, it also contains many quite "computer" elements. The vast majority of scientists are involved into not too complex choice of variants, "combining" their works from the fragments of the works of predecessors (if apply the method described in the paper A to to the problem formulated in the paper B...). It is, apparently, really possible, to the delight of the materialists, replace them by computers. But can such a scheme to explain the emergence of radically new ideas? Is it possible to come to the general theory of relativity, or quantum mechanics, or the set theory by choice of variants?
It sems that a negative answer to this question can be rigorously justified, even if we consider only mathematics. This books of the outstanding contemporary mathematics and physics Penrose "The new intelligence of the emperor" and "Shadows of the mind", very popular in the West (the first of which has recently been translated into Russian), are devoted to such a justification. Here we give a brief summary of the Penrose statements, referring the reader for many important details to the original texts.
Computer would completely replace a human mathematician (of course, bearing in mind only his professional activities), if mathematics was fully formalized system, the output of a finite set of axioms. However, such a Leibniz-Russell-Hilbert program of axiomatization of mathematics and reducing it to the "business logic" was refuted by Godel and other logicians in the 30 years of XX century. In particular, we bear in mind the famous "Godel's incompleteness theorem", according to which, there are, even within the arithmetic of the natural numbers, assertions which cannot be proved or disproved (in any strict sense of the word "proof"), pursuant to any finite set of axioms. Close (and in fact equivalent) statement is the existence of algorithmically unsolvable problems, that is, those which are in principle can not be solved by any computer in a finite number of steps. It is important to stress that not all of these problems are "meaningless" or "boring." A number of non-trivial examples of unsolvable problems are known - for example, there is no general method for determining whether it is possible to tile the plane without gaps with tiles from a given set (even if are limited to the tiles-polygons).
The matter is that the set of tasks that can be solved by all the past, present and future computers is countable, that is, has the same power (roughly, the "number of elements") as a discrete set of natural numbers. Human, however, is quite capable of working with the idea of actual infinity and continuous sets of the continuum (and, perhaps, better). One might think that the concept of the continuum as a primary entity, not reducible to a countable set, ris eally inherent in the human psyche. Each person probably has the beginnings of a topological thinking based on the idea of continuity. A distinguished mathematician of XX century Weyl spoke of abstract algebra and topology as two alternative ways of mathematical thinking. In the words by Weil, "angel of topology and the devil of abstract algebra are struggling for the soul of every mathematician." At the level of physiology, different ways of thinking are associated with the hemispheres of the human brain (right hemisphere thinking is continous, responsible for images, topology; left hemisphere thinking is logical, symbols, letters, words, discrete, algebra). It is important to stress that meaningful (creative) thinking involves going beyond the binary "computer" logic. In more detail, this topic, very important for us, will be discussed in Chapters 8 and 10. Penrose writes about (course, nonmaterialistic) views Godel:
Apparently, the point of view of GЖdel is that the mind is not limited to "computing" ability and not even limited by the finity of the brain ... GЖdel rejected the Turing argument that there is no reason, separate from the matter, calling it a prejudice of our time. Apparently, for GЖdel, it was obvious that the physical brain must act as a computing device, but the mind is something beyond the brain.
Penrose himself is trying to give a "materialistic" (perhaps only in form) explanation for the obvious fact of irreducibility of the human mind to performing some computer programs, or, in other words, for the presence irrational elements in human (science, and even mathematical!) thinking. Unfortunately, the prejudice of our time, that "consciousness is a product of the brain," led him to a rather exotic hypothesis about the importance of quantum effects (at physiological temperatures!) In the nervous system, quantum effects being treated not in a symbolic and associative sense, as we do, but in the spirit of "natural science." Realizing that iit s hard to believe in the quantum nature of the whole cell - neuron, he is trying to treat cytoskeleton as a structural psyche substrate. We would not like to be too categorical, but any physicist, professionally engaged in the processes of decoherence in SQUIDs, molecular magnets or any other real systems, will much easier to believe in directly mystical constructions than such scientific hypotheses.
The first assumption suggests that it is an unknown phenomenon - God knows how many else. The second is, on the contrary, connected with well-known to us and is in complete contradiction with all the basic and human laws. That is why we need to treat it with the greatest doubt, to it and its apparent rationality.
(D. Adams. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul)
However, an attempt to describe consciousness as a quantum phenomenon itself seems very interesting. At least, the quantum picture of the world, based on the wave-particle dualism, corresponds far better to the structure of the human psyche than "computer" classical world. At the same time, attempts to link "quantum nature" of consciousness with the quantum properties of his supposed physical media and the known laws of physics causes already great doubt.
'But I thought you believed in miracles,' broke out the secretary.
'Yes,' answered Father Brown, 'I believe in miracles. I believe in man-eating tigers, but I don't see them running about everywhere. If I want any miracles, I know where to get them.'
(G.K. Chesterton)
CHAPTER 7.
The quantum world: the end of classical causality
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it... if you can possible avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.
(Richard Feynman. Character of Physical Law)
Discussion of traditional, to first line religious understanding of reality led us far enough from the perspective of natural science, and the reader may ask,, to paraphrase a famous anecdote about lieutenant Rzhevsky, "Well, when will it be about quantum mechanics?". The answer is: now.
One commonly thinks (and, as we shall see, this view is well founded) that the creation (in the first third of the XX century) quantum mechanics was a kind of frontier, after which physics not only can, but also must deal with the problems, previously wholly attributable to the competence of theology and philosophy. According to many physicists and philosophers, quantum mechanics has put questions that can not be adequately discussed in the framework of the traditional natural science worldview that emerged from the XVII century. The basic tenet of this outlook is the possibility of a clear separation of subject and object of knowledge and the resulting sharp opposition between "matter" and "consciousness." Explicit philosophical formulation of this postulate was usually associated with the name of Descartes, and an example of its successful application to the description of "reality" (however, very limited) became for centuries "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" by Newton. Some writers refer to such a fundamental worldview as "Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm." It should, however, be emphasized that the views of Newton and especially Descartes were much more informative and interesting than this "paradigm" (see, e.g., discussion of differences in everyday used "Cartesian" approach and true Descartes' philosophy in "Cartesian Meditations" by M. Mamardashvili). Any case, it is this "dualism", the empirical effectiveness and usefulness is beyond doubt, that radically distinguishes the natural-scientific view of the world from the other (apparently more deep) approaches. The development of quantum physics put the question of a possible failure and exhaustion of this paradigm, even within science itself.
The ensuing debates were attended by almost all the great physicists of our time (except for the positivist-minded researchers, generally not inclined to discuss philosophical questions as "unscientific"). Although in the book of humanitarian character some particular points of view on this issue are often preceded by the words "modern physics has found that ...", the controversy is not over. In this section, we present - in so far as it is necessary for the connection of presentation, - basic physical facts, which will be further discussed with the more "elevated" perspective.
The early development of quantum physics (1900-1924) is characterized primarily by the formulation of the laws of radiation in the ideal model of a "absolutely black" (i.e., not reflecting) body and the introduction of "quantum of action" (Planck, 1900), the discovery of light quanta and "wave-particle duality", i.e, the dual nature of light (Einstein, 1905, and subsequent work), and then building a model of the Bohr atom (Bohr, 1913) and the hypothesis of Louis de Broglie about wave properties of the electron (1924). The key here is to understand "wave-particle duality" as a universal property of matter.
Attained is
Eternity! .. It -
Like wave
Merged with the sun.
(A. Rimbaud. Eternity)
The second stage, which began in 1925, is characterized by the construction of a formal theory describing this dualism (Heisenberg, Max Born, P. Jordan, E. SchrOedinger, P. Dirac, W. Pauli, 1925-1927, 1925-1927; J. von Neumann, 1932, R. Feynman, 1948, and others, and a deep reflection in connection with the conceptual problems arising ("uncertainty principle" by Heisenberg, "statistical interpretation of the wave function " by Born, "principle of subsidiarity" by Bor, measurement theory by von Neumann, etc.). There are good popular expositions of the physical nature of the wave-particle duality (see, e.g., wonderful books by Feynman's "Character of Physical Law" and "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter"), to which we refer the reader for a more detailed physical information.
The most striking feature of quantum mechanics, which makes it radically different from all previous physics, is giving the status of the fundamental concept to probability. In classical physics, there is a probability as a measure of our ignorance of the system behavior, and its use is generally pragmatic. For example, to calculate the precise trajectory of the fall of the coin with account of its spin, the forces of air resistance, etc., in the framework of classical physics is, in principle, possible, though although this is a complex physical problem. Instead of solving it in every case, we resort to probabilistic considerations, when we say that at sufficiently large number of trials in about half the cases coin falls by "heads", but in the half - by "tails." However, if we really want, we may do much more, namely, to calculate the movement of the coin fully and predict how it will fall in a given case. Another thing is that, in many real problems such opportunity is only in principle - for example, in problems of molecular physics, where you have to consider jointly the equations of motion for the huge number of particles. Besides that, for many important physically tasks the motion is unstable, and already a small uncertainty in the initial conditions leads to an arbitrarily large uncertainty in the decision at longer time intervals. In such cases, pragmatically the use of the concept of probability is not only possible, but inevitable. However, in principle there is no limit to arbitrarily accurate determination of the initial conditions and arbitrarily accurate solution.
Within the "Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm" it seemed certain that in principle it is possible to predict or explain any phenomenon, if you know in enough detail all cause-effect relationships in the system. In quantum mechanics, the basic mathematical object - the wave function - is also subject to the deterministic equation (SchrOedinger equation) and thus it can in principle be found with arbitrary accuracy. However, it is not measurable directly, and only determines the probabilities of the result of various physical experiments ("statistical interpretation" of Born). It is important to stress that, in contrast to classical physics, no predictions for the results of individual physical experiment in quantum mechanics can be done. For example, quantum mechanics can, in principle, to calculate the probability of whether the nucleus of a radioactive isotope disintegrates on a certain day from 10 am to 5 pm, and these statistical predictions in the presence of a sufficiently large number of cores will be accurate (say, if this probability was 20%, at 5 pm really 80% of the nuclei of this type will remain from the number at 10 am). But it can not answer the question of when this particular nucleus will decay, and whether it decays at all in the time period. Moreover, it is argued that the answer to this question is impossible in principle.
They die in an instant, in the middle of the night; the people are shaken and they pass away; the mighty are removed without human hand ... Without inquiry he shatters the mighty and sets up others in their place.
(Job 34:20,24)
In this sense, the concept of causality, fundamental for the whole European science, is radically revised. Say, this particular nucleus has decayed at 12 hours 37 minutes 00 seconds, but we can not specify the cause of the event, explaining why it did not happen, say, two minutes earlier or later, - it could well happen sooner or later, but it was now - and it is senseless to ask "why." This feature of quantum mechanics is particularly emphasized Pauli.
For Pauli, freedom, characteristic of the individual events, is the most important lesson of quantum mechanics. He often referred to the philosophy of Schopenhauer, the basic elements of which were the will (Wille) and presentation (Vorstellung), i.e. (irrational) freedom of choice and (rational) idea.
(KV Laurikainen. The message of the atoms. Essays
on Wolfgang Pauli and unspeakable. Berlin, 1997)
Modern human, belonging to the European (in the broad sense of the word) culture and educated in reverence for science (often without a real need to understand its methods and results!), the notion of causality seems self-evident. "Popular" esoteric tradition dating back to Hinduism is based on the simple concept of karma as a universal mechanical coupling phenomena. At the same time, many of the canonical texts (especially the Buddhist tradition) emphasize the impossibility of talking about the reasons for the deepest level of reality. Logical and philosophical refutation of the category of causality was given in Nagarjuna's treatise "The twelve gates" (see Chapter 3). To this problem, sooner or later, man comes in the process of spiritual growth.
Bhagavan: Supported whereon do you then, Manjusri, develop the perfection of wisdom at the time when you do so?
Manjusri: I have no support at all at the time when I develop the perfection of wisdom. Bhagavan: When you are unsupported, Manjusri, is that then your development of perfect wisdom?
Manjusri: When one is not supported anywhere, just that, O Bhagavan, is the development of perfect wisdom... Because the development of perfect wisdom is not set up by taking as one's basis any dharma which one could forsake or grasp at.
(The Perfection of Wisdom in 700 lines)
This feeling is not alien alos for "secular" culture, at least in its higher manifestations. Pushkin wrote, "The case is a powerful weapon of Providence." Developing this idea, Sinyavsky in "Strolls with Pushkin" emphasizes fundamental "indeterminacy" of the world of the great poet:
The idea of rock ... acting with a speed of lightning, is deprived [for Pushkin] of rigor and purity of religious doctrine. Case is that point, putting this idea into a faceless and precarious position of uncertainty, yet retained the right to sit in judgment over us. The case of the service of rock hides it under the cover of sporadic coincidences that, while happen with suspicious accuracy, are sufficiently shallow and capricious, to pass for irresponsible set of circumstances without resorting to metaphysics... Case both cuts the fate of the root, and builds for it a new, scientific basis. The case is a concession to the black magic from the part of of precision mechanics, which opened the origin of things in the flickering of the atoms and, under the nose of the church, managed to explain the confused world order by disorder, from which, as in the cylinder of the fakir, withthe sudden clash of beads, civilization formed, needing not a creator ... Homelessness, abandonment, loss of purpose and destination - for all that blind chance, transformed into a law, was accepted y Pushkin. In it, enlightened age has for the time kept intact flavor of secrets and tricks, darling for the heart of poet. It was something of a game of cards, which Pushkin loved.
M. Mamardashvili in "Psychological topology path" (Lecture 7) explains in detail that for the most important concepts (good, understanding) there is no and can not be reasons: "the absence of reasons is just called God." In this sense, quantum physics, breaking with the classical ("Laplace") determinism, seems really get into some more deep-lying layers of reality than classical physics.
Theer are no reasons in the world,
there are only consequences. And people are victims of consequences.
(Brodsky)
Applications of probabilistic language in quantum and classical physics are different in the following. In the classical case, the probability of independent events are always added up. In the quantum case, the amplitudes are added - complex numbers, the square modulus of which gives the value of the probability of an event. This is what leads to the appearance of interference, i.e., wave, phenomena. Thus the basic laws of quantum mechanics formulated by Paul Dirac is the superposition principle: if a system can be in two different states, it can be in any superposition (mathematically speaking - a linear combination) of these states. For example, if an electron can be in a state with definite values of spatial coordinates (that is, simply speaking, be localized in a certain point), it is possible also a state where it has (with different probabilities) all these coordinate values simultaneously. A similar statement holds for the velocities: there are countless states in which the electron has a certain magnitude and direction of the velocity vector. Moreover, it appears that there are no such states in which an electron at the same time would have the exact values of both coordinates and velocities (Heisenberg uncertainty principle).
It is important to emphasize that in the cases where quantum mechanics "agrees" to answer a particular question, its answers have been consistently confirmed by all so far the experiments performed. For example, it can quite successfully calculate the characteristics of various spectral lines of atoms, molecules and solids, the distances between the atoms in the molecules, etc., and so far physics never faced its inadequacy. Of course, in each calculation it is necessary to do some additional approximations, which are to be controlled themselves, but in some cases we have the exact solution, e.g., for the spectrum of the hydrogen atom. And no differences between the experimental results and the predictions of quantum mechanics can be found. Moreover, quantum mechanics has many successful practical applications (transistors and lasers - two, perhaps the most obvious and spectacular example). At the same time, a number of issues, traditionally considered quite acceptable (e.g., the importance of the position and velocity of an electron at a given time), it does not give any answer. In such a situation we can not speak about the "wrongness" of quantum mechanics, but it seems relevant to the question of its "incompleteness", i.e. not a final character, and the existence of a more fundamental theory that can provide answers to questions that lie outside of quantum physics. This position, in particular, was held by the discoverer of the wave-particle duality Einstein. His well-known saying "God does not play dice", means a refusal to recognize the purely statistical theory for the ultimate truth. Here we write down a more full quote (which implies biblical and even "Kabbalistic" associations) and a number of related ones:
Quantum mechanics deserves respect, but an inner voice tells me that this is not the real James. The theory gives a lot, but it does not bring us closer to the sacraments of the Old. In any case, I am convinced that He does not play dice.
(From Einstein letter to M. Born 4/12/1926)
Obviously, never in the past a theory was developed which, like quantum one, would give the key to the interpretation and calculation of such diverse phenomena. Despite this, I still think that in our quest for a unified foundation of physics, this theory can lead us to an error: it gives, in my opinion, an incomplete picture of reality, though, is the only one that can be built on the basis of the fundamental concepts of force and material points ... Incompleteness is the result of the statistical nature (incompleteness) of laws.
(A. Einstein. Coll. Scientific. Works. T. 4. M., 1967. S. 220)
The purpose of the theory is the determination of the probability of measurement results in the system at a given time. On the other hand, it does not attempt to give a mathematical representation of what actually takes place, or what is going on in space and time. At this point, the modern quantum theory is radically different from all previous physical theories of both mechanics and field. Instead of yielding a model for images of real space-time events, it gives the probability distribution for possible changes as a function of time ... Some physicists, including myself, can not believe that we should once and for all abandon the idea of a direct image of the physical reality in space and time, or that we should accept the view that the phenomena of nature are like gambling.
(Ibid., pp. 238, 239)
Einstein raised the question of the "incompleteness of laws" is extremely important, if you remember the dual role of the law in the Bible, especially in the New Testament. On the one hand, the law is holy:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, not one iota or one tittle shall not pass from the law until all is accomplished.
(Matthew 5:17-18)
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: Yes, we establish the law. (Romans 3:31)
At the same time, the Law "brings wrath, because where there is no law there is no transgression" (Romans 4:15). Gospel boldly offers to drop the Law, trusting the grace and unpredictable Spirit.
And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace, for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
(John 1:16-17)
But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; tha we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
(Romans 7:6)
Not being able to treat this very difficult problem in detail (see our book "The ordinances of heaven", Ch. 6), we note its connection with the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. The laws of classical physics are - if we may say so - "the laws of direct action": they are literally "prescribe" to natural objects, how to behave in a given situation, for example, how to move under the influence of external forces, etc. The basic law of quantum mechanics - the Schroedinger equation - is quite deterministic in the sense that, in principle, it enables to calculate strictly evolution of system state. In this case, however, the "state" (technically, the wave function) is just a set of values which allow to determine the probability of certain outcomes of experiments. The wave function itself is not measurable, but only determines the possible (probable!) outcomes of different measurements. It is appropriate here to quote the Diamond Sutra:
Know that my expounded Dharma (Law) is like the bamboo raft. The honored Dharma must be relinquished, how much more so what is not the Dharma?'
Also, there is no established dharma which the tathagata can expound. What is the reason? Of the dharmas expounded by the tathagata, none can be grasped or explained, being neither dharmas nor non-dharmas. What is the reason for that? Of every one of the Sages, all via the unconditioned dharma make discriminations.
Subhuti, what is said to be the good dharmas, the Tathagata has explained to be non-Dharmas. They are called good dharmas.
Of course, multi-faceted meaning of any sacred text is far more important than any of his "natural science" applications, but still hard to resist the temptation to use the word "... neither the law nor the law " to the Schroedinger equation - the law that describes the evolution of some system-related possibilities!
We now turn to the writings of the Hindu tradition, once again giving us a comment with the positions needed.
Lord is all-pervading cause of creation. He is self-sufficient and independent of the others. He is learned through hearing testimony, and direct experience. He is self-luminous.
(Bhagavata Purana 5.12)
In higher quantum spaces (and not in the created world, as considered in the classical science) consciousness of researcher meets only causes, but this category is not yet understood by physicists, although it is described in the canonical texts as the highest principle or motive of God. Pervading Reason is unmeasured basis, it is self-contained, having no beginning or end, but contains all the other reasons. The reason can not exist in the form of energy that is secondary. True theoretical knowledge attained through hearing of testimony, direct experience, the transition to the concept of quantum causality (which, if we remember the Diamond Sutra, is not the causality...). Although not all know classical physics, all use it in practical life. There are different levels of understanding of science - the school, the engineering and academic one, but all of these are the study of words, investigating the manifestations, and the direct perception remains outside. Self-luminous God is the light source, which itself is immeasurable, but can be studied only in its manifestations. God's creation is this phenomenal world, the sacrificial body of Adam-Christ, parts of which are the elements of classical mechanics.
Since the universe has ultimately no real existence, all things and concepts in it - similarity and difference, coarseness and subtlety, misery and grandeur, cause and effect, vital signs and substance - are imaginary. All this is like the pots, made of the same substance - the land, but named differently ... Know that all around is just a mechanical manifestation of primordial substance.
Ultimate truth is the knowledge of the One. It is not contaminated by gunas [three properties] and confers liberation. It transcends all duality and is all-pervasive. Initially awareness of the transcendent, all-pervading Brahman occurs. The second stage is awareness of immanent Supreme Spirit, Paramatma. Higher awareness of the Absolute Truth is the knowledge of the Supreme Person, Lord Vasudeva, for He is the cause of Brahman, Paramatma and other divine manifestations. There are many paths leading to the attainment of absolute truth, but the truth is revealed only to those who receive the mercy of a great devotee.
(Ibid.)
The world has a common energy basis, there is one primary element in classical physics - a single field, a neutral substance of the earth. Knowledge of one is not predetermined by prior knowledge, and quantum mechanics allows to comprehend this truth. On the other hand, one who understands the state of the single can arrange his own ideas of the quantum world. Quantum physics should be studied not by scientific books, but with a clean blank sheet to present the sequence of a study of one ithrough his mind. As we move along this path, duality errors disappear, there occurs liberation from ignorance (or, equivalently, from the false knowledge). For a physicist, this means getting rid of the belief in a tangle of classical laws, the ability to think like a child, without relying on the experience of previous generations and the galaxy of scientists, denying it. The new physics is a killer of all physicists of the past. The quantum world enters our world, but is devoid of the duality. Transcendent pervading Brahman is the quantum laws, which are comprehended by the physicist. Then the causes and manifestations are realizes which are in the higher quantum worlds, that is, the attributes of God, which are willing to enter into our world. Great devotee - is the prince of this world, God's self-interest (the biblical Abraham). He dictates the laws of the world to his slaves, but cannot himself break out of it, although he may help in this case to others, because he knows all about high.
As for the difference between the classical laws (deadly according to St. Paul) and the quantum ones, it is appropriate to recall the Greek myth of Perseus: a direct view of the Medusa kills (like the letter of Scripture), so you need a mirror. Wave function as a reflection of the physical reality, plays the role of the mirror. Undoubtedly, mirroring comprehension of reality corresponds to a deeper level of insight than the "literalist" one. God (reality, everlasting light) is visible to a person only in the mirror.
Here, our mirror is Lord,
Open your eyes and see them in Him.
(Odes of Solomon 13)
Wisdom is "a reflection of eternal light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness" (Wisdom 7:26). Semi-transparent mirror (by the way, one of the main structural elements of the laser) simultaneously connects and separates our world and the beyond, serving as a kind of boundary. Through the Looking Glass multiple reflections of man and God occur - they both reside in one another (see Gospel by John).
Drawing a parallel with religious symbols, we can say that the physics includes a trinity of atoms-waves-rays, corresponding to the Christian trinity of body-soul-spirit, which is discussed in the letters of St.Paul. Atoms mean absolutely discrete laws, and the dynamics of their relationship is described by wave processes. Wave is uniting (Christian, female, Sophian) principle. Quanta are space-time transitions, unconditional regardless of cause. A certain level (high or low) is reached and picked up by the measurement. Quanta mean the highest level of assumption, but not of research. These are the laws beyond the region of causality. After inversion, beyond the mirror there are the same three levels of higher laws, investigated by spiritual tools.
So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"
(Luke 17:10)
Here servants are physical laws, or the fates of people, and because they both rare ealized in one energy space, where the living and nonliving world exist. Classical laws of this world are discrete and fixed state of minimum length, a description of combinations of atoms. Similarly, the elements of human lives are the same, they just come in different combinations.
The law has a shadow of the good things, and not the very image of the things.
(Hebrews 10:1)
Law is a solid foundation for all processes, including for the manifestation of something hidden. It exists therefore not in directly visible form, but in its manifestations (at the level of understanding, ideological constructs or deeds). The law contains two parts - it has both hidden and manifested bases. Law (in quantum mechanics - the wave function expressing it, "probability amplitude" or "state vector") appears as a shadow of the foregoing proceesses - potency, off-energy substance, which is not observable and experimentally indeterminate. Law overcomes chaos and energy disorder, and goes into the category of future good things. Physical system goes into proper state (energy level is increased, and so on). However, the "pump" is not yet a law, it is also exposed to the invisible shadow of the law. The very image of things is a detailed action of the system ordered in such a way. God manifests himself in the first place through the law of Moses, which is invisible, but leads to a certain higher order. Thus there just occurs a shift from zero energy level to the maximum, potentially charged one. Further on thesystem existd not in the category of the law, but in the category of disorder: the quality of the law begins to be lost, because the chaos comes into opposition with the order. So corrosion of a metal, pure in its base, occurs.
... Here, for the sake of beauty, sacrificial pillars of precious stones and gold altars were built, beautiful though they were not made in accordance with established standards.
(Mahabharata. Sabhaparva)
Beauty is perfection of original creation idea. Primary energy state is desirable, necessary, beautiful. It then becomes a victim. Sacrificial pillars are basic states of the processes that will go on and benefit the entire proceeding through sacrifice. These pillars-laws are composite - they are made of precious stones, and are discrete, although they act in huge spaces. There occurs splitting in the particles, teachings, chapters, knowledge sections - living disembodied organisms, programs operating in the world. Initially they are not alive, but are granted by life in the very process of life - the opening of the law. Anything that has the quality of life sees its manifestations in others. Life and non-life are combined. Thus entropy may be also treated as a living being; alive are also the time and space in which everything happens. Gold glitter symbolizes the categories of higher and lower, the energy emptiness and fullness, that polarizes and divides the system into two parts. Of the two opposites, a whole set of intermediate states occurs. For example, the love to life appears simulaneously as the fear of death. Bright gold is love, fear is something implied.
Altars of gold are the basic polarizing principles of local thermodynamic system. The whole vast universe with its long-lived processes is only a small, finite, and limited part of something bigger, and threfore it is doomed to extinction. We may greatly zoom in, but we always stay in the local system. The level of consciousness can rise to unimaginable heights, which are almost free, not comparable (shunya in Buddhist terminology) states, but we come to quantum physics only if we are absolutely abstracted from manifestation of any processes. Then this one system needs not to be studied, and all its manifestations have fraction nature.
The law itself can not be considered to be made in accordance with established models - it has no predecessors, that is not determinated and does not age. However, unconditioned is transformed into deterministic. All conditioned is subject to aging, unidirectional, destructive course of things. Where irreversible (uniquely going) processes flow, there is always a local thermodynamic system. Any development consists of the phases of birth, preservation and dying. If there is unique movement, it should consist of these three parts. Their presence is a sign of local systems - dying and discrete, relative and deterministic. Such systems are described by all the laws of physics, which are now brought into our world by the human mind from beyond in the form of discrete knowledge, which are treated as rocks, systematized and ordered by human logic.
Material nature, divided by three gunas, made bodies of creatures, and the creatures have erred, since the illusory energy (jnana guhaya) hid their knowledge. Because of his forgetfulness, spiritual being takes influence of material energy for field of action, and, misled, considers himself as a cause of action. Although the soul does nothing and transcends the material action, it is plunged into conditional life.
(Bhagavata Purana 3.26)
Beings who have fallen into error are time demons. Forgetfulness is finding a specific direction of the system, forgetting the origin where all the possibilities were still open. With forgetfulness, celebration of death begins - unidirectional motion of the system to the end; no one can get out of this process, taking it for his field of action. The influence of the material energy corresponds to the field of gravity - the cause of directed motion, of irreversibility of processes. Until there is no gravity, there is no time. Material consciousness is the cause of conditioned life, the foundation of directed duality processes. Changing his field of consciousness, a person can change the world, so it plays a huge role in all physical processes. There is no objective physical reality: the world is changed by karma, its main energy principle is the thought, consciousness is the guiding principle of the discrete material universe and the main mechanism of its transformation. Physical laws are secondary and subordinate to the human mind - the carrier of quantum physics. If scientists (in the broad sense of the word, that is, all the people, anyway investigating the universe) did not explore the world, it would be out of time.
Thus, there are two worlds: the measurable and immeasurable, manifested and unmanifested, the classical and quantum. This is conditional division, its boundary is defined by the possibility of measurement. Each of these worlds is inside another, their relationship is inextricable and dialectic. All life manifestations reflect the invisible world. Strictly speaking, quantum physics is a category that reflects the learning process. For a more accurate description, three states of the world should be picked up. First one corresponds to fixed, static physical laws that explore the world of atoms as the sum of elementary particles. Second is mobile state, which provides relationship of stationary states and systems. In fact, the laws of physics are closely related and intertwined, but conditionally divided into separate paragraphs in textbooks; the measured world describes their dialectical transitions. At the transition of mobile to the movement waves and fields arise that determine the relationship between the "atoms" (which are reality are never in the rest). Third unmanifested state of the world ("non-world"), which directs these transitions and seamlessly manages and governs all manifestations is called quantum state. At every moment it denies the previous state of the measured object. The quantum world itself is unconditioned, but is manifested as single block units in deterministic world, as the transition from fixed to mobile, through a change of any state of manifestation.
the message is delivered in the village,
That implies the good and opposite effects,
Although the sounds of speech are not included in a letter -
So one must comprehend all dharmas.
(Samadhiradjasutra 9)
Who sent - is invisible, the message comes into the village quietly, but it determines its life and all the changes. In the quantum world, all actions are non-deterministic and non-measurable, they are changes in relationships only. Equivalent of measurement in quanta is conventional element of discreteness, which is described in the language of myth.
In Hinduism, one introduces the concept of spiritual energy - yogamaya, by which God games (lila) are performed. Yogamaya is in contrast with the great illusion of the phenomenal world - mahamaya. These concepts are useful to apply in the new physics (or for destruction of the old physics) as follows. Quantum mechanics can be considered only in relation to classical on. These are two forms of the same - the manifested and unmanifested. Games of God are the quantum states that are transformed into some forms (control pulses), manifesting themselves as the classical laws (mahamaya). To reach the state of the quantum world, you need to find a variant of knowing yogamaya. The latter can not be described in the usual way, since it lacks the space and time, physical constants are not determined. However, the quantum state can be described by some principles of yogamaya missing in physics - through continuous myths where one passes smoothly into another, there is no beginning or end, and there is no normal human ethics.
Material nature is the cause of the physical body, emotions and gods, ruling over the senses. Unmanifested eternal connection of three gunas is the cause of the manifested state and called Pradhana. Pradhana is called prakrti when being in the manifested state. The set of elements - the five gross elements, the five subtle elements, four internal senses, the five senses of knowledge and five organs of action - is called Pradhana.
(Bhagavata Purana 3.26)
All quantum categories are realized through human consciousness, free from gravity (egoism), death and time - the field of action of God, yogamaya. Prakriti is the sinful nature, which took possession of classical mechanics with all its laws. Pradhana are God's eternal categories that embody quantum mechanics. Reaching such categories through non-duality, the person becomes a carrier of the laws of the quantum world. There is no general law, the law can only be implemented in consciousness of one man (in the Bible - the prophet and lawgiver Moses). When a person knows the dharma (law), and begins to act, the world recognizes him as support of the law.
The quantum device can be built, but he did not measure, and only comes into contact with yogamaya. There is no God, the existing is not God, but only His manifestations and attributes. Similarly, if we do not talk about the vulgar popular scientific expositions, quantum physics as a science does not exist - it is approved only through negation. However, there is a physicist - someone who can investigate it. Making the trip across the boundary of his mind, he is transformed from an atheist (classical physicist) into a religious man, a mystic, believing and comprehending.
After the transition into the new world, a new language is used. The canonical texts and myths of all religions are employed: they contain the laws of the quantum world, but give only the main content of the processes, and not their interpretation. Since ordinary cause and effect categories are not available, various myths are the same event, a single process unfolding in different parts of the phenomenal world. However, the man with his primitive mind and classical measurement system can hardly always recognize it - the higher categories manifest themselves apart from the usual reason. To make consciousness adequate to myth, one needs to go beyond space-time, the concepts of age and thermodynamic evolution of living system.
CHAPTER 8.
Tale of two: the comlementarity principle and the language problem
That the world is my world, is found in the fact that the boundaries of a particular language (the language that I only understand) mean the limits of my world. The world and life are one ... The subject does not belong to the world, and is a kind of border of the world. ... Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (L. Wittgenstein.Logico-Philosophicus)
Attempt to understand the situation in the physics after creation of quantum mechanics forced scientists to re-discuss the deep philosophical questions - perhaps the first time since the scientific revolution of the XVII century. According to Pauli (see the cited book by Laurikainen), "in the seventeenth century, they went a little further than they should do," and this led to a deterministic system of the organization of the world in post-Newtonian science. Deep analysis of conceptual difficulties, that have arisen after the demonstration of limitations of the classical picture of the world, was given by Bohr during the development of his famous "comlementarity principle":
To recognize the following main provisions is crucial: however far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, all experimental data must be expressed in classical terms. The justification for this is simply the statement of the exact meaning of the word "experiment". The word "experiment" is referred to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned. Therefore, an experimental setup and observations must be described unambiguously by the language of classical physics. Of this guideline ... we can conclude as follows. Behavior of atomic objects can not be sharply distinguished from their interaction with the measuring instruments, fixing the conditions under which the phenomena occur ... Consequently, the data obtained under different conditions, can not be covered by a single picture, and these data should rather be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of different events may give a more complete picture of the properties of the object.
(N. Bohr. Coll. Scientific. Works. V. 2. Moscow, 1971)
Heisenberg tells of his discussions with Bohr on the problems of language, which took place in 1933:
[According to Bohr words], science means that people observe events and report their results to others, so that they can test them. Only reaching consensus on what is objectively happened or happens regularly, we have a basis for understanding. And this whole process of monitoring and reporting is actually carried out by the concepts of classical physics ... Among the main prerequisites of our science is that we are talking about our measurements in the language, which has essentially the same structure as the language in which we talk about our everyday life experiences. We found that the this language is a very imperfect instrument of analysis and information. But this tool is still a prerequisite for our science.
(Heisenberg. Physics and philosophy. Part and Whole. M., 1989)
According to Bohr, the root cause of our difficulties lies in the fact that in reality the terms "wave", "particle", etc., which we use to describe the properties of microscopic objects such as electrons, - are the words of ordinary language, formed in the course of development macroscopic world around us. Electron is not like either wave or a particle, and, strictly speaking, has no analogues in the world of our everyday experience - but we have yet to describe it in appropriate terms. Situation with determining the essence (the real name) of an electron is somewhat reminiscent of difficulties in identifying the true name of the cat ("singular Name") in the poem of T.S. Eliot:
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
"A (third) name that's peculiar" - this just is - in addition to the names of the "particle" and "wave".
A similar situation occurs in science and philosophy not to first time. According to Losev, despite the absolute objectivism of Plato philosophy, cosmology described in the "Timaeus" is based solely on the concept of probability. In this dialogue, we can find (if we want) anticipation of a number of ideas of quantum mechanics.
...Whereas the accounts of that which is copied after the likeness of that Model, and is itself a likeness, will be analogous thereto and possess likelihood; for I as Being is to Becoming, so is Truth to Belief. Wherefore, Socrates, if in our treatment of a great host of matters regarding the Gods and the generation of the Universe we prove unable to give accounts that are always in all respects self-consistent and perfectly exact, be not thou surprised; rather we should be content if we can furnish accounts that are inferior to none in likelihood... (29d).... Regarding the subjects now before us, we must give a more exact exposition; and also regarding the subjects anterior to these, namely, the generation of bodies in their several parts, and the causes and divine counsels whereby the Soul has come into existence, we must hold fast to the most probable account. (44 d)....
Strictly adhering, then, [48 d] to what we previously affirmed, the import of the likely account, I will essay (as I did before) to give as likely an exposition as any other (nay, more so), regarding both particular things and the totality of things from the very beginning... We must, however, in beginning our fresh account of the Universe make more distinctions than we did before; for whereas then we distinguished two Forms, we must now declare another third kind. For our former exposition those two were sufficient, one of them being assumed as a Model Form, intelligible and ever uniformly existent, [49a] and the second as the model's Copy, subject to becoming and visible. A third kind we did not at that time distinguish, considering that those two were sufficient; but now the argument seems to compel us to try to reveal by words a Form that is baffling and obscure... Now imagine that a man were to model all possible figures out of gold, and were then to proceed without cessation to remodel each of these into every other, then, if someone were to point to one of the figures and ask what it is,[50b] by far the safest reply, in point of truth, would be that it is gold; but as for the triangle and all the other figures which were formed in it, one should never describe them as being seeing that they change even while one is mentioning them; rather one should be content if the figure admits of even the title suchlike being applied to it with any safety... These we lay down as the principles of fire and all the other bodies, proceeding according to a method in which the probable is combined with the necessary; but the principles which are still higher than these are known only to God and the man who is dear to God. (53 e).
For physicist, who is professionally engaged in the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, the words of Plato"... they change even while one is mentioning them" can cause association with the famous "collapse of the wave function" in the measurement process (mentioning, giving name!) and quantum measurement theory, describing this process and built by the great mathematician John von Neumann. This theory is a "constructive" mathematical form of Bohr's complementarity principle. According to the von Neumann theory, the state of a quantum system can be changed in two ways: during "smooth" evolution according to the basic equation of quantum mechanics - the Schroedinger equation, or by jump in the measurement. Note that only the second type of change leads to irreversibility. Measurement problem in its "philosophical" aspects is discussed in detail in later chapters, but here we will focus on the discussion of the Bohr analysis of scientific language. Note that the very appeal of Bohr to "humanitarian" issues, such as language, is unprecedented in post-Newton natural science (such constructions as the "Aryan physics" or "Michurin biology", where the humanitarian component also played an important role, fortunately, were not included in the canon of science; the devil, as always, is in the details ...).
Thus, according to the complementarity principle, any attempt to specify the description of reality leads to its incompleteness and in narrowing the very concept of "reality." "Wave" and "particle" - we are doomed to interpret reality in these terms, borrowed from the world of macroscopic objects, and the rest, according to Plato, "is known only to God and the man who is dear to God." At the same time, according to Bohr, the true picture of the world can be perceived by us (including science way) only in its two "complementary" (alternate) projections, for example, wave and particle one. As compared to that, claims of classical science to a direct and immediate description of reality look naive. It is appropriate to describe this situation in terms of Pythagorean "numerology" - the dialectic of relations between unit, two, three, etc.
Pythagorean scrapbooks contain the following. The beginning of all is one; unit governs Indefinite dyad as a substance, numbers come from unit and Indefinite dyad, points from numbers, lines from points, then come flat figures, from the flat figures come three-dimensional figures, of which come bodies perceived by the senses having four bases - fire, water, earth and air; moving and turning in the whole, they create the world ...
(Diogenes Laertius. About the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, Vol. 8, see also Plato. Timaeus 31-36)
Classical physics is based, in that sense, on "one"-"two": one in the sense of unitary picture of the world ("lucky Newton, for a picture of the world can be set only once" - Lagrange), and two in the sense of using binary logic, the principle of the excluded middle. With the advent of this new physics this familiar view collapsed. Unitary view of the world (for example, only corpuscular or only wave one) is certainly not complete, even within physics and the principle of the excluded middle (electron - either a wave or a particle) is insufficient. In this sense, it is worth to listen to the warnings of classical Buddhist texts:
Does the dog have the Buddha nature?
The answer is given in the question.
If you say "yes" or "no"
You ruin yourself and lose your life.
(Huikay. Outpost without gates)
Quantum mechanics is based on two-three: two in the sense of using two complementary projections to describe reality, and three in the sense of the "game" of pairs as binary pictures.
Tao generates one,
One gives birth to two,
Two generates three,
Three generates all the variety of things.
(Tao Te Ching 42)
Speaking: two, we do not mean by this that it is one and another one. When We said above: "two trees", We used one of the properties of the "two" and turned a blind eye to all properties ... In this case, the two expressed only the number and stood in the number series, or, as we think, in the number wheel, between one and three.
(D. Harms)
In India, the description of all the properties of the phenomenal world is widely used concept of the three gunas, which we have already met: tamas (inertia), rajas (activity), sattva (balance, clarity). These are qualities of matter and consciousness, which in itself are not observable, but always dynamically intertwined.
Three themselves are non-existent parts of the three basic elements of existence.
(D. Harms)
Three, after attempts of pairwise design, turns into six (6 = 3! - factorial of three). Incidentally, in the theory of elementary particles, all "strongly interacting" (readers in the humanities, do not pay attention, it's just a term ...), the particles are built up of quarks, number of which gradually increased from three to six. Quarks in a free state are not observed, but are combined of three in "real" particles, or in the quark-antiquark pairs.
Since we are one - what more can one say? But certainly if we are talking about one thing, can you do without words? A single and words about it make up two and two and one make three. From now on, even skilful mathematician does not get to the end of the numbers, saying nothing about the average person! Even going from nonexistent to the existent, we must count to three. What to say when we go from the existent to the existent! But we will not do that. We will follow the given, and nothing more.
(Letszy)
Take us, the doomed -
Triangle turns you, the scientists
Into mad ones,
Well, an us - on the contrary.
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
At the level of the physical experiment inadequacy of the classical unitary picture of the world and binary logic appears as a violation of causality - the events in the microworld occur "without reason" (which is particularly emphasized by Pauli). Researchers and philosophers had to get to this uncertainty and lack of clarity very long. In this sense, one can only laugh at the arrogance of modern scholars who consider the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato about divine number, the concept of the Trinity, the "fog" constructions of the Indian mysticism and Jewish Kabbalah as childhood of humanity and superstition, but during the 250 years could hardly have learned to count to two. One can not recognize the practical importance even of such an account - transistors, lasers, etc. rely on the achievements of quantum mechanics .The question is - what will happen if one day physics grows to four-five?
Ah, once again!
One head is at us,
Well, in this head
Two ears and two thoughts.
...
Ah, once again!
There is five for us.
Two hands - two legs,
A lot of thoughts in my head!
People do not tease -
There is no spirit,
And nobody jokes:
"Head - two ears".
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
According to esoteric tradition, the living world is six-fold. It includes the five senses, the sixth being mind (manas). Such an interpretation of the five is commonly used in the interpretation of biblical texts:
He [Christ] reproached the Samaritan woman at Sychar, in a riddling talk which she may or may not have understood, for having had five husbands, the five material senses, and for having as present husband one who was not really her husband, namely the Cosmocrator, or Devil
(R. Graves. White Goddess)
However, it is important to keep in mind that in working on the Pythagorean-type numerology, one inevitably balances on a dangerous line between great insight and insanity, or banal stupidity (e.g., in the spirit of "piramydology" or the "new chronology"). This, of course, does not mean that you can not engage in numerology: who said that the way to truth should be safe and "respectable"? Therefore, we remind once again that the quarks just six are! "And let it be a shame to him who thinks ill of it."
It has become almost common place to talk about the parallels between the principle of complementarity and Eastern religious and philosophical systems, including Taoism and Buddhism (see especially the book by F. Capra's "The Tao of Physics"). Such parallels are really interesting and important.
What is here called "the Buddha" is synonymous with "the trackless" (apada; also: wordless). Because it cannot easily be intimated by words (vak). It is not easy to define speech (vak), how much more so the Buddha!.. He is the one who is not in full possession of enlightenment, whohas not been produced, who will not be stopped, who is not endowed with any dharma, of whom there is not track, who is undifferentiated, and just equivalent to the trackless... Just as the self does absolutely not exist, and cannot be apprehended, so also the Buddha. As the self cannot be expressed by any dharma, so also the Buddha. One speaks of a Buddha where definitions fail.
(The Perfection of Wisdom in 700 Lines)
How can I praise Thee - Lord, unborn, omnipresent, surpassing any worldly comparison, abiding in the field which can not be expressed in words? ... Thou art neither far nor near, neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in samsara nor nirvana. Praise to Thee, abiding nowhere! ... Who can praise Thee, devoid of origin and not liable to death, who has no end, no middle, no perceiver and perceived? Praise the Buddha who knows how to walk (Sugata), and left the way, who did not go and did not come!
(Nagarjuna. Catuh-stava)
Vedic literature commentator Bhaskararayya writes:
There are two kinds of knowledge of Brahman: shabda (expressed in words) and aparoksha-anubhava (direct perception), the first of which preceding the other.
As already mentioned, the manifested Brahman (saguna-Brahman) encompasses the three gunas - the qualities of the material world; in the Bible this is Adam - a manifestation of the Supreme Creator. He becomes known through words, that is, all forms of duality in the discrete world, all physical laws, all which can be measured. Unmanifested nirguna-Brahman, who is known directly, relates to the quantum states and has even no transcendent qualities. It corresponds to the consciousness of quantum physicsist, who is free and believing, is in a state of Advaita (non-duality). He passed the border of the discrete classical perception and is ready to know the beyond, direct entry into the quantum states. Someone who understood can give nothing to the remaining behind - neither knowledge nor support, because there is no language to translate these conditions into a normal human language. Although such a translation is given in the Scriptures, one can deal adequately with it and know the higher categories contained in the texts only through interpretation. In general, the non-dual consciousness is realized at different levels. Through elementary interpretation - splitting of meaning into discrete pieces - only the first step is reached, which is followed by the "continuous" grace; there are also a variety of state of spirit... In the following chapters we shall often return to this very important and difficult question of dualism of discrete and continuous, knowledge and understanding.
Ideas related to the role of word in cognition have been widely discussed in the West too. Bohr says about the restrictions imposed by the structure of language to scientific knowledge. Ancient (in particular, the Gnostic) authors speculated with stress about the role of the names and the relationship between the name and named object (or Object):
Names given to the worldly are very deceptive, for they divert our thoughts from what is correct to what is incorrect. Thus one who hears the word "God" does not perceive what is correct, but perceives what is incorrect. So also with "the Father" and "the Son" and "the Holy Spirit" and "life" and "light" and "resurrection" and "the Church (Ekklesia)" and all the rest - people do not perceive what is correct but they perceive what is incorrect, unless they have come to know what is correct. The names which are heard are in the world [...] deceive. If they were in the Aeon (eternal realm), they would at no time be used as names in the world. Nor were they set among worldly things. They have an end in the Aeon. One single name is not uttered in the world, the name which the Father gave to the Son; it is the name above all things: the name of the Father. For the Son would not become Father unless he wore the name of the Father. Those who have this name know it, but they do not speak it. But those who do not have it do not know it.
But truth brought names into existence in the world for our sakes, because it is not possible to learn it (truth) without these names. Truth is one single thing; it is many things and for our sakes to teach about this one thing in love through many things.
(Gospel of Philip 11-12)
According to the famous Islamic thinker Ibn Arabi, the names form a sphere which is intermediate between the absolute being and the material world (limited being).
Considering what rules the world and acts on it, we found: this is Beautiful Names that have come to it in all their comprehensive fullness, not hiding.
(Image of circles)
This topic is discussed in detail in the canonical Christian tradition (one can recall, for example, the medieval debate between realists and nominalists on the existence of universals (general concepts) in reality or only in thought; however, this issue also goes back to Plato).
In modern literature, perhaps the most vivid representation of the power of the name is expresssed in The Earthsea, tetralogy by Ursula Le Guin. Foundation of magic in her fantasy world is the knowledge of the true names of items in the true language. This is the native language of the dragons: they can even lie on it, but for a man, with his dual thinking, this is impossible in principle.
Knowing names is my job. My art. To weave the magic of a thing, you see, one must find its true name out. In my lands we keep our true names hidden all our lives long, from all but those whom we trust utterly; for there is great power, and great peril, in a name. Once, at the beginning of time, when Segoy raised the isles of Earthsea from the ocean deeps, all things bore their own true names. And all doing of magic, all wizardry, hangs still upon the knowledge - the relearning, the remembering - of that true and ancient language of the Making. There are spells to learn, of course, ways to use the words; and one must know the consequences, too. But what a wizard spends his life at is finding out the names of things, and finding out how to find out the names of things.
(U. Le Guin. The Tombs of Atuan)
According to Irenaeus, the Gnostics of Basilides school also knew the magic of names, trying to use it for getting free:
He who knows the names of all the angels and their origin, is invisible and inaccessible to those angels and forces ... And as the Son was unknown to all, they also should be unknown to anyone, all knowing and all passing through ... For, they say, "know all, and let nobody know you" ... They keep their sacraments secretly and open to nobody.
(Against Heresies 1.24)
However, the allegorical representation of the true names goes back to the Bible and the Quran legends, according to which the names of all that exists was given by Adam or communicated to him by God.
The Lord God formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air, and brought [them] to the man (Adam) to see what he would call them: and, whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field, but for Adam there was no helper suitable for him ... And the Lord God formed the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman (Heb. isha), because she was taken out of Man (Heb. ish).
(Genesis 2:19-23)
And He taught Adam all the names, and then offered them to the angels and said, "Tell Me the names of these if you are truthful." They said: "Glory be to Thee! We know only what Thou taught us. Truly Thou art Knowing, Wise!" He said: "O Adam, tell them their names!" And when he told them their names, He said: "Did I not tell you that I know the hidden in the heavens and on the earth, and I know what you find out, and what you hide?"
(Quran 2:29 (31) -31 (33))
If we could know the true name of the electron (the one given to him by Adam - or even by God), we really could, by analogy with the heroes of U. Le Guin, command electrons. Having lost the knowledge of the "language of the dragons," we are forced to use pseudonyms - a wave, a particle ... Classical science took aliases for the real names (or rather, apparently did not understand the very problem of distinguishing true and false names). Complementarity principle, at least, put the issue with respect to the microworld. Solution to the problem (if it is at all possible in the framework of science) is a matter of the future. Here an analogy is suitable with apophatic (negative) theology, going back to the legendary Dionysius the Areopagite and detailed in the Eastern Church:
The theologians, having knowledge of this, celebrate It, both without Name and from every Name. Without name, as when they say that the Godhead Itself, in one of those mystical apparitions of the symbolical Divine manifestation, rebuked him who said, "What is thy name?" and as leading him away from all knowledge of the Divine Name, said this, "and why dost thou ask my Name? "and this (Name) "is wonderful,"
And is not this in reality the wonderful Name (Judges 13:18), that which is above every Name -- the Nameless -- that fixed above every name which is named, whether in this age or in that which is to come (Ephesians 1:21)? Also, as "many named," as when they again introduce It as saying, "I am He, Who is -- the Life -- the Light -- the God -- the Truth." And when the wise of God themselves celebrate Him, as Author of all things, under many Names, from all created things -- as Good -- as Beautiful -- as Wise...Yea, they also say that He is in minds, and in souls, and in bodies, and in heaven and in earth, and at once, the same in the same -- in the world -- around the world -- above the world -- supercelestial, superessential, sun, star -- fire -- water -- spirit -- dew -- cloud -- self-hewn stone and rock -- all things existing -- and not one of things existing.
(Dionysius. The Divine Names 1.6)
Who says, can portray for listening nothing invisible, except for names, taken from the visible objects.
(St. Ephraim the Syrian)
O Thou, out of all things
What can be done to call Thee?
How can I express praise to Thee,
If Thou art ineffable by speech?
How can the mind incorporate Thee,
If Thou art not comprehended by any mind?
Thou art the only ineffable,
Although Thou spawned everything open to speech.
Thou art the only unknowable,
Although Thou spawned everything open to mind ...
The end of all things is Thou,
One and all, and no one,
Neither one nor all, proclaiming all these names,
how can I call Thee?
(Gregory the Theologian)
In other words, if we try to talk about the properties of God, we have to use the words of everyday language - we have no others. But because God is infinitely different from all created things, these words do not apply to Him. We can only say what God is not..:
And what we speak of God in the affirmative form, shows us not the nature of God, but what is relevant to the nature ... For if knowledge has as its object existing things ... what is above being, is above knowledge too.
(St. John of Damascus)
Therefore, about Him (praise to Him!) we cannot ask, "What is He?" - Because He does not have a self, and we cannot ask: "What is He?" - Because He has no quality ... Our knowledge about Allah is limited to the statement that there is no god but Him.
(Ibn Arabi)
In Taoism, where there is no concept of God, more or less comparable to the Abrahamic religions, we can find similar statements, and even language, reminiscent of the biblical:
What is the essence of the One?
Top of it is not bright,
Its low part is not dark.
It stretches without stop even for a moment,
and is called by no name.
Round and round all comes back to it,
and there are no things.
This is called to have a shape, which is absent,
have existence, not being a thing.
That's what's called being unclear
and vague, like the morning mist.
I meet it, but I do not see its face,
I follow it, but I do not see its back.
(Tao Te Ching 14)
The similarity of scientific knowledge and the knowledge of God is, of course, purely methodological: in both the cases we are talking about the difficulties in describing that goes beyond our sensory experience, but in terms associated with this experience. However, in theology, the solution of this problem on a rational level is impossible in principle. A description of the microcosm in terms of ordinary language is possible, but it is necessary to use complementary pictures, each of which covers only a part of reality. According to Bohr, the situation is as follows. We can not describe an electron in visual images (or, in terms of everyday language) - it does not look like anything familiar to us, but we can describe the action of an electron on the classic object-device: for example, talk about the deflection of measuring device arrow-indicator. Thus, if we accept the interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on the complementarity principle, the relation of the quantum and classical physics is very complicated. On the one hand, classical physics is a limiting case of quantum physics in the sense that at passing to the consideration of sufficiently massive bodies, long distances, and so on, the probability of movement of the object along a single path, defined by the laws of Newton, tends to unity, and along all other - to zero. At the same time, the language itself (coordinate, velocity, etc.) is purely classical, and, according to Bohr, we can not replace it by something else. Therefore, the existence of classical objects (devices) is necessary for quantum mechanics. The situation is radically different from the theory of relativity, which contains the whole classical mechanics as a particular case, corresponding to motion with velocities that are small compared to the speed of light.
Starting from the Niels Bohr, the ideas of complementarity is widely used in the humanities. In particular, they are expressed in the modern dialectic theology, opposing the sacred history to science (though, as we have seen with regard to quantum mechanics, this opposition is not quite fair):
Man's relation to history is not like his attitude to nature. Person distinguishes himself from nature, if he knows himself in his true being. If he turns to history, he would have to tell to himself that he is a part of history and therefore refers to a set of relations, in which he himself is woven by own being. Therefore, one can not consider this set of links just as something present, as the nature, for each statement about the history he, in some way, speaks about himself too. Therefore there can not be an objective consideration of history in the sense in which there is an objective consideration of the nature.
(R. Bultmann)
These arguments of modern theologian are similar to those used in the Bohr-Einstein debate on the completeness of quantum mechanics. According to Bohr, the measuring device must be considered an essential part of the system (for details, see the discussion of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in Chapter 12). Of course, analogy between human and "instrument" which measures features of the historical process, may be a shock for "humanistically" minded readers, but from a functional point of view it is justified. To speak about historical events beyond human perception simply does not make sense. Napoleonic wars have common points with the migration of lemmings - in both cases we have the movement of large masses of organic matter with almost the same chemical composition (if we do not pay attention to the buttons, guns and other metal products, not used by lemmings). Content of history is precisely what distinguishes these two phenomena. The true course of historical events is hidden from any biased observer, and the best "scientific" (objective) description available to us should link, according to Bohr, the complementary paintings (in the simplest case - paintings constructed by opposing parties). Otherwise, we have not a science of history, but ideology and propaganda.
On a deeper level, one can discuss these issues, bearing in mind the events of sacred history. Naive perception of these events (e.g., the treatment of the Bible as a historical source among others) is as unjustified as the classical description of an electron. Meaning of the events of sacred history is verbally inexpressible (as will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter), and any interpretation is always personal (as well as the interpretation of the electron as a wave and a particle involves a very specific type of experiment and the use of very specific measuring devices). The events themselves are infinitely more important than any of their interpretation (i.e., the perception of them as "historical facts"). According to Karl Barth, religion is experienced in time, the revelation occurs at the point (note that the fact that the locality of interaction is very important also in microphysics). According to Bultmann, there remains the only point fact: Jesus once existed in history. The modern man encounters with Christ only in the word of the Gospel:
Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now do not know.
(2 Corinthians 5:16)
I avoid any meeting with historical events, including the meeting with Christ in the flesh, and turn to the only meeting with Christ proclaimed, and He meets me in kerygma, which finds me in my historical situation.
(R. Bultmann)
Historical Christianity is nonsense and non-Christian confusion, for no matter how many true Christians were in each generation, they are simultaneous with Christ. His life on earth takes place in parallel with the human genus, occurs with every single generation of people as an eternal story; his life on earth has eternal simultaneity.
(S. Kierkegaard)
We can nothing "objectively" know about either the past or the future. Each person makes their "measurement" of ultimate reality and gets the result. In this sense, any "formalized" religion is like classical physics. "No religion in its concreteness will avoid court" (Karl Barth).
Great Way leads to harmony and peace,
but people usually prefer to walk
straight to make it faster.
They like to visit the holy places more
than pave their own way.
(Tao Te Ching 53)
I tell them, so and so,
Well, that is not so - then lie.
And they cry to me, And the facts, say, the facts, say,
Take out and put the argument.
And though I `m a not warlike man,
I'll wait here, have a look,
And then I will take my only argument,
Pull out and rely on them.
(J. Kim)
It is important to stress again that the inability to express the knowledge of the divine through language does not mean the complete unknowability of God. Gregory Palamas used the following interpretation of the "divine darkness" of Dionysius the Areopagite: "God is above not only knowledge, but also unknowable," although "if the vision is above negation, then the word interpreting this vision remains below the negative ascent" (Gregory Palamas. Triad). Being applied to the above-discussed analogy between the apophatic theology and the complementarity principle, this means something like: comprehension of the "invisible world" (including microworld!) is probably still possible for human - but only as a part of an analogue of the mystical experience.
The famous American psychiatrist S. Grof argues that some of his patients demonstrated such an ability in special "holotropic" states of consciousness (see his book "Beyond the Brain", "Psychology of the Future," and - in the form of fiction - "Call of the Jaguar"). Reproducible diving into a microcosm of the human mind has taken place also in the tradition of contemporary spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo. Unfortunately, the results of these experiences can not be formalized and not of interest to modern science in the Western sense. It follows from the Bohr analysis that a qualitative understanding of the Schroedinger equation - the basic dynamical law of quantum physics - can be only non-verbal. These very non-trivial issues are discussed further below. We now treat another, also very difficult, turn of our story.
Chapter 9
Sacred text and the world
I resort to perfect words of Allah to escape the evil He created (Islam khadis)
The so-called Principle of complementarity for the first time in the history of the Western science associated abilities of scientific cognition with capabilities of language. That idea was perfectly in the spirit of the time, of the twenties and the thirties of the 20thcentury. About the same time, Ludwig Witgenstein attempted to make a similar analysis of the scope of philosophical cognition (see the epigraph to Chapter 8). At first glance, language appears to be a too fragile tool to set limits of knowledge; after all, it contains a limited number of words, it is subordinate to grammar principles that clearly do not look as fundamental as laws of nature, etc.
Is language sufficient enough to be the basic tool of cognition? In context of our task of comparison of the natural-science paradigm and the traditional (religious) picture of the world, it is important to emphasize and explain the unconditionally affirmative reply to this question; the reply given by all major religions. The role of the Text (the Holy Scripture) is commonly held decisive not only in cognizing the created world, but also cognizing God. From the philosophic viewpoint, the role of the text can be illustrated by the following words of philosopher M. Mamardashvili: "Text is a mirror; we follow the Path, correcting our way by this mirror. Until I start composing a text, that is start collecting something with my productive imagination... I cannot understand anything".
First of all, note that a finite (and rather small) number of units (symbols) of language does not contradict to the assertion, that a textcould contain a potentially infinite amount of information, just like any irrational number could be written down as an infinite aperiodic decimal, using only ten numerals (or, even only two numerals, in binary-number system). Note a very important correlation between text and context here: a truly great literary work (in the limit - a sacred revelation text, created not by men) is able to produce an unlimited abundance of meanings and bonds with facts of outer life and particularly of inner life of a person.
"Citation is not an excerpt. Citation is cicada. It sounds incessantly. It clutches at the air and never lets it off.... Any word is a bunch and meanings protrude from it into different directions, rather than be fixed upon one official point" (Mandelstam, Conversation on Dante)
The notion of context comprehends many levels and necessarily embraces an "observer".
"The context of word is the whole world", as said by Stanislaw E. Lez. Therefore the critical goal is interpreting texts (at least, if you take serious texts). Interpretation of a holy text enables us to unfold the whole world and to pass along a "tree" (like through a graph-net) to the "paradise" innocent state, and finally, to return to the beginning of creation. Through a correct interpretation, a text becomes "non-local" and embraces all the plenitude of creation (pleroma), all ties of the real world. According to jewish midrash, the Most High attached a crown (sign) to each letter of the law (Torah), in order that from each sign ("iota and dot", Mt.5:18) one could derive galakha(a rule). Thus the holy text operates like a hologram, which even being broken to pieces still does not lose its wonderful qualities; thanks to coherence (retention of information on the light beam phase), each fragment reproduces all the image, if you just care to look "into" it. Even one single biblical verse comprehended properly (be it only on a certain level of perception or from a certain viewpoint), might convert a man to faith or give birth to a whole religious movement, a new confession, not unlike it happened repeatedly in times of Reformation.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
As is well known, a Jewish sage Gillel just as quickly managed to explain the essence of Torah by means of "the golden rule" to a pernickety proselyte, while the latter was standing on his one foot (Talmud, Shabbath). Note also a competent text from the buddhist cycle Pradjnyaparamita (Infinite wisdom):
Subhuti, if someone were to fill the 3,000 chiliocosms with piles of the seven precious treasures as high as Mount Sumeru as an act of generosity, the happiness resulting from this is much less than that of another person who knows how to accept, practice, and explain the Vajracchedika Prajna paramita Sutra to others. The happiness resulting from the virtue of a person who practices this sutra, even if it is only a gatha of four lines, cannot be described by using examples or mathematics
Subhuti, if as many times as there are grains of sand in the Ganges a son or daughter of a good family gives up his or her life as an act of generosity and if another daughter or son of a good family knows how to accept, practice, and explain this sutra to others, even if only a gatha of four lines, the happiness resulting from explaining this sutra is far greater. (Diamond sutra)
As opposed to the sacred text, a profane, artificially composed text is "flat", that is, contains no dimensions, no deep internal bonds. An ideological, propagandistic collection of letters (in newspapers, or bureaucratic language, or commercials) is even more trite and barren, since composed of cliches, ready made verbal blocks. Interestingly, the aim of destruction of language (and hence destruction of the human consciousness) can be put into practice quite meaningly:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible...The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as `This dog is free from lice' or `This field is free from weeds'. It could not be used in its old sense of `politically free' or `intellectually free' since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.
The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily.
From the foregoing account it will be seen that in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions, above a very low level, was well-nigh impossible. It was of course possible to utter heresies of a very crude kind, a species of blasphemy. It would have been possible, for example, to say Big Brother is ungood. But this statement, which to an orthodox ear merely conveyed a self-evident absurdity, could not have been sustained by reasoned argument, because the necessary words were not available.
(George Orwell: `Nineteen Eighty-Four', Appendix: The principles of Newspeak)
A writer, working fervently on his book, soon notices himself to be enthralled by it and starts living a common life with his writing, to the point of real occurrences and coincidences in his environment. Not only the author, but also a reader of a serious text becomes its part or a co-author, just like the experimenter in quantum mechanics is a part of the experimental setup (cf. analysis of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox below, also the general conception of entanglement, a quantum "cohesion" of sub-systems).
"Whenever we take a large work of art or a great work, it contains within itself not only its content... There is something else, heard in the novel between the lines; it s a certain existence of the composition itself, different from what came into being by the text of the novel... The work itself is sort of actually given, discontinuously given infinity... Works like this have a lot of interpretations, which are modus vivendi or way of existence of this work; as if we are within the conscious infinity, revealed by this work. Note, than although one can never presume or predict beforehand any interpretation of the work, yet whenever it appears, it is undoubtedly an interpretation of meaning of exactly this particular work. That is, it constitutes its attribute part" (Mamardashvili, Psychological topology of path)
The mere fact of existence of text bears no relation to the way how, in which capacity and by whom t is read, lstened to, comprhended etc. In other words, the text content, in the phenomenological sense, is what is generated within in process of its perception, reading, comprehension and interpretation" (A. Pyatigorsky, Mythological thoughts)
Any text, possessing such properties, is, in a certain sense, sacred - just like there is Christ abiding in each man (Logos). Quite the contrary, scientific texts, especially realized by mathematical language, are written in such a way, so as to be interpreted possibly impersonally and unambiguously. Along with huge pragmatic advantages (conciseness, precision, lucidity) such use of language is fraught with certain dangers.
"Once you open your mouth,
Your life is already ruined"
(Outpost without gates)
"Words are to use to express the meaning. Once the meaning comprehended, words are forgotten. I wish I could a find a man who forgot words, to speak to!"(Czuanchi)
Bringing order began with the fact that
there occurred names.
But the names may not be enough,
and one should be able to stop in time.
And when you know how to stop in time,
you can use any number of words.
(Tao Te Ching 32)
These perils were clearly realized by naturalist scientists (at least, the most profound thinkers):
"In theoretical physics, the primary language, produced in process of scientific clarification of facts, is usually the language of mathematics; namely, a mathematical scheme permitting physicists to predict results of the next experiments... Still, for a physicist, ability to describe in common language also serves as a criterion of the degree of understanding achieved in the appropriate field... Logical analysis bears danger of too ample simplification. In logic, attention is directed to special linguistic structure, to unambiguous connecting premises with conclusions, to simple argumentation schemes. All other structures are simply overlooked in logic. These structures might result, for instance, from associations between certain intermediate meanings of words... The fact, that any word might evoke in our mind many others, only half-realized stirs, can be used to express by means of language certain aspects of reality more distinctly, than it would be possible by means of logic scheme. (W.Heisenberg, Physics and philosophy)
Note for reference words of one of the biggest poets of 20th century:
"Poetical speech or thought might be only utterly relatively (with reserve) called soniferous (sounding), since we hear in it only a crossing of two lines; one of which, taken separately, is perfectly mute, while the other, taken out of instrumental metaphor, is devoid of any significance and any interest, yet is amenable to retelling. Which, in my opinion, is the surest sign of absence of poetry... Imagine something comprehended, grasped, torn out of darkness expressed in the language, voluntarily and readily forgotten immediately after the elucidative act of comprehension and fulfillment has happened... The outward, elucidative figurativeness is incompatible with instrumentation. (Osip Mandelsam, Conversation on Dante)
If you wish, the ideal of scientific language is computers language; scientific text is closed in the sense that it can be interpreted as a part of a fixed limited supertext (consisting of dictionaries, preceding scientific works, manuals etc). While a sacred text is principially open; to adequately perceive it, one has to possess the aggregate life experience of all living beings and all possible worlds etc. Practically, understanding sacred texts is realized by illogical irrational way, "through spirit, by grace".
From formal viewpoint, computer language consists of programs or algorithms, bluntly speaking, of instructions (e.g., to copy a numeral into another cell, to add one, etc). A scientific text, by virtue of principle of reproducibility, repeatability of scientific results; the text, at the limit, also should constitute an instruction, not tolerating ambiguous interpretations (for instance, take a mono-crystal of a certain matter, put it under a beam of neutrons with certain characteristics, measure the number of neutrons, dispersed at so-and-so angle...).
Understanding a sacred text (e.g., the Bible) as a set of contradictory directions (for example, in the area of ethics) is widespread among people with natural-science type of thinking and leads to heavy misunderstandings and total aversion. Extremes, as it often occurs, meet here: the similar path is chosen by religious sectarians, who attempt to substitute the too complex Holy Scripture for a handy, simple and unambiguous catechism, be it composed of biassed biblical citations, usually interpreted extremely straightforward. Granted, such an "understanding" is the worst kind of profanation, interdicted by the same Bible; "for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor. 3:6).
One of tools we can suggest for solution of this issue is sense of humor, which is admittedly beyond the reach of computer. A jokealways, apart from its literal sense, contains "overtones" and thus can express at once several assertions, sometimes formally contradicting to each other. Humor permits to get over the incompatibility of a pair of opposites; to come out into the next level of understanding; to correlate different levels of reality; to speak of the most superior without fear and ceremony.
"Myths picture gods as mourning not always, while laughing gods are incessant, since the tears mean gods' care about things mortal and transitory, about the kind of signs that are now existing, now not; while laughter belongs to integral and incessantly moving plenitudes (pleromata).... to all-embracing energy... If we care to allot demiurgic actions among humans and gods, then laughter would go to gods' kin, while tears go to collection of humans and animals" (Prokles)
In day-to-day life, humor lets us express the dual nature of human both as "the image and likeness of God" and animal, burdened by "vulgar" instincts.
"Coarse jokes are evidence of the fact that we are animals being ashamed of out animal origin or at least deriding it. If spirit and flesh (organism) were not at odds with each other, that could not happen. Yet it is not easy to imagine that it really was; not easy to imagine a being, originally feeling ashamed of itself. Dogs see nothing funny about the fact that they are dogs; also angels hardly see something funny about the fact that they are angels." (K.S.Lewis, Miracle)
That is exactly the reason why loss of sense of humor and especially of self-irony is a very disturbing symptom of spiritual disorder; since there are few who readily admit being a dog, mostly in these cases it is a question of a claim (usually ungrounded) to angelic virtues.
Another indicative example of ambiguity of language, intended to express the deep essence, can be of alchemical texts. Their formulae appear too enigmatic or even preposterous to present-day readers due to abundance of vague and obscure symbols; their straightforward understanding leads to nonsense. At the same time, scientific effort of contemporary scientists also cannot be reduced to carrying out of instructions. The most precious and non-trivial results in science, obtained by both theorists and experimentalists, can not be dubbed as computer-based in the least.
Referring to the most formalized discipline of all, to mathematics, this assertion is substantiated in detail in the books by Penrose ("Emperor's New Mind" and "Shadows of Mind).
An now, let us get back to the issue of fundamental ambiguity of sacred texts. Here we can adduce another interesting analogy with quantum physics. Recently scientific community devotes much attention to the problem of so called "quantum computers" (although the possibility of their physical realization is still not quite clear). The main difference of a quantum computer from a classical one is that in quantum case, an element of the full state space of the quantum system (Hilbert space) serves as an elementary block of a program (instead of the q-bit itself). If the system consists of N elements, each being in one of two states (binary code 1 and 0), then dimension of the Hilbert space is 2N and thus very large even by a small number of elements. So there is hope to employ quantum computers (if only they will be one day materially created) for solution of problems, that in classical case require a number of operations exponentially growing. As an example of such task, important for cryptography, is expansion of very big integers into prime number factors; a method of solution of this problem by means of a quantum computer is called, after the author, Shor's algorithm. So, as it turns out, the Hilbert space dimension is the number of subsets of the set of all q-bits, that is, roughly speaking, the number of all possible ways to connect the parent elements.
To a certain extent, informational abundance of sacred texts can also be correlated with their fundamental "many-body" nature (long-distance "quantum" correlations) when combinations and collations of words from different parts of text (parallel passages, not necessarily having historic casual relations) give a new content. Even more important is the fundamental openness of text, mentioned above; the matter concerns liaisons between text passages and facts of the outside and inside life of a human, society etc. As a result, from the practical standpoint, information capacity of a sacred text turns out to be boundless. Which brings up again the issue of contradictions and discords in sacred texts. The fact is that in reality, a text (understood as a part of context, embracing all the universe) is a many-dimensional object, while its version written down on paper is only a certain projection, spread out onto our world with unavoidable ruptures and distortions. Text as such, recoverable by all its possible projections (that is, understood as total of possible interpretations), can be consistent in an appropriate "superior" sense.
Generally, religious symbols, as compared to mathematical ones, have to deal with much more grave aspects of reality. They are supposed to bring out man to new levels of perception, pertaining to the world beyond. Correspondingly, they сan also be perceived on different levels and are being revealed, little by little, according to spiritual growth of the man. A symbolical interpretation of text leads to gradual elimination of contradictions, as missing internal links are added to the picture. Using the notion of symbol, one can solve (or, more precisely, remit) the medieval controversy between realists and nominalists about reality of common notions. For the "quantum" perception, the common is shining through in any single instance as the total of all possibilities; they are all real at once.
Isaiah answer'd: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover' d the infinite in everything, and as I was then perswaded, & remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote."
(W.Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
"Evidently, the rose you are describing, is not a rose presented in thousands and millions copies. Just like the woman you love is not a woman as a representative of women's class, inclusive of thousand similar women you could love. In our traditional language symbolism this phenomena is often referred to as the notion of "the golden age" or "the paradise lost"(cf. our discussion on the Fall -authors). In this case, paradise should mean plenitude of our own presence (i.e. pleroma - authors).
For instance, you experienced uniqueness of a rose, while in language, you learned the meaning of the "rose". And meaning of a rose is meaning of thousands od specimens of rose (and one has to see all these individual specimens as present in the aggregate notion - authors)" (M.Mamardashvili, Psychological topology of the Path)
By the way, compare with a story how one day the Buddha's sermon was reduced to silently showing a flower to his favorite disciple Maudgallyana, causing, thereby, a special state of mind of the latter and all other attendees.
The next very important development of the topic is dualism of a sacred text and the world. All tradition religions insist on the exceptional, even cosmological meaning of primary sacred texts, containing afflatus. These texts are given priority to dogmatic systems and commentaries, that are stating main principles of a religious teaching in simple logic form. In the western (judaic-christian) tradition, the principal Book is the Bible (which in the Greek language meant exactly books). Canon is often shaped with influence of number symbolism. In Judaism, the biggest authority is carrried by the Torah, i.e. first five books of the Bible, written down by Moses. As legend has it, Hebraic is the single primary language of mankind; moreover, God was creating the world while glancing from time to time into Torah. Even separate letters of Torah are ascribed an incredible power. One hebrew legend tells:
"Very good" in Gen. 1:31 is conveyed by "tov me'od". Yet our wisemen were keeping a Torah scroll with erroneous (obviously, slip of pen) tov maved (Death). Now, we have "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was death". Read such a scroll, and the whole world collapses" (commentary to In the heart of seas, by S.Agnon)
Compare the original "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day" (Gen. 1:31)
According to the Talmud, rabbi Meier added to his copy of Torah a remark "very good is the death". And indeed, death might mean beauty of the eternal, the timeless.
The Christian tradition has only four Gospels particularly worshipped, yet the Old Testament is unconditionally keeping its significance in all three Abraham religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), each having its own sacred books. The world is still functioning according to the Old-Testamentary law of Torah, since the former was created on its basis. As concerns a separate man, we have to stress, that even realization of evangelic freedom hardly exempts him straight away from physical world laws (if for no other reason than he possesses a material body). But then again, the saints can do miracles... This ability is purchasable at an exorbitant price, though.
"You, most likely, will never occur to witness a miracle. Probably you are also right, whenever you find a natural explanation for all strange incidents of your past life. The Lord does not scatter miracles onto nature, like pepper from a pepper-pot. A miracle is a big rarity. It may occur in nerve-knots of history. But not of political or social history, rather of spiritual history, that people are not supposed to know in full anyway. While your thought is far away from these knots, stop waiting for the miracle.. If you were an apostle, a martyr, a missionary, than it's quite another matter. He who does not live by a railway, never happens to seу trains. Neither me, nor you never attend at making of important contract, or a scientific discovery, or the suicide of a dictator. Even less chances to attend a miracle. Yet I would never advise you to long for it. As far as we know, miracle and martyrdom walk along same paths, that we do not.
(C.S. Lewis. Miracles)
Other religions also assert absoluteness of Holy Scripture authority, like for instance Hinduism. The most ancient stratum of Hinduist canon consists of vedic hymns by rishi poets; these hymns were origins for the mystical philosophy of upanishadas, and later for countless commentaries to scientific treatises in various religious schools. Texts were always consecrated by tradition; personal ideas, opinions and insights were considered of inferior value. Although buddhists repudiated authority of four Hinduist vedas, they quickly developed their own canon. Sutras, constituting it, often date back to later historical times, but still are interpreted as words imparted from Buddha himself and hence are cited as a weighty argument not only in religious, but also in psychological works of buddhist scientists.
A sacred text, as a divine reality, is intersecting with the historical reality of the earthly world in certain "points" of being.
According to orthodox Judaism, the whole Torah (in broader sense, including all biblical texts, posterior Talmudical and cabbalistic commentaries and even all the subsequent history of Jewish people) was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. As legend has it, Moses was told everything, that ever would be spoken in each dispute and "whatever each assiduous disciple wold tell his teacher" (rather than only vice versa).
The Christian Symbol of faith contains mentioning of Christ's crucifixion in the time of Pilatus; "singularity" of Golgotha incident is the key event in the world's history. Yet this event is, time and again, being reproduced in the life of each man, progressing the crucial path of Christ. There is a deep duality between the Holy Scripture and life (spiritual life, first of all); this duality might be interpreted also as complementarity. From this point of view, the issue of historical reliability of biblical stories is simply abolished, just like demand for literal realization of prophecies etc. As the specific situation requires, and as applied to the particular man, one or another aspect of this duality might prevail (not unlike in the particular physical experiment one can examine either corpuscular or wave behaviour of electron).
Many contemporary philosophers emphasize the organizational role of text as a tool for cognition of reality. This is one of key topics in works of M.Mamardashvili (Psychological topology of the Path). Note several typical passages thereof.
"Text, that is, a composition of a certain imaginary situation, is a unique tool for untangling one's experience; when we start to understand something in our life and it acquires a certain outline depending on the text participation therein".
"The fact is, that we only succeed in obtaining some sense, in ascertaining what is in reality, on condition that we care to compose a text for that.... Text is what connects... Text is something, by means of what we are reading something else. By means of text we are reading an event"
"We have to deal with, so to speak, tragic finiteness of man. The point is, that we are not able (since we are finite, we don't have time enough) to face empirically everything that was created for us. We are not able since our life space is limited, our geographical abilities are restricted... Still, there is something counteracting human's limited nature and human's finitness. These acting tools are things called texts."
There are no such mechanisms that automatically could secure beauty to last, freedom to last etc. Each time we have to reproduce this situation by our efforts and risks. Still, there is a tool that helps man in this effort. This help is called text (in broader sense)".
Events and symbols, described in the Holy Scripture (or, more precisely, in the text of it) preset а "frame of reference", wherein we may describe our life experience (particularly, of our inner life); trajectories we are moving along. It is crucially important to realize: whatever happens to Christ or Judas or Job, happens to us. Granted, it is more preferably (bearing in mind e.g. experience of Job, or, Lord forbid, Judas situation) to experience these happenings only parabolically and symbolically, in our mind. Texts give us such opportunity, making up the for the finiteness of human existence.
Life's too short to confine oneself by the destiny given from above (sometimes it is not a destiny but rather an eventual dead end - as a joke goes, sometimes a light at the end of a tunnel might turn out to be the front light of a coming train); sometimes it's time to think of one's personal freedom. He who has cognized and "adopted" the Scripture, has nothing to fear - neither in the earthly life nor in the reality beyond.
**
Chapter 10
The left and the right: dualism of knowledge and perception
Be aware of your masculine nature;
But by keeping the feminine way,
You shall be to the world like a canyon,
Where the Virtue eternal abides,
And go back to become as a child.
(Tao Te Ching 28)
The brilliant analysis of complementarity principle, given by Niels Bohr, played the largest role in discussing philosophical and even theological issues concerned with progress of physics; first and foremost, as it established a precedent of debating on humanitarian problems by naturalist scientists. On the other hand, much time has passed since that; and the specific argumentation, used by Bohr while formulating and evolving his complementarity principle, now, apparently, can be essentially supplemented taking into account recent progress in both linguistics and psychology. First of all, we have to take into consideration, that the "classical" nature of language, emphasized by Bohr, not necessarily implies the classical nature of consciousness or psychic activity as a whole. A considerable (and essential) part of the contents of psyche can not be verbalized, that is, conveyed by means of everyday language. These issues were crucial, for instance, for philosophy of Ludwig Witgenstein, but also serve as pivot for many modern trends of humanitarian thought:
"We only notice the solving of a problem of our life by disappearance of this problem (That's probably why those who, after many hesitations, come to understand the meaning of life, still are not able to tell the meaning).
Indeed, there is something unutterable. It can only manifest itself, it is mystical." (Ludwig Witgenstein, Treatise on Logic and Philosophy, 6.521-6.522)
Earlier interpretations of structure of human mind and particularly of brain information processing methods were using a conception of two signal systems (contrived by Ivan Pavlov). The second human signal system is connected with speech. Worth mentioning, that humans, comparing to other primates, have the role of hearing notably increased, especially for speech perception (while primates, as opposed to other mammals, have the visual representational system dominating, rather than audial (hearing) or olefactory (smell)). At present, a notion of functional assymetry of cerebral hemispheres is considered to be a more adequate neurophysiologic language for description of "binary" nature of human mind. At that, the left hemisphere (if you are a right-hand man) manages logic, speech, counting, analysis, while the right hemisphere is in charge for perception of entire images. Very roughly speaking, that dichotomy corresponds with the second and the first signal systems introduced by Pavlov. The "two hemispheres" are not necessarily to interpret literally (in anatomical-physiological sense of the words); rather, as two mental subsystems, or, two projections of real work of brain. Too literal associations between psychology and neurophysiology seem questionable in general (we can end up in position of a man, trying to understand the content of TV broadcasts, by examining circuits and chips, making up a TV set). Nevertheless, the conception of the binary structure of human mind is very productive; for simplicity sake we will adhere to the terms "left-hemispheric" and "right-hemispheric", although interpreted with the mentioned reservations.
Both the tastes and demands of mine are strange -
I'm exotic, to say the least:
I can simultaneously biting glasses
And read Schiller without a dictionary.
During my two I, the two poles of the planet,
Two different people, two enemies:
When one seeks to ballets -
Another seeks to right on running.
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
Interesting and informative discussion of the humanitarian aspects of the problem can be found in "Even and Oddy" by Vyach. Vs. Ivanov (Vyach. Vs. Ivanov. Selected papers on semiotics and cultural history. V. 1. M., 1999). However, one must understand that the word "binary" is too rude to describe the actual structure of the individual.
For a short time I saw my friend Harry ... But before I learned him, he fell apart, there separated from him the second figure, the third, tenth, twentieth, and all of the huge mirror was filled only with Harry, or pieces of Harry, countless Harry, and I have seen and learned each of them only for some lightning split second.
(H. Hesse. Steppenwolf)
A slight change of angle could turn the student of today into the child of yesterday; could turn Randolph Carter into that wizard Edmund Carter who fled from Salem to the hills behind Arkham in 1692, or that Pickman Carter who in the year 2169 would use strange means in repelling the Mongol hordes from Australia; could turn a human Carter into one of those earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black, plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kythanil, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus; could turn a terrestrial Carter to a remotely ancestral and doubtfully shaped dweller on Kythanil itself, or a still remoter creature of trans-galactic Shonhi, or a four-dimensioned gaseous consciousness in an older space-time continuum, or a vegetable brain of the future on a dark radio-active comet of inconceivable orbit--and so on, in the endless cosmic circle.
(H. P. Lovecraft. Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
At present, great thinkers suggest us various personality "maps", starting with rather simple Freudian concepts (Id, Ego, Super-ego) , until utterly intricate constructions of modern transpersonal psychology (S.Groph and others) which is in turn a development of analytical psychology by Karl Jung. Still, the binary basis seems the most natural for analysis. A very profound and important (as well as ambiguous, as is always in the Scripture) evangelical dictum, Let what you say be simply `Yes' or `No'; anything more than this comes from evil. (Mt. 5:37) can be possibly interpreted as an indication of fundamental binarity of the Creation. We can notice here a gentle hint at the Oriental quaternary logic though (which additionally includes two more possibilities ("both yes, and no"; "neither yes, or no"). In Pythagorean tradition the numeral "two" symbolized distinction, disparity, everything divisible and changeable. In any case it is difficult to resist the temptation to associate the wave-corpuscular dualism of quantum mechanics with ambivalence (duality) of the "left-hemispheric" (corpuscular) and "right-hemispheric" (wave-like) consciousness.
Important to emphasize, that both these aspects might be expressed by language means. At first glance, this statement might sound strange, since, firstly, speech centers are located in the left hemisphere (of right-hand men), and secondly, language by its nature is discrete (discontinuous), since based on "atoms", called phonemes; the number of phonemes varies in real languages within not very wide range, from 10 to 80. However, in reality, beside a discrete meaning, a language is able to express in principle also a continuous idea by means, e.g., of extension of words; just like an irrational number (that is, a infinite decimal fraction) might be formed as section of two rational numbers, a transitional word (intermediate by its meaning) might similarly be interposed between any two words (for instance, formally, by means of comparative adverbs).
"And were every tree that is in the earth (made into) pens and the sea (to supply it with ink), with seven more seas to increase it, the words of Allah would not come to an end". (Quran 31:26).
This trait of language was clearly understood already by physicists Bohr and Heisenberg; the latter in his book of dialogues "The Part and the Whole " (already mentioned) adduces such a remarkable reasoning from Niels Bohr:
"Surely, language possesses these traits of peculiar hovering. We do not know accurately, what this particular word means, the sense of anything we speak depends on the words connection in the sentence, on the context the phrase is delivered in, and also on surrounding circumstances, hardly enumerable at all. Such is the situation with common language, even more so in poetic language. The same applies, to some extent, to the language of natural science. It is in atom physics, where nature again is teaching us, how restricted might turn out to be the area of applicability of notions we regarded as perfectly definite and indisputable... Adherents of positivism are surely right when warning us against danger of washing out the language of exact wordings. However, at that, they hardly take into consideration, that in natural science we might, at best, approach the ideal, but never achieve it".
Further on in this dialogue, Bohr gives a perfect example of "non-classical" usage of language: "The meaning of life is that it is meaningless to tell that life has no meaning".
Turning back to Bohr's principle of complementarity and wave-corpuscular dualism, we can note an evidently "right-hemisphere" nature of the wave notion. Consider, for instance, the following illustrative statement of a known psychologist and philosopher:
"We are living in the epoch when the logic of balance-sheet, the logic of things production has also extended over human life. Men and things are equally become specimens... How may we say "no" to philosophy, that always has the ideal as life based on principles of computer - without waves, feelings, passions?" (Fromm, Excape from Freedom)
Waves, sea, water are notions associated by man with continuum, with the world beyond (as opposed to the discontinuous, discrete, fractional, disintegrating into elements, world of manifested).
As already mentioned in Chapter 7, the scriptural tradition (particularly in its Christian interpretation) presupposes important role for dialectic of law and grace, discussed in detail in epistles of St.Paul. To some degree, this dialectic corresponds to the dualism of "left-hemispheric" and "right-hemispheric"mind, of corpuscular and wave pictures, of continuous and discrete (law is discontinuous, corpuscular, verbalizable, "logical"; while grace is "illogical", unverbalizable, "nonlocalizable", noncausal. Being manifested in the world, the single God generates discontinuous forms, that are constantly splitting.
"Each word of God begets an angel" (Talmud, Hagiga). After St.Paul's interpretation, Moses receives the heavenly Law by communicating with individual intermediary angels (the same was suggested by Phylon Alexandrian in "Judaic antiquities").
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained by angels through an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one; but God is one. (Galatians 3:19-20)
The Law, being holy and righteous, still is not giving salvation to an individual man, but rather is only condemning him.
Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, "And to offsprings," referring to many; but, referring to one, "And to your offspring," which is Christ. (Galatians 3:16)
The issue of correct (adequate) verbal expression of truth is, to put it mildly, not novel at all (cf. "the thought uttered is a lie"). Yet this issue is supposed to be solved each time anew. Anything not shaped in words has not become a part of the human world, as based on the Word, Logos (John 1:1).
At any rate, Socrates, after such an exhortation I should be ashamed of not trying to do my best. Now he who knows perceives what he knows, and, as far as I can see at present, knowledge is perception. (Plato. Theaetetus)
On the other hand, the Oriental tradition (particularly, Zen) frequently talks about necessity of direct, non-verbal imparting the truth from a teacher to his disciple.
"A plain man, who has assumed knowledge, is a wise man. A wise man, who decided that he knows, is a plain man.
Once you open up your mouth, you will lie. Once you keep silent, you will ruin the truth as well.
Yet, he who neither speaks nor keeps silence, will be even thousand times as far from the truth."
Awareness of impossibility and even uselessness of the eternal manifestation of truth can serve as a cause of painful, yet productive reflections.
As noted by S.Averintzev, in pious literature, the God's existence is not proved, but rather demonstrated. A book of M.Mamardashvili and A.Pyatigorsky "Symbol and consciousness" is telling about duality of "left-hemispheric" and "right-hemispheric" thinking (corpuscular and wave-like if we assume our analogy) as of dualism of knowledge and understanding. Here is the lengthier citation:
"Sign systems with all their structures and elements potentially contain all the Universe observable by human, and even if we do not know something about the Universe yet, then this "something" can be assigned as an observer. Then the very fact of such an assignment would mean, that we failed to elicit something from the data contained, in principle, in the information obtainable; we failed to elicit it from ourselves. And the fact that we have not extracted ourselves, should be a pivotal point for the turn of the problem towards consciousness; the problem of duality of understanding and knowledge. Knowledge is always a sign system... This elicitation is exactly the transition from knowledge to understanding. As long as we do not know, we cannot complete the elicitation from the information flow."
Here we see a whole number of concepts, important for description of quantum reality; specifically, related to the notion of observation (the detailed discussion of the idea follows below). For our analysis of language problems, we hold very essential the remark of the discontinuous (corpuscular, algebraical, alphanumerical) nature of knowledge and continual (wave-like, topological, figurative) nature of understanding. The aggregate of knowledge and understanding is exactly what gives an integral description (explanation?) of reality, accessible for man. In its superior manifestations, both the poetical (right-hemispheric) and the scientific (left-hemispheric) pictures of the world "gush over" the dividing barrier between them, attempting to surmount their "one-sidedness" and overflow into each other:
"Poetry, you have to envy to crystallography, bite your nails in a rage and impotence!" (O.Mandelshtam, Conversation on Dante).
If we continue these, so popular now, comparisons of human mind with computer (as in the Fromm's citation), we can say, that the left cerebral hemisphere operates in discontinuous and, moreover, binary coding ("yes" or "now") and thereby really plays a part of computer of a kind. While the right hemisphere works with analogous, wave processes, holographic images.
Another inevitable association occurs here to a man of physical-mathematical education: a physical process can be described either step-by-step, in real time, OR as a spectral distribution, giving information on the process as a whole. (It is the respective Fourier transformation, that fulfils the transition from corpuscular to wave picture in quantum mechanics.) In that way, we can interpret the Bohr's principle of complementarity as a description of how man really cognizes the world. Yet, the question, how many facets the world has "in reality", is a separate issue, and, probably, incorrect in philosophical sense.
"One monk asked the preceptor Fenyan: "Neither word nor silence are capable to express the meaning of being. So how might we utter the truth?"
Fanyan replied: "I still see that spring on the south bank of Yan-Tsi. Pods of birds are chirping among aromatic flowers".
What is important to accentuate, is that quantum physics for the first time in history of Western science resulted in building of the world picture, which, more or less, conforms to nature of human consciousness; while the classical (Newtonian-Cartesian) Universe is in fact the Universe from the viewpoint of computers (although non-existing at that time). A.Losev wrote very emotionally about that in his "Dialectic of Myth":
"The only and exclusive original creation of the new-European materialism consists exactly in the myth of the universal dead Leviathan."
Hence we have the imagery, so frequent for the "classical" 18th century: images of puppets and clockwork machines. The sense of horror of a normal, "dual-hemispheric" man in front of such a reality is vividly expressed in, e.g., "The Sand Man" by E.T.A.Hoffman. The very attribute sand is brilliantly сhosen, evoking obvious associations with discontinuous matter; apparently, Hoffman intuitively derived it from Judaic traditional legends about golems, made of sand and clay and thus barren of blood circulation (liquid, water, blood symbolize the continuous). Another prototype of golem is, apparently, the idol, collapsing from a stroke of stone, from the Book of Daniel (Dan. 2:31-35).
We can also recall homunculus from the second part of Goethe's Faust, as a man suffering from his inferiority ("left-hemispheric"), and deliberately merging in his suicidal act with (continuous!) aqueous element, which still promises him the future revival.
Similar imagery is easy to find in contemporary poetry. Symbolism of sand, dust (as the "discontinuous" matter) as opposed to water (continuous) is constantly present in poems of Josef Brodsky.
Discontinuity of the manifested world as the result of the measurement procedure, i.e., roughening of the continuous quantum reality is sometimes discussed even in quite special articles of physicists. For instance, H.D.Zeh writes in his recent work:
Field amplitudes always represent the true physical variables (in quantum theory the arguments of a fundamental wave functional), including fields which never appear classical, while apparent particles are no more than the result of decoherence in the measuring device, without playing any fundamental role in the theory or its interpretation.
(H. D. Zeh. Phys. Lett. A 309, 329 (2003)).
In other words, the idea of field is primary in quantum description. So called physical vacuum is a reservoir of particles, that can be born from it when applying the appropriate energy (for instance, electrons are born together with their antiparticles, positrons). It is substantial, that all electrons are perfectly identical and in a certain sense might be considered as one and the same electron, transient back and forth in time. Individual electrons observed in a particular physical experiment, are, according to Zeh, the result of destruction of coherence of the united electron-positron field by the measuring device. Anything that is observable (and thus apparent, manifested) is, by definition, not quantum-like anymore. As for the term functional, used by Zeh, he means by it a substantially non-local object, depending on configuration of quantum field in all points of time-space continuum. Hereby, the field functional is opposed to wave function of a separate electron; the function non-existent in reality (or, rather in the Reality!).
Consequently, we have a fundamental dualism of discontinuous and continuous, manifested in philosophy as the dualism of knowledge and understanding, in neurophysiology and psychology - as the dualism of left and right hemispheres, in mathematics - as the dualism of algebraic and topological, while in physics - as the dualism of corpuscular and wave-like. Transition to quantum images (if only we could perceive them immediately), would be able to "reconstruct" reality by these two projections. That was, by the way, a coveted dream of Robert Feynman, one of the most prominent physics of 20th century:
"The future great era of awakening of human mind will bring along the method of understanding of qualitative content of equations. Today we are still unable for that. Today, we cannot tell with certainty, whether the Schroedinger equation contains both frogs and composers and even morals, or nothing of the kind can be contained therein. Thus each of us may have his personal opinion on that" (Feynman's lectures on physics, issue 7)
Such a leap lies already beyond the bounds of physiology. But even at present, the "right-hemispheric", graphic symbols obstinately penetrate into theoretical physics (for instance, cf. diagrams in quantum field theory, contrived by the same Feynman).
Let us adduce another manifestation of the discussed dualism; it is known that stimulation of one hemisphere would block operation of the other. Therein is the danger of formalization, of too wide use of mathematical apparatus. The left-hemispheric style of thinking does not promote appearance of new ideas, that usually come in shape of images rather than of formal constructions.
Particularly, the thinking of Einstein was remarkable for clearly expressed right-hemispheric nature. You can easily come to this conclusion, once you care to analyze his works, no matter scientifiс or autobiographic books.
Emotional aspect of this issue is also very important: the perception of the tragic nature of life, indispensable for one's spiritual growth, is entirely connected with the right cerebral hemisphere, while the explicit domination of the left hemisphere often shows in disposition not only to schematization, but also to euphoria and complacency.
The words "left" and "right" are in themselves provided with respective emotional and ethical connotations (note, by the way, that anatomically, the left hemisphere is connected with the right body part and vice versa). Various linguistic, ethical and political meanings are accumulated on these terms (cf. lambs go to the left, goats go the right).
The binarity, described by modern science as opposition of the left and right hemisphere, in more traditional world outlooks is interpreted as the dualism of the masculine and feminine, while their connection (association) is symbolized by sacrament of matrimony. Note a citation from a modern Christian author:
Separation of these two beginnings is perceived as a source of misfortunes. According to a Christian mystic Jacob Boehme, gender has arisen from the Fall.
Texts of different traditions (for example, of Hinduist and Taoist) speak of perfect man as a being combining the male and female beginnings; with proper interpretation of the symbolism, such passages are also to find in the Bible. Take for instance the description of creation of earth and heaven, or of man, who was, then, parted into Adam and Eve; Talmud is telling about that more manifestly. Cabbala even expounds a doctrine about the God's left and right sides, associated, respectively, with His mercy and wrath; symbolically, this picture of God's attributes is represented by the sefirot tree. Yogi is evolving a notion of the left and the right channel in the man's body (ida and pingala); joining of those in the centre of the backbone is the purpose of spiritual practice. The bisexual primary man ("androgyne") as a perfect being is also mentioned by Plato:
The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous" is only preserved as a term of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;-and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round: like their parents. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods;
These conceptions, although usually interpreted only symbolically, played the major role in medieval alchemy (cf. works by K.Jung "Psychology and Alchemy", "AION", " Mysterium Coniunctionis"). It is important, that both named beginnings play their part in the cause of man's salvation.
But if the unbelieving partner desires to separate, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. For God has called us to peace. Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife? Only, let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him. (1 Corinthians 7:15-17)
Symbolism of the male and the female in literature is also considered in works of one of the most known contemporary philologists:
"Necessity to reconcile continuity of being with discontinuity of consciousness and immortality of nature with mortality of man engendered the idea of cyclic recurrence; while transition to linear [i.e., Christian - authors] consciousness stimulated the conception of death-and-revival. It resulted into mythological notion of a renascence of the aged father in his young son and idea of death-and-birth. Yet, it was an essential dividing point. In the cyclical system, the death-and-revival was experienced by one and the same eternal deity. The linear reiteration, on the other hand, created an image of someone another (a son, as a rule), in whose image the deceased deity kind of regenerated in his likeness. In as much as the female beginning concurrently was conceived as continuous, that is, immortal and eternally youthful, the novel young hero (character) confirmed himself by sexual intercourse with the eternal feminity, sometimes interpreted as relations with his mother. (Yu.Lotman, Death as the problem of plot).
In this passage we again can hear repercussions of a number of ideas of psychologists and mythology researchers; Z.Freud, J.Frazer, R.Graves. Dialectic (or constructive cooperation along with permanent struggle for domination) of female and male is described by W.Blake in vivid and dreadful images of his poem Mental traveler
And if the Babe is born a Boy
He's given to a Woman Old
Who nails him down upon a rock
Catches his Shrieks in Cups of gold
She binds iron thorns around his head
She pierces both his hands & feet
She cuts his heart out at his side
To make it feel both cold & heat
Her fingers number every Nerve
Just as a Miser counts his gold
She lives upon his shrieks & cries
And She grows young as he grows old
Till he becomes a bleeding youth
And she becomes a Virgin bright
Then he rends up his Manacles
And binds her down for his delight
He plants himself in all her Nerves
Just as a Husbandman his mould
And She becomes his dwelling place
And Garden fruitful Seventy fold
They are his meat they are his drink
He feeds the Beggar & the Poor
And the way faring Traveller
For ever open is his door
His grief is their eternal joy
They make the roofs & walls to ring
Till from the fire on the hearth
A little Female Babe does spring
And she is all of solid fire
And gems & gold that none his hand
Dares stretch to touch her Baby form
Or wrap her in his swaddling-band
But She comes to the Man she loves
If young or old or rich or poor
They soon drive out the aged Host
A Begger at anothers door
He wanders weeping far away
Untill some other take him in
Oft blind & age-bent sore distrest
Untill he can a Maiden win
And to Allay his freezing Age
The Poor Man takes her in his arms
The Cottage fades before his Sight
The Garden & its lovely Charms
The Guests are scatterd thro' the land
For the Eye altering alters all
The Senses roll themselves in fear
And the flat Earth becomes a Ball
The Stars Sun Moon all shrink away
A desart vast without a bound
And nothing left to eat or drink
And a dark desart all around
The honey of her Infant lips
The bread & wine of her sweet smile
The wild game of her roving Eye
Does him to Infancy beguile
For as he eats & drinks he grows
Younger & younger every day
And on the desart wild they both
Wander in terror & dismay
Like the wild Stag she flees away
Her fear plants many a thicket wild
While he pursues her night & day
By various arts of Love beguild
By various arts of Love & Hate
Till the wide desart planted oer
With Labyrinths of wayward Love
Where roams the Lion Wolf & Boar
Till he becomes a wayward Babe
And she a weeping Woman Old
Then many a Lover wanders here
The Sun & Stars are nearer rolld
But when they find the frowning Babe
Terror strikes thro the region wide
They cry the Babe the Babe is Born
And flee away on Every side
In these verses we can easily perceive a number of evangelic hints (primarily, relations between Christ and Mary-Church, as his mother, daughter, wife and sister at once). In essence, the matter concerns here an alternation and mutual struggle of female and male beginnings in life of each individual man.
By the way, it is perfectly clear, that numerous "sexist" passages in the Bible, making present-day feminists so indignant, in fact are telling primarily about the inside world of man, or about the superiour reality; therefore their literal, "sociological" interpretation simply is below the appropriate level of comprehension.
For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Corinthians 11:8-9)
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)
The "man" and "woman" here appear as symbols of an inside man and outside man. Christ, "who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility" (Eph. 2:14) throws a bridge from them both to God. Therewith, the fundamental binarity of the created world is surmounted and humans achieve a break-through to the One (united?).
Rich in virtue, like an infant,
Noxious insects will not sting him;
Wild beasts will not attack his flesh
Nor birds of prey sink claws in him.
His bones are soft, his sinews weak,
His grip is nonetheless robust;
Of sexual union unaware,
His organs all completely formed,
His vital force is at its height.
He shouts all day, does not get hoarse:
His person is a harmony.
(Tao Te Ching 55)
In writings of St.Paul we can see both the binary description of man's structure (soul and body) and the triple model as well; the latter is the prototype of the Christian Trinity. The issue of male and female presence among three elements of the Trinity is very controversial and fraught with heresy. As doubtful are all attempts to "project" the "three" to "two" (cf. Chapter 8). Similar problems are arising in the issue of origin of the Holy Spirit; whether it emanates from the Father solely, or from both the Father and the Son. This issue in one's time has become one of the main causes for schism between Catholics and Orthodoxy. The problem of correlation between energy and spirit, that was one of issues of fierce controversies of Palamites, also pertains to the subject.
Sometimes the female beginning is interpreted as the concealed fourth (cf. particularly works of K.Jung, who always stressed importance of the Catholic dogma of Mary's Ascension). Spirit, being a continuous element, can also appear as a female beginning, as it was for instance in some early Christian and Judaic texts.
Invisible incentives and laws of interrelations between the male and female beginnings are very different and may be compared to physical fields (e.g., to three colors of quarks; on the other hand, the "two", according to Pythagor, engenders the "three"). Another traditional figure for three fields is three tenses, that is the past, the present, the future; thereby each object appears in three roles. According to Hindu-Buddhist tradition, in reality there are no fields, but rather forms of interaction of discontinuous states; as a result thereof, there happen dialectical transitions over the continuous. There is a unifying principle for three fields types; the fourth state, which is their Master, principle of annihilation, of conversion energy into the discontinuous. This is the point where all physical laws are violated, time itself vanishes, materialization and dematerialization are possible. The fourth state, which in itself is non-determined, is a source of emanation of three fields; the source which can both engender and annihilate them. Being outside the local system, the fourth is still within the realm of classical physics and the manifested world.
According to the lost (available only in fragments) Hebrew Gospel, the Spirit, descending upon Jesus during baptism, is in fact His mother. On the other hand, it is known, that in the image of a white dove, ancient Jews worshipped Shehina. The Wisdom (Sophia) is the bride of Christ; at the same time, in the Orthodox tradition, the Wisdom was identified with Logos-Christ. Intuitively, soul as a universal element (the world's origin, anima mundi) is perceived as of female gender; on the other hand, the human's life and soul, personally connecting him with God, is Christ. So on different levels of hierarchy, one and the same substance may appear both as masculine (the giving one ) and feminine (the receiving). In similar way, in Judaiс tradition, the Torah is the bride of Israel, while Israel itself is the bride of God. According to Judaic and Christian interpretations of the Song of Songs, God (Crist, Logos) embodies the masculine beginning, while Israel (Church) personifies the feminine. In Hindu philosophy and religion, we see similar notions ofpurusha (man, witness) and prakriti (nature, matter), corresponding to the discussed dichotomy.
Anatomical and physiological interpretations (consideration of human's body and brain) will hardly be perfectly appropriate and adequate in this situation, yet certain analogies may be quite useful. The feminine usually is interpreted as connected with the right-hemispheric (continuous!), figurative, informal (cf. the so called "woman's logic"), while the masculine is connected with the left-hemispheric, regulating, with logic, rule, and order. Such is, in particular, the semantic assignment of well known Chinese symbols yinand yan, eternally being in state of constructive opposition.
Note the appropriate biblical passage, concerning the eternal struggle and sufferings thereof:
To the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." (Genesis 3:16)
The pain, the sorrow might be associated with the tragic nature of right-hemispheric perception.
In fact, dialectic of the feminine and the masculine is essentially tangled; each of both contains a small part of the other (note black and white inserts on the other's field in the graphic symbol yin-yan); besides, they are perennially converting into each other. Also relevant here are subjects of correlation between light and darkness, heaven and earth, personal and collective. Originally, attributes of light, heaven, individual are the male symbols, while darkness, earth, collective are female. Compare, for instance, the Greek Mythology, where Uranus-Heaven covers Geya-Earth. Yet there is nothing steady in the world of myths, everything can turn upside-down in the twinkling of an eye... In the Egyptian religion, god of the earth is Heb, while Nut (heaven) is his sister and wife. To the same token, darkness is at the same time a blinding light (literally blinding, and thence black, that is, not perceptible by eyes); the Lord's darkness, mentioned in various biblical passages:
"Who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see." (1 Timothy 6:16)
"Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light... Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?" (Amos 5:18-20)
But then again, the Church, being the bride of Christ and therefore, the feminine essence, is at the same time keeper of the discontinuous, that is, "left-hemispheric", male law. All in all, the back and white dots are put onto each other's fields not for nothing...
A true woman has to carry in her the spontaneity of the Grace, yet she is also the darkness, that begets everything. However the "continuous" wave, while passing on from the world of the Ultimate Reality to the world of manifested, readily spills (scatters?) into aggregate of discrete fragments, that in their turn build up into the Law of the "earthly church" (whereas the initial heavenly Law provides from above quantum-seeds and is surely masculine). This transformation is referred to in the Bible as the confusion of tongues, that prevented to complete the tower of Babel. If only people would manage to keep the language of the One, they truly would reach heaven (male symbol) and could become like Gods.
The process of splitting up the One into names, corresponding to different forms of the manifested, is described in the following Hindu text:
In the beginning of Kalpa when Brahma was thinking about a son, who would be like him in virtues, a boy with reddish-blue body appeared in his lap. Brahma addressed the boy with names like Rudra, Bhava, Shiv, Ibhaan, Pashupati, Bheema, Ugra and Mahadev. Brahma also fixed Surya, water, earth, air, fire, sky, Dikshit (graduate scholar) Brahmin and the Moon His abode. Since then, all these things idolise Shiv. These eleven idols of Shiv have wives like Suvarchala, Usha, Vikeshi, Apara, Shiva, Swaha, Disha and Rohini. Shanaishchar, Shukra, Lohitaang, Manojav, Skand, Sarg, Santaan and Buddh are the sons of these idols respectively. Rudra Himself got Sati, the daughter of Daksha Prajapati as His wife.
(Vishnu Purana 1.8).
Here we meet transition from the "seven" to the numeral "eight", symbolizing blessing, boon; good, mercy in its superior form (cf., for instance, the noble path in Buddhism). Next in this text we read about roles of the male and female beginnings of the world:
She is Earth, but also can be classical physics, that in a certain way is correlated with the heavenly quantum physics. But only the latter is creator, since it contains all potencies. Here we have again continuity (unity) and dialectic of two in one; mutual transitions ofyin and yan into each other. Thus symbolism of the feminine and masculine turns over, again we have a literal overturn; Eve is the holder of the earth, but then Adam is the earth. Quantum notions, according to Bohr, are expressed by classical language, one affecting the other. This is how the main trait of the created world is born; duality, which is lacking in a pure quantum state.
Profusion of ancient male and female symbols mentioned here, surpasses any scientific constructions of Freud and his progeny.
In the created world, as the world of polarity, duality, the One (Unified) is being fragmented and "multiplied". Woman, the creating beginning, the Goddess of everything, Evrinoma, is now turning into the black and imperious sorceress Hekata (cf., for instance, works by R.Graves "White Goddess" and "Myths of Ancient Greece"). Yet woman's logic in its implacable "computer-like" version is known to be a very unpleasant thing. Incidentally, by mentioning the lunar goddess Hekata, we touch upon another important symbolism, of the masculine as the solar beginning and the feminine as the lunar. This topic was also disussed at length by numerous researchers in the field of mythology.
However, reverting to the Bible:
The women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. (1 Corinthians 14:34)
The feminine (right-hemispheric) is keeping silence, since the "manifested" speech, Logos, is a function of the left hemisphere, although speech is still unfeasible without the latent "female" energy. The aim of many spiritual practices is in achieving unity, harmony and balance of the "hemispheres" (cf. the notion of the "middle state" in Buddhism), inner silence. "Uniting" is associated with symbolism of the marriage palace of the New Testament. The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas (considered by many contemporary bible researchers to be a reproduction of authentic words of Christ) is saying:
"When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]." (Gospel of Thomas, cf. Eph. 2:14-16)
**
Chapter 11
Measurement, decoherence and the Schroedinger's cat.
His mercy is manifest to every creature; and he hath separated his light from the darkness with an adamant. Say not thou, I will hide myself from the Lord: shall any remember me from above? I shall not be remembered among so many people: for what is my soul among such an infinite number of creatures? Behold, the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, the deep, and the earth, and all that therein is, shall be moved when he shall visit. The mountains also and foundations of the earth be shaken with trembling, when the Lord looks upon them. (Sirach 16:16-19)
Niels Bohr, W.Heisenberg, V.Pauli, J.von Neuman and their progeny elaborated an understanding of quantum mechanics based on the complementary principle and accentuation of the role of measuring instruments, and then developed it into a consistent concept, which was later called the Copenhagen interpretation (particularly worth mentioning the role of von Neuman, who constructed a formal theory of quantum-mechanical measurements and pointed out its connection with the second law of thermodynamics and the problem of time irreversibility). This model is still winning approval among most scientists, although there are numerous alternative interpretations debated (especially famous is the multiple worlds model by Everett and Willer, transactional Kramer's interpretation and others. It is very substantial to stress the particularly phenomenological nature of this Copenhagen interpretation, though. The point is that, according to Bohr, a measuring instrument is supposed to be a classical object, otherwise the very measuring procedure is not defined (cf. the discussion in Chapter 8). But for all that, the issue of the origin classical objects in the quantum world still persists. The key role in this problem is played by the notion of decoherence of the quantum system by its environment. This concept will be the point of discussion in this chapter.
First of all, we have to admit, that, apparently, the Copenhagen interpretation can with great reserve only conform with newton-cartesian paradigm. Indeed, the use of one or another measurement instrumentation, determined by free choice of the experimenter, would highlight different, supplementary, aspects of reality or even can create those. Thereby, we have a question of the role of consciousness cropping up. The very description of reality already presumes a contraposition of the researcher (experimenter, observer) and the investigated object; an electron as such is incognizable in principle, or, at least is undescribable verbally. Yet, there can be diverse viewpoints here; let us look into opinions of prominent physicists.
"An observer or observation facilities, that are inevitably to allow for in microphysics, essentialy differ from a classical observer, who is constrained by nothing. In microphysics, the character of nature's laws is such, that any knowledge, obtained as a result of a measurement, must be paid off with a loss of another, a complementary knowledge. Therefore each observation represents an uncontrolled disturbance perturbation of both the observation facility AND the observed system; and thus it violates the causal relationship of the preceding events with the events following it... Such observation, substantially distinct from events that happen automatically, can be easily compared to a creation act in microcosmos or to a transformation, although with an unpredictable result, independent from external influence... The reverse effect of the investigated upon the investigator exceeds the bounds of natural science, since it belongs already to the aggregate of all feelings, necessarily experienced by the investigator." (W.Pauli. Physical essays)
"In the 19th century the natural science was kept within the strict limits, defining not only the make-up of the natural science, but also general views of people... Matter was considered as the primary reality. Progress of science manifested in conquest of the real world. Utility was the sign of time... These bounds were so tight and rigid, that it was hard to find therein a place for many notions of our language, for instance a notion of spirit, human soul or life. Especially hard was to find in this knowledge system a place for those reality aspects, which constituted the subject of traditional religion... Confidence in scientific method and rational thinking replaced all other securities of human spirit.
Returning to the question, what physics of our century contributed into this process, we can say, that the most important change, called forth by physics progress, consists in demolition of the rigid system of notions of the 19th century... The idea of reality of matter was apparently the strongest point of the rigid system of notions of 19th century; in view of new experience, this idea should be at least modified" (Heisenberg, Physics and philosophy)
Not surprisingly yet, such physicists as A.Einstein, Schroedinger, Louis de Broile refuted the Copenhagen interpretation exactly because of incompatibility with the newton-cartesian paradigm. The fact of such incompatibility was quite clear for them:
"However that may be, the claim is made. New science presumptuously assumes the right to
slight all our philosophical outlook... Of course, one can think, that in the end, the totality of all observations that have been already made and still will be made some time in the future, does constitute the reality, the only subject physical science has to deal with... However, such a statement made concerning all observations, conducted in the framework of quantum-mechanical theory, has no reasonable foundation and cannot claim to philosophical seriousness...." (E.Schroedinger, Selected works on quantum mechanics")
W.Pauli also pondered very much on philosophical and even "mystical" aspects of quantum mechanics, although he published no works on that topic.
"I think, that the attempt of alchemy to elaborate a unified psychophysical language failed only because that science dealt with the visible and concrete reality. While in present-day physics we have to deal with invisible reality (with atom level objects); handling it, the observer enjoys a certain freedom (since he is facing the alternative "either choice or sacrifice"), whereas in psychology of the unconscious we study processes, that cannot be uniquely attributed to a certain subject. An attempt of creating the psychophysical monism seems to me today by far more promising, if the sought unified language (unknown so far, neutral with respect to the dichotomy psychical - physical) will be referred to the deeper invisible reality... With such an approach, we have to sacrifice ontology and metaphysics (which is by the way already made in buddhism - authors); in return, the choice falls on the unity of being" (W.Pauli cited by W.Heisenberg, philosophical views of Wolfgang Pauli)
Thus, the contemporary "natural" science, just like the ancient alchemy, failed to avoid the question of the nature of the measurement "subject", that is of man.
As already discussed in Chapter 10, the most adequate language for describing quantum reality is a poetic language, combining in itself the left-hemispheric and the right-hemispheric perception.
The symbol of the pearl (as of the true self, the ego, the man is descending for into the depth) goes back to the famous gnostic anthem from "Deeds of Judas Thomas" (cf. also Chapter 4).
We can also consider the "existential" aspect of the measurement problem on basis of biblical texts, of course, with a little help of interpretation.
"For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. These sevenare the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole earth." (Zechariah 4:10)
The plummet, as an example of a measuring device, can be understood as earthly and centripetal interests of a physicist, who proceeds to the study of quantum mechanics. These interests are pointed toward the centrum of the earth, to the mud of the sensual world, into the humans world; these interests are base (low) due to gravity mechanism, involving the main vital quality; selfishness. By taking the plummet of their primitive aspirations, people merely wallow in their filth, instead of trying to approach the superior quantum world. The prophet tells about transition from the Five of the eartly world (in Buddhism, respectively, of sansara; in biblical tradition - of Torah-Pentateuch, earth of Canaan), to the "quantum" Seven; seven superior colors of rainbow, seven sacral stages of the spiritual Path. Through his seven eyes, God beholds our world, therefore there must exist a way-out beyond the scope of classical laws, and backwards. Yet, to achieve this aim, one has to cast aside the plummet as a measurement instrument. This instrument, just like all classical physics laws, is built on the single law of gravity (which later became the Einstein gravitation theory, giving birth to the idea of the Unified field theory). This law is connected with beginning of time, irreversibility (friction) etc. The first noble truth of Buddha reads: life is dukha (burden, suffering). All physical categories as applied to living beings can be transformed into ethical, speaking about human passions, love, hate etc. Such Interpretation is appropriate only for the Lower (inferior) world with its everlasting repetitions, discrete and painful states, that always end up by death. Superior worlds are worlds of eternity, infinity and continuity. As soon as a physicist gets rid of the earthy filth and mortifying conceptions of the finite, he is able to gain freedom.
The critical stand, taken by Einstein and Schroedinger, remained within the limits of the Western rationalistic tradition and surely was not that radical, as the mystical speculations just adduced. This stand was, in fact, strictly scientific, yet the "physical community" realized its constructivity far from straight away.
"In fact, if you follow the recent biography of Einstein, written by Pice, Einstein after 1925 could devote himself to fishing. Indeed, he did not obtain major achievements, although his perspicacious criticism [of quantum mechanics] was extremely useful" (R.Penrose, in "The nature of space in time" by R.Penrose ans S.Hawking).
Attempting to prove the incompleteness or fallacy of the Copenhagen interpretation, Einstein and Schroedinger suggested their famous mental experiments, known as the "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox" (EPR) and "the paradox of the Schroedinger's cat" respectively, which were extremely assistful if not in clarification of the situation, then in any case in realization of its profound non-triviality. We have to emphasize though, that by "paradox" we mean not paradox in the sence of internal logical contradictions (apparently absent in the Copenhagen model), but rather in the sence of incompatibility of its conclusions with the "common sence". The EPR paradox touches upon an amazing property of the quantum reality, namely its essential non-locality. This paradox will be examined in the next chapter.
Now let us turn to the paradox of "the Schroedinger's cat". This paradox is supposed to display that the Copenhagen interpretation in fact casts doubt on existence of determinism not only for micro-objects, but also for macro-objects. Considering the essential role alloted by the complementarity principle to existence of classical devices, this challenge indeed questions the very foundations of the Copenhagen model.
Now consider the following imaginary situation: A cat is put into a hermetically sealed box (with food, air etc). But also there is a sinister special device contained in the same box; it consists of an ampoule with prussic acid and a hammer, able to break it under the action of an electric signal, which in turn is caused by the Geiger counter impulse; the counter is adjusted to be triggered by a single radioactive decay act (which is technically pretty possibly); there is also a nucleus of a radioactive isotope close by. According to principles of quantum mechanics, no one is able to tell, when exactly the nucleus disintegrates. The latter is in a quantum state, which is a so called superposition of states of the disintegrated and non-disintegrated nucleus. Thereby no-one can predict (until the sealed box is opened) if the cat is dead or alive. By all laws of quantum physics, the cat is being in superposition of states of the dead and the alive cat. Which means, if the generally accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics, stated cursorily above, is correct, then the cat is being dead and alive at the same time. This mental experiment is supposed to show in pointed form the following: for any macroscopic object (a cat in this particular case) we can contrive a situation, when its state is solely determined by the state of a microobject; hence if there is no determinism on micro-level, it will not exist on macro-level as well. Which, in turn, clearly contradicts to an intuitively obvious (according to Schroedinger) fact, that we have a right to expect from science reliable predictions concerning at least macroobjects.
Staying on the topic, for completeness sake, consider also a Zen story about another case of cruel treatment of a pet (according one of commentaries, the described events were preceded by a monks' discussion, "Whether a cat possesses the nature of Buddha?").
So here it is:
"Once, monks from the left and the right wing were clashing over a cat. Nansan raised the cat and said: "Listen to me, brethren! If someone of you can tell a single word of Zen, I will let the cat go; otherwise I will kill her!" No-one could reply to that and he killed the poor animal. By the evening, Dzyosyu returned to the monastery. Having learned from Nansan about the incident, he took off his shoe, put it on his head and went away. "If you were here in the morning, I would spare the cat's life!", Nansan exclaimed."
(Mumonkan)
The ethical aspect of this parable is revealed in the following commentary by another author:
"If Dzyosyu were there,
the story would take a different turn.
He would snap out his knife,
While Nansan would beg for mercy."
On a more serious note, we have to emphasize the gravity of the issue we touched upon. According to Bohr's principle of complementarity, the very existence of quantum physics is possible only to the extent of existence of classical objects. The aim of quantum physics is to describe the behaviour of microobjects. But in what terms must this description be? If in terms of probability amplitude, then it is probability of what? For sake of concreteness, let us take the probability amplitude for an electron to have a certain value of coordinate at the given moment of time. However, an electron has no coordinate, since by its nature, it is able to move along all trajectories at once (we will return to this fact later). To have any understanding of the situation, we at least have to postulate existence of classical objects; measurement devices, that under favourable conditions with certainty determine the coordinate, impulse and other classical characteristics. For instance, when electrons are passing through a screen with holes, then the counters set at each hole are in aggregate a device, measuring coordinate of electron along the screen. But if we venture to consider these counters also as quantum objects, that whether trigger or not depending on probability laws, then all the situation entangles, becomes a complete puzzle, and assertions of quantum mechanics lose any reasonable sense altogether.
At the same time, the mental Schroedinger's experiment clearly shows that the big size and mass of a device not necessarily ensures the "classical nature" of this device. Even a macroobject can be put in circumstances, that would allegedly display its quantum-like, probabilistic nature.
The cat's paradox can be easily reformulated in the form, more traditional for natural science. Essentially, it is equivalent to the following question: Is the superposition principle, as the principal law of quantum mecahnics, also applicable for the macroworld? The question of possibility for a cat of being in state of dead and alive at once is, with all its scandalousness, not very different from the question of, say, nature of optical activity of sugar solution. The phenomena of optical activity, was discovered by Louis Pasteur and consists of ability to turn the plane of polarization of a passing light wave to a certain direction; this phenomena is a consequence of a very characteristic feature of living substance; assymetry of the left and the right.
It is well known, that molecules of many organic compounds cannot be matched after mirroring, just like the right glove and the left one cannot fit one hand. Meanwhile, the "left" and the "right" forms of a molecule possess the equal energy; if we have a sucrose, obtained by means of some reactions from non-organic ingredients, it will contain "left" and "right" sugar molecules in equal shares; therefore its solution will not be optically active. While it is well known, that a sugar solution of organic solution (obtained, for example, from sugar-beet or sugar-cane), contains molecules of one kind only (of the certain chirality, as physicists call it). Amino acids, nucleotides and other principal components of living substance are always "chiral" as well. The origin of such phenomena constitutes a part of the complicated problem of life's genesis. At this point, we only consider the fact of coexistence of two forms of some molecules in itself.
According to quantum mechanics laws, there is a small, yet non-zero probability for a molecule to be "turned inside out" as a result of the so called tunneling effect. For molecules of smaller size this phenomena is perfectly known; particularly, it enables the operation of the so called ammoniac maser, that started the age of quantum electronics. How come sucrose moleculs never convert from the right form into the left then? Why these molecules never appear in state of superposition of the left and the right (such a solution would certainly display no optical activity)? Intuitively, we can explain the difference by the size; a sugar molecule is essentially bigger, than one of ammoniac. But then...so what? Where do quantum mechanics laws imply, that they are applicable only to objects "small enough"? What is "enough" in this case?
That was THE problem in focus of renowned discussions held by Einstein with adherents of standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, N.Bohr, Max Born, W.Pauli etc.
Check one of retorts of W.Pauli:
"Einstein's consideration B. A macroscopic body in case of "objective description" will always have a quasi-sharply fixed position...
Well, I disagree with Einstein's consideration. I don't regard as likely any chance, that a "macroobject" would always have a quasi-sharply fixed position, since I see no fundamental difference between microobjects and macroobjects. In my opinion, one has always to reckon, to a considerable degree, with uncertainty of situation whenever the wave nature of the object in question is showing in principle.
(W.Pauli, from a letter to Max Born, 31.3.54)
The mentioned "Consideration B" is in fact a hypothesis of inapplicability of the superposition principle to all sufficiently large ("classical") bodies. According to Einstein (and in full conformity with our everyday experience), such bodies are likely to be only in states endowed with a vanishingly small coordinate uncertainty. Pauli draws our attention to incompatibility of this statement with quantum mechanics; if two states with locations fixed arbitrarily precisely, yet distanced at, say, 1 meter, are possible, then superposition of this states (in another words, the sum of states on the left and the right) is also possible. In this state, the coordinate uncertainty would be equal to this 1 meter exactly, and there are no formal causes to forbid appearance of such states.
Note again, that we are discussing here the superposition principle, which is the most fundamental law of quantum mechanics. By the way, the Schroedinger's equation contains no restrictions on its application not only to an electron, but, say, to a soccer ball as well. Yet, for a soccer ball, such substantially quantum states were never observed. The problem of the "Schroedinger's cat" essentially consists in explanation, why it happens like that.
As you probably guess, classical objects exist empirically reliably. They even do not have to be macroscopically big for that: for instance, as regards optical activity, our sugar molecule has to be already considered as a classical object, since its tunneling from the left form into the right is fully suppressed. Consequently we arrive at the main question: where do classical objects in the quantum world come from? What ensures reliability of some (and very many, in fact) statements about the world around us? This issue is extremely complicated and even more important. Further on, we take the liberty of setting forth a candidate solution, that at present seems most credible to most physicists, dealing with quantum mechanics (including the authors).
So here goes the most popular solution for the "cat's paradox". If we consider a system strictly isolated from the outside world, then the Schroedinger's reasoning is perfectly flawless. All isolated systems, notwithstanding their sizes, mass etc, are quantum-like and strictly obey the superposition principle. To understand the marginal effect by transition from macroobjects to microobjects, we have to change somewhat the experiment setting and examine open-ended systems, interacting with environment. Such problem was firstly formulated in strict mathematical form by Robert Feynman in 1963. Its careful study by many physicist showed, that the interacton with environment destroys the quantum interference, thereby turning the quantum system into a classical one; at that, it happens the sooner, the bigger is the system mass. For such an object as a cat (or even a sucrose molecule, but not of ammoniac!), even very weak "unisolatedness" is sufficient to destroy quantum effects completely.
Destruction of quantum interference in case of a cat is caused, for instance, thanks to dissipation on the cat of atoms and molecules of the air the poor animal breathes in. Even particles of space dust in the intergalactic space cannot be considered quantum objects due to their interaction with the so called relic radiation, which, according to contemporary conceptions, fills all the Universe. Hence, all classical systems, including measurement instruments, exist only due to their interaction with the outside world. For more detailed discussion, check the book : D. Giulini, E. Joos, C. Kieper, J. Kupsch, I.-O. Stamatescu, H. D. Zeh. Decoherence and the appearance of a classical world in quantum theory (Springer, Berlin, 1996) although intended for prepared readers.
But for all that, important to remember, that some states are the most stable towards perturbations, caused by environment. These are exactly the states realized in macroworld (later named pointer states). W.Zurek demonstrated, that such an increased stability is peculiar to so called coherent states, where uncertainties of paricles coordinate and velocity are minimal. According to Zurek's hypothesis, for a quantum system, interacting with its environment, the initial quantum state of general form is "falling apart" into thepointer states. At that, superpositions of pointer states, in general case, are NOT pointer states. In this sense the superposition principle is, indeed, violated for open quantum systems (i.e., for those interacting with environment). That is why in macro-world we are able to discourse on certain defined values of objects coordinates and velocity. For sake of fairness, we have to make a reservation, that this model is still far from clarity and mathematically strict proofs for its key statements are lacking.
***
CHAPTER 12.
EPR paradox and nonlocal quantum world
If in the four corners of the great ocean four people happen to take the water, all the water that they will take, will have the same taste, the taste of salt.
(The Perfection of Wisdom in 700 lines)
Before turning to a discussion of the EPR paradox, it is necessary to make some clarifications. We will consider here not the original formulation of the paradox discussed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in 1935, by a more intuitive version proposed subsequently by D. Bohm. Most microparticles (to be specific, hereafter we mean the electron) are, in a sense, like a top, that is, have an internal angular momentum - spin; as well as in the classical case, the law of conservation of the total momentum of an isolated system is valid. However, the specific features of quantum mechanics become apparent here. It turns out that you can not simultaneously measure the spin projection onto three mutually perpendicular axes and thus determine its exact direction in space (the reasons are the same as for the simultaneous measurement of the position and velocity of an electron). You can measure the projection on any axis, but it can take only two values - up or down (more exactly, +1/2 and -1/2 in units of Planck's constant). In this respect, the experimental setups, which measure the projections along z axis (up - down) and along the x axis (right - left), are complementary in the sense of Bohr. Suppose that we measured the electron spin projection on the z axis, and found that it is equal to 1/2. The projection of the spin along the x-axis is completely uncertain, that is, its measurement with 50% probabilities will yield results +1/2 or -1/2.
We now turn to the presentation of the paradox. Suppose we have, in the initial state, two electrons with total spin equal to zero (which means zero projection on any axis). Such a state is indeed possible to prepare (experimentally it is more convenient to deal not with electrons, but with light rays - photons, but the essence is not changed). Let then these electrons were scattered far enough, so that they certainly can be considered as non-interacting. Measure the projection of the spin of the first electron on the axis z; let it turned out to be 1/2. Then, by the law of conservation of total angular momentum, the second electron is in a state with spin projection on the axis z, equal to 1/2. We can measure its spin projection on the axis of x, the result being +1/2 or -1/2. For definiteness, assume the latter. Then at the time of measurement the state of the first electron changed abruptly: from a state with spin projection 1/2 along the z axis, it moved to a state with spin projection 1/2 along the axis x. So we changed the state of the first electron, giving no effect on it! It's more like a magical procedures (such as human exposure through the manipulation of his image), than the result of physical experiment. The point is to "mixing" (entanglement) of degrees of freedom of the electrons in the initial state, which leads to a special kind of long-range correlations in the system.
Thus, the quantum world is essentially nonlocal. As usual, the mystery, hardly grasped by scholars, is disclosed by poets:
All that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe,
or on any of the wandering stars, or on any of the fix'd stars,
by those there as we are here,
All that is henceforth to be thought or done by you whoever you are,
or by any one,
These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which
they sprang, or shall spring.
Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?
The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,
No consummation exists without being from some long previous
consummation, and that from some other,
Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the
beginning than any.
(W. Whitman)
The allusion to the nonlocality of the world can be found in the statement of early teachers of the Church:
Ocean is impassable for humans, but the worlds located overseas are driven by the same orders of the Lord God.
(Clement, cit. by Origen)
It is important here to understand properly the traditional symbols (the ocean - the space and, at the same time, the depth of the mind, see "Ordinances of heaven", Ch. 11, 12).
In 1965, John Bell gave to the EPR paradox a rigorous quantification by showing an essentially non-classical nature of these long-range correlations. Suppose we measure simultaneously the spin projections of the first and second particles on different directions and determine the probabilities of different values of pairs of projections (i.e., the number of outcomes of an experiment in which both the first electron spin was directed along the axis z, and the second - along the axis x, in which both the spin first electron was directed along the axis z, and the second - against the axis x, and so on). We make a very weak and, at first glance, natural assumption: the choice of orientation of the device used for measuring the components of the spin of one particle does not affect the spin of the other (recall that the distance between the particles can be arbitrarily large, and no physical effects can not propagate faster than light, so that our decision to measure the projection of the spin of the second electron on a specific axis can not influence what is happening at the same time with the first electron). Bell showed that, using only this assumption, we can derive an inequality according to which some combination of the probabilities of various outcomes is less than 2. He also showed that if we calculate this combination, assuming a fair standard quantum mechanics (not the Copenhagen interpretation, and the mathematical apparatus, in which no one seriously doubts!), we can get its value more than 2. Subsequently, this violation of "Bell's inequalities" has been verified experimentally. Thus the idea of the physical reality independent of the measurement procedure (i.e., of the free choice of the experimenter!) seemed to be refuted in a physical experiment.
There are numerous discussion of the connection of the EPR experiments (and other ideas and images of quantum mechanics) with the possibility of non-causal influences on the system, as well as of phenomena that are investigated, e.g., in parapsychology. C.G. Jung used here the introduced by him idea of synchronicity, or non-causal correlation between various events (see: C.G. Jung. Synchronicity, and our book "The ordinances of heaven"). Jung defined synchronicity as parallelism of time and sense of mental and psycho-physical events in the absence of a causal relationship between them. Investigating this phenomenon experimentally, he statistically analyzed experiments with guessing one of the 25 cards with different Rhine symbols and psychokinetic effect - the influence of the observer on the fall of dice. It turned out that the positive results are obtained regardless of the distance between the guessing peson and the place of the experiment, and guessing maybe both before and after the shuffling of cards or dice throwing, that is, there is anticipation. Thus, we have the psychic relativity of space and time, and the principle of causality is not satisfied. A poor reproducibility and a great role of the subjective factor were found, the results being much better if the "measurement" is performed with enthusiasm, and worsening at loss of interest, although the direct impact on the experiment was excluded.
Apparently, a similar situation holds for other cases of extra-sensory perception and action. Strictly speaking, the formal grounds for such generalizations "in the light of quantum mechanics" are in the present time absent. Jung himself referred, in particular, to discussions with Pauli, who did not deny the possibility of such an approach (this happened before the opening of Bell inequalities and experimental verification, but, of course, after EPR paper). As for modern eminent physicists, attempts to obtain clearly "mystical" conclusions from quantum mechanics were made B. Josephson. Of course, the physical community at large considers such attempts as, to put it mildly, the eccentricity:
Well, Josephson? ... As we all know, even greater fame came to him after the discovery of the Josephson effect in superconductivity, for which he awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973. And, not everyone knows, since he has become engaged with items such as parapsychology, or the so-called telekinesis (moving objects by thought. - Auth.), to disappointment of his fans and to the delight of various cranks and hoaxers.
(A. Abragam)
As usual, not imposing our views on these very controversial issues, we restrict ourselves to some "free associations." Changing the spin direction of the second electron in certain manipulations with the first electron cannot be described in terms of the cause and effect (not least because it is instantaneous). Rather, we have two consequences of one root cause - the state of the linking (entanglement) of spins in the initial state. Correlation between states of far flown apart electrons is due to a special choice of the initial state (in the above example is a singlet state with zero projection of the total spin on any axis). Those who are not afraid of being branded as serious people deceived by cranks or crooks, can interprete Jungian synchronicity as a consequence of entanglement between mind and matter in the universe considered as a quantum system. Then one can realize the phenomenon of "synchronicity", and quite simply, magic events. Usually in this context one refers to "weave" of the miracle worker consciousness and world. "Selecingt" himself frpm the world, human destroys this unity.
And I have from nowhere
Come to split
Single miracle
Into the soul and the flesh.
(Andrei Tarkovsky)
The same elements are used to create an internal (psychological) and the outside world ... Subject and object are one. It is not that the barrier between them is destroyed by the achievement of the physical sciences, because this barrier does not exist.
(E. Schrodinger)
The importance of the concept of entanglement in spiritual matters is demonstrated by the following excerpt from the apocrypha:
It is not possible for anyone to see anything of the things that actually exist unless he becomes like them. This is not the way with man in the world: he sees the sun without being a sun; and he sees the heaven and the earth and all other things, but he is not these things. This is quite in keeping with the truth. But you saw something of that place, and you became those things. You saw the Spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw the Father, you shall become Father. So in this place you see everything and do not see yourself, but in that place you do see yourself - and what you see you shall become.
(Gospel of Philip 44)
One of the exercises of supreme Raja Yoga is Samyama, full integration with the external object of contemplation, which gives complete control over it. Similar statements can be found in the Buddhist sutras:
And Bhagavan again said Manjusri, the crown prince: On what basis do you want to know the full higher, true, and perfect enlightenment?
Manjusri: If I wanted to find enlightenment, I would like to fully understand it. But I'm not looking for enlightenment, because enlightenment is the same thing as Manjusri, the crown prince.
Bhagavan: Manjushri, you have well explained these very deep points.
(The Perfection of Wisdom in 700 lines)
In the Eastern tradition, consciousness (in Sanskrit - citta) is a set of mental processes, which breaks down into a discrete stream of instantaneous states. Thus, by nature, it is like the light, exhibiting wave-particle duality. Simply saying, the idea can be put into discrete images. The fact that consciousness is able to localize is confirmed also by familiar to everyone own sense of "I"; a mystical experience leads to its expansion beyond the individual. A description of "structure" of human in traditional teachings is very difficult. Hinduism has introduced a special term ahankara - composing I, which is picked up from the omnipresent Divine Consciousness (Atman), the principle of individuality, isolation. Atman (Breath) is both absolute subject and object. Atman is in the body, but is not identical to it. Another Hindu term is Jiva, that is the essence, the soul, which is capable of reincarnation. Atman, being the only, is not exposed to them. Consciousness of individual is like being enclosed in a cell, in the biblical symbolism - in earthen vessel. According to the Jewish Kabbalah, these vessels are filled with divine light and can be destroyed by it.
Creator of the world is, in fact, the Atman (and in this sense It is Brahman), which does not have a personality. In Christianity, one emphasizes the role of the God-man Christ, creating the world (i.e., the inner world of each person). Strictly speaking, there is only the state (in a clear quantum-mechanical sense, that is, the wave function) of the whole world. All the traditional religions are insisting on the unity of the world, behind the apparent binarity, the dualism of matter and consciousness, good and evil, etc.
Individuality, as discussed in Chapter 4, is roughly approximate description, artificial selection oneself from the whole, which is conventionally replaced by some "medium". In physics, this approach to the description of the state of a single many-body system is called the "mean-field" (Hartree-Fock) approach and describes "quasiparticles". In such a decription, all the specifically many-particle (as one says, correlation) effects are simply thrown away. Description of the effects of coherence is possible also only for the true many-body system.
One should follow the general, but although the mind (logos) is common, most live as if they had a special reason.
(Heraclitus)
We become people of crowd at the time when wall off, spun off - of course, only in own imagination. Just isolation makes us motes of crowd. The desire to be not like all, to depart makes us one from the crowd, who lives on his private understanding. To be not like a crowd, to be not in a lump, one should follow the universal mind and spirit, wuthout trying to isolate oneself in a separate self.
(V. Bibihin. Language of philosophy)
The notion of entanglement seems important in discussing the relation of various individual consciousnesses. Such a thing as "spirit of the time" certainly exists, and it is manifested not only, say, in a secular fashion, but in really serious things. Even mystical experience is not really individual - it is determined by the collective consciousness that captures the man like a stream. Speaking of dark and dangerous features of mystical experience, it is appropriate to remind: previously, as a rule, the devil came, and now - the "aliens"... On the other hand, the success and personal advancement in the spiritual tradition (or the school) is also determined by the historical stage of its development. And indeed, there are good and bad times. According to the Indians, in the last days (the period of the Kali Yuga) the possibility of spiritual growth with Raja Yoga are practically inaccessible, one can only hope for the ecstatic exercises, mantras and prayers.
At a time when small kalpa draws to the end, the people, the life of which is a decade, are obsessed by immoral inclinations, extreme greed and false teachings. Their anger is so strong that when they see each other as the deer hunter - a forest antelope, they are quickly seized by a feeling of hatred and disgust. All that gets their hands on - sticks, clods, etc. - becomes their weapon with which they break each other's lives.
(Abhidharmakosha 3.99)
And we pass away out of the world as grasshoppers, and our life is astonishment and fear, and we are not worthy to obtain mercy. (4 Ezra 4:24)
At worst country the people are also the poor.
They tyi to amass a bigger things,
but have no time to enjoy them.
Oppressed by the fear of death,
They are afraid of any change.
Though they have boats and crews
no one goes in them.
Though they have the troops and weapons,
no one can put them in order.
They themmselves only dream of the past,
that it would be good to get back again all
by tying knots in a rope instead of a letter.
(Tao Te Ching 80)
Quotes about the good times will not given. We will not tremble soul in vain...
During an "evolution" of the Atman first self (ahankara) appears, then the mind (buddhi), the mind (manas), the senses (Indra), and finally, the physical body; a similar septenary structure is adopted in the Kabbalah. False identification of the Self with all these elements just leads one to the loss of the true reality. Disidentification with these shells occurs at certain stages of spiritual practice. As techniques, the concentration and subsequent meditation - free disclosure of consciousness - are used. Of course, all of these feelings can be inadvertently experienced by every creative person in the course of work. In all religious traditions, major role in the work of knowledge belongs not to external, but to internal world.
Know thyself, and thou shalt know the gods and the universe.
(Delphic inscription)
Oriental texts are full of descriptions of the thought processes and techniques to govern them, many formulations being conveniently interpreted just in terms of entanglement between mind and body - mental and physical. We present here an excerpt from the Buddhist Dhammapada (33-40):
Just as a fletcher straightens an arrow shaft, even so the discerning man straightens his mind -- so fickle and unsteady, so difficult to guard.
As a fish when pulled out of water and cast on land throbs and quivers, even so is this mind agitated. Hence should one abandon the realm of Mara.
Wonderful, indeed, it is to subdue the mind, so difficult to subdue, ever swift, and seizing whatever it desires. A tamed mind brings happiness.
Let the discerning man guard the mind, so difficult to detect and extremely subtle, seizing whatever it desires. A guarded mind brings happiness.
Dwelling in the cave (of the heart), the mind, without form, wanders far and alone. Those who subdue this mind are liberated from the bonds of Mara.
Wisdom never becomes perfect in one whose mind is not steadfast, who knows not the Good Teaching and whose faith wavers.
There is no fear for an awakened one, whose mind is not sodden (by lust) nor afflicted (by hate), and who has gone beyond both merit and demerit.
Realizing that this body is as fragile as a clay pot, and fortifying this mind like a well-fortified city, fight out Mara with the sword of wisdom. Then, guarding the conquest, remain unattached.
Epithets associated with the thought, cause apparent "quantum" (wave) associations: the thought trembles, quivers, is barely restrained, wanders. It is impossible to catch, record, stop this, just as it is impossible to stop the wave (then it will be not wave). In contrast to human's consciousness, his body is obviously classical, "corpuscular" (corpuscle literally means "body"), it serves as a unique personal device, connecting human with the "rough" world.
Body is our veil in this world:
we are as the sea, hidden under the straw.
(Rumi. Masnavi 4.823)
But the body is not only an obstacle and a prison for the soul, it can be used, in the spirit of entanglement, as a tool for learning and spiritual growth. Reliance on the body for spiritual purposes is the basis of the practice of Eastern Tantra. Working with the body is also used in the Orthodox monastic practice of clever doing, during which the mind "drops" in the heart.
From the point of view of esoteric systems, the body (microcosm) corresponds to the structure of the macrocosm (the universe) - again, we gave non-locality and "linking" between such different worlds, as the human body and the universe. Also, one introduces the seven chakras - energy centers of the human being in its "thin" body (different systems give certain schemes of their location in the physical body). Chakras serve for communication with the spiritual world as receiver-resonators, and correspond to the different level of consciousness. To describe them one usies color symbolism of the rainbow, as well as a number of sacred symbols and sounds. These centers should be consistently "opened" by yogi who strives for spiritual perfection.
The already mentioned Castaneda, apparently using the ideas of various mystical systems, gave his description of the structure of the world and man, the concept of consciousness being primary. Life (i.e., the existence of a living body, as well as double, moving sensation body) means shining in a range of frequencies, which is fixed by seers at some egg-shaped cocoon. Thus, the common consciousness of living beings is determined not by their proximity in the physical space, but by the "spectral" characteristics. Physicists (especially professionals in "solid state") might here think about geometric images of "back space" of the crystal lattice (Brillouin zone, the Fermi surface). "Human" is only a narrow strip on the surface of the egg, and the remaining region, shining in different colors, correspond to animals, plants, "inorganic" forms of life, the unknown, the unknowable ...
Shift of the "assemblage point" on the surface of the cocoon leads to a radical change of perception, going to other worlds, but from the point of view of an outside observer - to the transformation of human into other creatures, wonderful movement in space for long distances. The books by Castaneda describe also such "states of superposition" (the third point), where the narrator is in two places at once: Don Juan, being thrown into the river by treacherous nagual, floats on it and at the same time speeds along its shore to escape the jaguar. Carlos runs through thickets of thorn bushes and watches the whole scene from above with aerial view. The purpose of the practice of Castaneda "warrior" is the maximum extension of consciousness, leading to the achievement of the second and third attention. As a result of this awareness, all the "cocoon" of man flashes, and he gets an indescribable state of total freedom, leaving the world with his body.
Chapter 13
Symbolism of way and the problem of freedom.
Between freedom and slavery, truly frightful ways cross; there is no guide for the future; the passed is instantly absorbed by darkness. Such ways are without number, or might be only one; nobody can know that, to now them is impossible, to view them is not allowed. I am there. I can not go away. I have got nothing to complain of.
F.Kafka, Diaries, 17.12.13
Demolition of the classical causality ideal in the new quantum physics opens up possibilities of new approaches to one of the most complicated and crucial problems of human existence; the problem of freedom. Questions of free will and predestination are cruelly argued by philosophers and theologists, giving cause for heated debates. Incidentally, various aspects come up: presence of external constraint, ability of deliberate choice between good and evil, a chance of exemption from original sin. As it is said in Talmud (in the Avot treatise), "everything is predetermined, yet freedom is still given".
Although classical philosophy and ethics are passionately talking about human freedom, our personal life experience persistently reminds us about boundedness of our abilities and existence of destiny; those conditions beyond our control. Realization of this situation already represents a significant step on the Way.
The very perception of destiny and its very notion are elements of great importance for our conscious life... We are human exactly to the extent, as we are the humans of destiny. That is, if we are living in destiny, we are humans; whereas if we are living outside destiny (which is most often) we are half animals" (philosopher M.Mamardashvili)
Karma (deed) is existent only while a man is working on his own salvation, instead of living an unconscious life. There is no karma in the sense of predestination; by following his destiny, it is not human, but rather an animal, a mechanism, a karmic refuse. Karma is generated by thought; it emerges along with the purpose of exemption and salvation; this gear lasts only while the purpose is not wrecked.
People already had to modify many conceptions of motion; gradually, they will learn to understand, that whatever we call destiny, is born from the depth of the man's soul himself, rather than catching us from outside. Only the fact that most were not able to cope with their destiny, when it was still inside them and unable to make their life out of the destiny; it prevented them to understand, what exactly was born from their souls depth.
(Rilke, Letters to a young poet).
Conception of destiny issues changes in process of one's spiritual growth. Taking the religious path expands one's opportunities yet strips him of many illusions. "If the one who follows the path does believe in predestination in the beginning of the path, he is an unbeliever. On the other hand, if the one who has completed the path is still guided by his will, he is also an unbeliever. (Nurvabaksh, "Conversations on Sufi Path").
Also the Bible does not give us many hopes apropos of this problem; that was justly pointed out by, e.g., St.Augustin and many Protestant theologists, starting with Luther and Calvin. All those thinkers repudiated the human's free will and set hopes only upon the divine mercy, giving a faith to a man.
I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps. (Jeremiah 10:23)
Being a staunch supporter of the predestination idea, yet acknowledging all the complicity of the issue, Calvin wrote, that the predestination teaching is a great mystery, a fathomless profound and an intricate impasse maze. But for all that, Calvin emphasized a distinction between predestination and prevision (pre-knowledge): the choice made by God is absolutely free.
Many other aspects of the symbolism of way (path)(which is of critical importance for quantum physics, as we will see later) are also presented in the Bible.
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:24)
And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. (Genesis 6:12)
And the angel of the Lord said to him, "Why have you struck your ass these three times? Behold, I have come forth to withstand you, because your way is perverse before me. (Numbers 22:32)
Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you in the way, for you are a stiff-necked people. (Exodus 33:3)
Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope; yet I will defend my ways to his face. (Job 13:15)
The problem of human freedom (and the cited Bible excerpts show that there IS a problem, to put it mildly) not only is in the centre of all advanced religious doctrines, but also penetrates all culture, infiltrating even into natural sciences. Niels Bohr, who imparted to the principle of complementarity a very broad sense exceeding the limits of physics, also examined on its basis the classical problem of "the free will".
Needless to say, that the discussion of this issue must be conducted on a slightly deeper level, than the criticism of "reactionary idealistic views on the electron free will", infamous from the soviet-era philosophy university textbooks.
"Revealing correlations of the complementary nature is a problem of no small importance also in psychology, where conditions for analysis and synthesis of emotional experiences are very similar to the situation in the nuclear physics. In fact, use of words likethoughts and feelings (senses?), equally unavoidable for description of mental experiences, relates to mutually exclusive alternative situations, defined by different drawing the line demarcating the subject and the object. Particularly, allocation of the separate place to the sense of free will is connected with the fact, that situations when we are confronting with free will, are incompatible with all psychological situations, where attempts of reasonable analysis are made. In other words, when we say "I want to", we thereby reject logical argumentation. (N.Bohr, "On notions of causality and complementarity"
The problem of freedom in quantum mechanics can be examined with use of Feynman formalism known as path integration, which can be considered now the most popular version of quantum mechanics and the quantum field theory. As we know, an electron is a particle, i.e. an indivisible object, appearing always as a whole and characterized by certain values of electric charge, turning moment (spin), mass etc. Yet, physics assert that under the action of the given outside forces, the electron is moving not along a certain trajectory, fully defined by Newton mechanics, but rather along all trajectories at once, with appropriate probabilities.
Great in counsel and mighty in deed; whose eyes are open to all the ways of men, rewarding every man according to his ways... (Jeremiah 32:19)
All we can find is the probability of the quantum particle location in the given point at the given moment of time. Interference (read "wave") phenomena are caused by the fact, that, as already mentioned, this probability is not equal to the sum of probabilities of motion along each trajectory; you have to add not the probabilities, but rather complex numbers, called probability amplitudes. The total sum probability equals the amplitude sum module squared. At that, it is senseless to talk about the electron velocity value in the given point of space, since it is moving in many (or rather in infinite number of) directions simultaneously. A typical electron trajectory is a continuous line, having no tangent in any point (worth mentioning, that introduction of such "mathematical monsters" into physics was the first prominent scientific achievement of Norbert Wiener, later known as the "cybernetics father").
The Feynman wording of quantum mechanics permitted to make out an issue that was perturbing scientists since the 18th century and from Maupertuis' time. The point is, that mechanics and geometrical optics laws allow to formulate them by way of so calledvariational principles. A typical example is the Hamilton's principle of least action.
Imagine, we try to determine how a particle is moving under the action of the given outside forces (or be it a system of particles adjusted of their mutual interaction), that is we need to calculate the dependence of the particles coordinates from time. Newton suggests the following method for solution of the problem. We have to calculate at the given moment all forces, acting upon each particle and depending, in general, on the particles coordinates and velocities. Forces determine accelerations and thus we can find velocities and coordinates of all particles in a small certain time interval; after that we can repeat all the procedure a necessary number of times. So the motion is being described "by steps", perfectly in spirit of the classical causality ideal. Yet we can examine this problem in a different way: let us view in our mind the whole aggregate of all possible time dependences of coordinates at given coordinates in the beginning and the end of the motion; then we calculate for each such dependence a certain number (value), called action.
As it turns out, a real movement occurs (with certain minor reservations) in such a way, that the mentioned action value of the movement proves to be lesser, than the one for any other conceivable time dependence of the coordinates.
Here a natural question emerges: why do mechanics laws (in fact, electrodynamics laws and other classical physical disciplines as well) allow such wording, as a statement about the process as a whole? Does it not imply, that the particle somehow "calculates" the action, making a conscious choice, in a way? As absurd as it may sound from the scientific (in fact, positivist) viewpoint, such questions were being discussed quite seriously; objections, that in in a number of cases the action value turns out to be not minimal, but rather highest possible etc, do not alter anything in essence. Quantum mechanics in the Feynman's wording supplies a surprising answer to that: in fact, the system is moving along all the paths, yet at the classical limit (big masses, distances etc), interference "stifles" motion probabilities along all trajectories, except fot those corresponding to the principle of least action.
This is how the passing trajectory (habitual for us) arises, agreeing with classical physics laws motion (an illustrative example here is a river, carving its way between mountains).
The quantum particle, unlike the classical one, never "chooses" its trajectory to comply with Newton's laws (and again we have an opposition of freedom and the Law). Such a behaviour might be considered as a "model" of a true freedom, which is not a "choice freedom" (choice of drawing the long lot of two equally long ones), but rather the freedom out of choice between two opposites or extremities. On the other hand, there still remains an opportunity of true choice, a personal self-determination, an absolute choice "either-or" according to Kyerkegaard; this opportunity is of greatest value for human.
Having received the Spirit's gift, a believer becomes able to use all languages. It is clear to everyone, that such ability radically differs from a command of a certain artificial "language of international contacts" like Esperanto, which is a result of averaging various "living" languages. Note here, that our attempts to use canonical scripts of all major religions are not in the least to interpret as a smoothing of contradictions between them. Contradictions are not to smooth away, but, quite the contrary, to foster, aggravate and strain to the limit (which belongs already to a different Reality).
The Buddhist teaching says that one day a man can irrevocably get on the noble middle path, which is not necessarily a pleasant one, yet, is to be considered as the Path of all paths. In the Gospel, the Path is identified with Christ. (John 14:6).
A quantum state, associated by us with freedom, is apt to be described by using symbolism of light, attached to righteous paths.
But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble. (Proverbs 4:18-19)
For if he do them, he shall be strong to all things: for the light of the Lord leadeth him. (Sirach 50:29)
Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. (John 12:35)
Both a righteous has many wicked paths, and a sinner has many wicked paths. But the Lord knows paths of the righteous, since they are all one path, and this is the true path. But sinner's paths are many and diverse; along them, the sinner attempts to evade the only true one. As a result, he finds out that he has lost both his way and all other paths. (M.Buber, Hasid parables)
Human is facing the objective of becoming God; the objective, set by Christian doctrine, and it can be interpreted (although in the context of a certain partial analogy) as a return to the "quantum" state with the true freedom and opportunity to evolve in all directions at once; the opportunity promised by the Lord to the righteous ones (by an appropriate interpretation of scriptural texts).
According to Judaic tradition, one has to serve to God by all ways.
For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1:6)
The sea [cf. our discussion of the "aquatic" cerebral right-hemisphere symbolism above] is set in a wide place, that it might be deep and great. But put the case the entrance were narrow, and like a river (??); Who then could go into the sea to look upon it, and to rule it? if he went not through the narrow, how could he come into the broad? ... Because for their sakes I made the world: and when Adam transgressed my statutes, then was decreed that now is done. Then were the entrances of this world made narrow, full of sorrow and travail: they are but few and evil, full of perils,: and very painful. For the entrances of the elder world were wide and sure, and brought immortal fruit... Nevertheless the righteous shall suffer strait things, and hope for wide: for they that have done wickedly have suffered the strait things, and yet shall not see the wide.
(2 Esdras 7:3-18)
Switching on, as usual, the mode of free associations, we assert again: for a quantum system, a choice is unfeasible as well as unrequired; the system is moving (or, broader speaking, changing) by all ways simultaneously. If you wish, it is exactly a certain analogue of freedom, which is above choice: any choice is a restriction. At that, a pure quantum evolution is reversible. An irreversible act of measuring "locks" the system in a certain subspace of states. With some desire, one can discover here an analogy with the scriptural Fall, which "locked" human in the physical Universe and put on him "garments of skin" or the "mortal body", as said in Old and New Testament.
Granted, the Fall has stripped of freedom in particular human beings, rather than God, who still knows all ways (instead of only the "classical" one, realized in the empirical Universe):
Thy way was through the sea, thy path through the great waters; yet thy footprints were unseen. (Psalm 77:19)
Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous, or is it gain to him if you make your ways blameless? (Job 22:3)
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2)
The word "weighs" can be interpreted also as a hint at a measuring process in quantum-mechanical sense.
Gnostic texts tell about a lapse from plerome (plenitude of omni-knowledge), or, technically speaking, about loss of information as a reason of a sad state of affairs in the world. Ignorance of frivolous Sophia and even bigger ignorance of the demiurge, unknowingly fulfilling the will of his mother; this ignorance leads to illusory creation.
"Error has raised its Matter in emptiness, not knowing the Truth. The Error turned to giving shape to creation, trying to discover a substitute for Truth in beauty.... Having no roots, Error remained deep in a fog about her Father, while she was storing up Deeds and Oblivion and Horrors, so that by means of them to win over those from the Midst and strip them of freedom." (The Gospel of Truth 17)
And the Sophia of the Epinoia, being an aeon, conceived a thought from herself and the conception of the invisible Spirit and foreknowledge. She wanted to bring forth a likeness out of herself without the consent of the Spirit, - he had not approved - and without her consort, and without his consideration. And though the person of her maleness had not approved, and she had not found her agreement, and she had thought without the consent of the Spirit and the knowledge of her agreement, (yet) she brought forth. And because of the invincible power which is in her, her thought did not remain idle, and something came out of her which was imperfect and different from her appearance, because she had created it without her consort. And it was dissimilar to the likeness of its mother, for it has another form.
No, but when she had seen the wickedness which had happened, and the theft which her son had committed, she repented. And she was overcome by forgetfulness in the darkness of ignorance and she began to be ashamed. And she did not dare to return, but she was moving about. And the moving is the going to and fro.
And when the mother recognized that the garment of darkness was imperfect, then she knew that her consort had not agreed with her. She repented with much weeping. And the whole pleroma heard the prayer of her repentance, and they praised on her behalf the invisible, virginal Spirit. And he consented; and when the invisible Spirit had consented, the holy Spirit poured over her from their whole pleroma. For it was not her consort who came to her, but he came to her through the pleroma in order that he might correct her deficiency. And she was taken up not to her own aeon but above her son, that she might be in the ninth until she has corrected her deficiency. (apocryphal John)
In the present-day interpretation of quantum mechanics, the term "oblivion" plays a very important role as a technical operation of summation (or averaging) over a part of degrees of freedom. According to von Neuman, open quantum systems (that is, systems "engaged" to their environs), are describable by the so called density matrix, ensuing from summation over the environment degrees of freedom. At that, while in a wave function of a full system (including its environment) all the information is held, but in the density matrix a part of information is already lost. After a measuring procedure (which is in fact an interaction with a classical measuring instrument, mentioned while we discussed the principle of complementarity), the system with certain probabilities is found in one ofpointer states, while the superposition principle is not working anymore; the system, metaphorically speaking, must make a choice. The measuring procedure and the concerned information loss result into the system entropy (disorder) rise. Pure quantum state is characterized by maximum of information about the system and has entropy equal to zero.
Canonical texts of different religions talk about the necessity to keep off such a "measurement".
And the Lord said again to Manjusri, the Crown Prince: On what grounds do you wish to fully know the utmost, right and perfect enlightenment?
Manjusri: If I had set out for enlightenment, then I would wish to fully know it. But I do not strive after enlightenment, because enlightenment is just the same thing as this Manjusri, the Crown Prince.
The Lord: You expound well, Manjusri, these very deep stations.
(The Perfection of Wisdom in 700 Lines)
The principle of non-action is in the centre of attention of many Eastern spiritual teachings, especially Taoism.
Not praising the worthy prevents contention,
Not esteeming the valuable prevents theft,
Not displaying the beautiful prevents desire.
In this manner the sage governs people:
Emptying their minds,
Filling their bellies,
Weakening their ambitions,
And strengthening their bones.
If people lack knowledge and desire
Then they can not act;
If no action is taken
Harmony remains.
Mastering this art is not easy at all; the result might appear quite surprising.
It is shap'd, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
(W.. Antony and Cleopatra)
Shakespeare's works often contain concealed superior secrets of yogi. In this excerpt above, the author is referring to tathata (known in China as tsi-jan), something that in itself is how it is. It has no beginning, no end, but has such-ness; all things are perceived by it in the true light. It is introducing the irrelative, the continuous into the discontinuous. To transmigrate into the state beyond (enlightenment, bodhi), one has, through the tathata, to find the unreal in the real, to abide both here and there. "When such-ness does not move, image is not seized".
Inside of one man the manifested and the unmanifested might combine. Then he is going round (throughout) the sensual world like through an ultramundane void, transforming it into maya in his consciousness; on that way, he might achieve salvation, going over to superior states. At the same time, the saved man continues to live in his body.
Another concerned symbol here is a crocodile, freely lying in Nile's waters and muddling them; at the same time it is the Egyptian Pharaoh (Jez.29:3), at the same time it is human selfishness. Being put to the path of salvation, the character becomes tathagata(buddha).The tathagata always resembles itself, whichever shape it would assume; it is unmeasurable. It has no external source of motion (no principles, no ideas); it is moving "with it own organs", no one knows where to, in its illusory world. Its nourishment is all energy processes and transformations of the world (sacrifices). Same-ness, irrelativeness, shunyata are synonyms.
The world is a space body of Buddha (dharmakaya). Dying in one world along with it, Buddha right away goes over to the next world,nirvana, through the process of consciousness transfer (phova); and then, the next world's age begins, where the indivisible soul is also indispensable. The highest practice of yogi is practice for all the world, rather than for an individual man.
These problems are quite comprehensible also for a present-day Western man (at least, for Western writers):
"I do not long for self-possession. Self-possession means to want to act in a casual place of infinite emanations of my spiritual personality. But if I happen to enclose myself within such circles, then I would rather do it passively, merely wondering at this monstrous whole, and bringing home just corroboration, given, e contrario, by this view. (F.Kafka)
"The non-verbal has one feature... we were not searching for it, yet it came... Why a "madelain" pastry [in one of Proust's texts -authors] may appear something containing the whole world? Well, it is because in my searches for the world, I was not searching for the pastry. I did not choose it. Evidently, all our choices are in fact pre-choices; I choose as a man, who does not something yet, as a man of pre-truth, that is, a man who is thinking in terms of prejudices." (M.Mamardashvili, Psychologic topology of way)
"In fact, the challenge of our spiritual life organization is to stay in non-action... Which means, not to resolve our emotional experiences in no way. Our reactions incite us to resolve our experiences. Like, for example, our friend was killed, and in revenge we kill the offender. Allegedly, it means for us experiencing the friend's death. Now we have two different things: experiencing the friend's death, where you got stuck; and secondly, the reactive resolution: cancellation of the very experience by action, wherein this experience allegedly is realized." (ibid)
As an example of such a "genuinely human" behaviour, we can mention the Hamlet's indecision (although the body count in this classical tragedy would indulge the most exigent Hollywood action fans; so much for the "indecision!"). The situation of renunciation of choice is unconditionally archetypical; at that, it is possible only for an instant. Hamlet, once having overcome his "wavering" (rather, contrarily, standing still), starts smiting his foes. Turning to sacred texts, we can mention a conversation between Krishna and Ardjuna on the great battlefield, constituting the substance of Bhagavadgita (the conversation, which miraculously lasts only several moments); or Christ in the Garden of Gethseman (praying for the cup). For a present-day man, such escape from empiric reality is, usually, completely unlikely.
Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot.
(James Joyce. Ulysses)
Which brings up the issue of personality self-dependence ("self-standing"?) as a resistance to the environment pressure, which is robbing a man of his bearing (support) and carrying him away with a flow. In the East, it is the stream of karma, leading to continualrenascences, change of human state. In this sense, according to buddhists, there is no soul, since one cannot separate it. Ardjuna, symbolizing human's mind, experiences "a weak moment " (although, in fact, rather a moment of strength) and then proceeds to his duties as a warrior and commander. While his charioteer and mentor Krishna is the true doer, a superrational origin of all processes in the world.
To digress a little, let us refer to the notion of non-action in a completely secular text. A character of a Shekley's novel "Exchange of minds" is suggested a very effective strategy of search theory: to stand still and wait, to be searched (allegedly, two men running around in an over-crowded mall, would never come across each other).
And indeed, the desirable encounter with the woman (as well as a number of other encounters) happens in a village chosen at random. Regretfully, luck can only come in a short time span, while the system is open.
The Old and New Testaments also tell about necessity of separation from the world:
Depart, depart, go out thence, touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who bear the vessels of the Lord. (Isaiah 52:11)
Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you. (2 Corinthians 6:17)
The "unclean" in context of our system of associations and symbols can be interpreted exactly as the environment, which impairs the quantum coherence, identifiable with pleroma of Gnostics. On the other hand, symbolism of the "unclean" is exposed in apocryphal Gospel of Thomas:
Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy.
Whoever has come to understand the world has found (only) a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world.
Cognition by way of observation always leads to information loss, reduction of wave function. "Whoever has come to understand the world, found a corpse", that is, the world, lacking the most important thing, that is the quantum plurality of outcomes, non-causality,freedom.
This very important aspect of the freedom problem, plenitude of all-knowledge, omniscience, is minutely dicussed in Buddhism. In buddhist "Questions of Milinda", Buddha is attributed by not "actual", but rather a "potential" omniscience, thus reception of information takes him some effort and a finite (be it very small) time.
"Yes, Sir, the Blessed is omniscient, but He does not possess his knowledge-vision constantly and continuously. The omniscient knowledge of the Blessed is connected with exploration, upon which the Blessed learns whatever he wants."
Buddha's omniscience is the incognizing cognition where there is no stored (accumulated?) knowledge and no distinction.
Buddha is able to be on any level of perception, both concurrently and successively (by analogy, a physicist again might think of pure and hybrid state notions). He has to degrade his level while "descending" into this world.
"If buddhas only would stay in purified state, how then could they go to talk to ordinary people? Buddhas join various people classes in order to lay a way out for people; like people, buddhas are able to feel the pain, burden and strain. Buddhas only differ from ordinary people in how they are free to stay or to go."
Such "potential omniscience" can be interpreted by a physicist, dealing with quantum mechanics, as the state of observer, who can conduct any experiment on the system, yet has not made his choice yet. A saint is similarly spared from necessity to choose a certain path:
Perfect of virtue, always acting with recollection, and liberated by final realization - Mara does not know the path such people travel.
He whose victory is not relost, and whose victory no-one in the world can take away, that Buddha, whose home is in the infinite, pathless as he is, by what path will you lead him?
He who has no entrapping, clinging desire to lead him in any direction, that Buddha, whose home is in the infinite, pathless as he is, by what path will you lead him?
Just as there is no path in the sky, there is no man of religion outside. Other people take pleasure in multiplicity, but the Buddhas are free from it.
Just as there is no path in the sky, there is no man of religion outside. There are no lasting functions of the mind, but there is no oscillation of mind for the Buddhas.
(Dhammapada)
If a quantum system is not isolated from the environment, its interaction with the latter "drives" (locks?) it into entirely determined states, or the pointer states, discussed above.
Thereby, fredom from choice (pleroma!), being the most characteristic feature of an isolated quantum system, is getting lost. Generally, the term pointer states evokes psychological and "metaphysical" associations, quite substantial from out point of view. If interaction with the environment is strong enough, then, as shown by Jurek, these pointer states happen to be the proper (own) states of the interaction hamiltonian (energy operator). In other words, the pointer states are determined not by the system itself, but rather by details of its interaction with the outside world. This might easily "explain" (on an associative level, of course), why an "empirical" man proves to be for 99% a product of environment influence. In other words, he (almost) is not in existence. In order to stay in one's ownstate, one has to make persistent drastic efforts (formally, the system's own Hamiltonian must be big in comparison with the interaction Hamiltonian) here we can refer to the famous Red Queen's remark ("You see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place" Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass).
Quantum coherence (a stay in the pure state, described not by a density matrix, but by a wave fnction) can be restored by an external effect (as long as light is with you), by grace.
However, contraposition of the external and the internal is particularly senseless here. At that, we have more scriptural associations appearing:
For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again; but the wicked are overthrown by calamity. (Proverbs 24:16)
One of the most famous Gnostic texts also tells about "purification":
When then Andrew had said this, the spirit of the Saviour was roused in him; he cried out and said: "How long am I to endure you? How long am I to bear with you? Have ye then not even yet understood and are ye ignorant? Know ye then not and do ye not understand that ye and all angels and all archangels and the gods and the lords and all the rulers and all the great invisibles. and all those of the Midst and those of the whole region of the Right and all the great [ones] of the emanations of the Light and their whole glory,--that ye all one with another are out of one and the same paste and the same matter and the same substance, and that ye all are out of the same Mixture. And at the commandment of the First Mystery the Mixture was constrained, until all the great [ones] of the emanations of the Light and all their glory purified themselves, and until they purified themselves from the Mixture. And they have not purified themselves of themselves, but they have purified themselves by necessity according to the economy of the One and Only, the Ineffable. (Pistis Sophia 2:100)
M.Mamardashvili in his "Psychologic topology of path" persistently recurs to the thought of the active nature of inactivity (or, using a Greek word, amechania). He considers important to experience an event, rather than react to it.
"A second of impression is the second, appealing to us to work... never to put off...
I have to live in peace with myself and accept in this world only the things, that permit me to go on living in peace with myself...
In the point we are in, we cannot put off anything to the future. If there is any sence, it is only in this point... So then we have in our point a certain clandestine labour... It is a point of equinox" (M.Mamardashvili"Psychologic topology of path")
The "wandering" ("oscillation?") of the system along the pointer states, imposed to it by the environment is associated in buddhism with the wheel of sansara (chain of renascences); this chain must be broken, and that already was done by Buddha. On the other hand, the wheel of dharma (of the Law) was set going by the same Buddha and will be turning perennially.
Let us also touch on the multiple worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, suggested by Everett; a model, that recently gains ever bigger popularity. Under this interpretation, all conceivable outcomes of a measurement take place at once, although in a certain extended "multi-foiled " Universe; each measuring act results in its further splitting into an infinite number of foils (leaves).
"You were going along the straight path... and your life was not wasted, since nothing in this world is in vain; and each word and each deed, and each thought is like a tree." (Alexey Tolstoy, Silver Prince)
The cardinal problem here is to explain, why in this case the perceptible structure of the Universe is changing rather smoothly and what suppresses leaps of our consciousness (again we are facing a problem of consciousness) between these strongly differing foils (leafs) of the Universe. The role of the smoothing factor might be played by the consciousness itself, that lines up a chain of connected events from different universes (or, more precisely, from different leafs of the Universe), by moving along a certain continuous line on the multi-foiled surface (cf. the notion of Riemann surface in complex variable function theory). Another spectacular image can be one of a Book, that is also readable by skipping over pages; yet is understandable only once read in a certain sequence.
The Eastern tradition emphasizes simultaneity of different alternatives for God (different alternative world histories, a physicist would say):
"Also, He sees the different not by different eyesight each time, not like when He looks at the past and does not see the present or the future; or conversely when He contemplates the future, He averts his eyes from the past; but perceives everything at once only by his one and mere sight. And it is not vaguely or indistinctive, since He distinguishes and discerns everything, by qualities of each thing. He who is sitting in theatre, does not see everything at once, since once he fixes his eyes ahead, does not see what is behind him; while he who is not in theatre, but rises above it, he can embrace all the inner circle of the theatre by his contemplation alone...
That is why in Holy Writ one can often read that the past stands in place of the future" (Damiani, On divine omnipotence)
**
Chapter 14
The Universe Watcher
Dominion and fear are with God;
He makes peace in His high heaven. (Job 25:2)
To start the chapter, let us discuss another, highly edifying, paradox of quantum mechanics, called Zeno's quantum effect. The name is referring to the famous ancient Greek philosopher Zeno's aporia (paradox), known as "the Arrow": there is no such thing as motion, since any motion can be presented as succession of stationary states. In quantum mechanics, this aporia, in a certain sense, exactly complies with the state of affairs. As already mentioned, one cannot predict, whether an unstable quantum system does decay or not, at any given moment of time (besides radioactive decay, the same is relevant for radiation of excessive energy by an atom or molecule in excited state). Surprisingly, in several cases (at least, for systems with discontinuous distribution of power, to be precise), as it turns out, quantum mechanics yields a paradoxical result: continuous observation of the system state is blocking its decay. In other words, as long as a researcher is conducting continuous measuring to check if the system is still remaining in the excited state, it WILL remain such.
This example seems to be another, even more remarkable illustration of the observation process effect on so called reality; the illustration showing clearly all the ambiguity of the latter notion.
This ambiguity of reality was since long perfectly evident to most philosophers and religious thinkers, let alone poets, but appeared shocking to physicists.
I am so tired, like a kid,
Still can't forget the game
And boy so happy as I am,
Not to believe there are other worlds
(M. Zvetaeva)
The mootest question in present-day disputes about interpretation of quantum mechanics is exactly the issue of reality of wave function (cf. R.Penrose, already discussed , and J.S.Bell. Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge, 1993)
The so-called Copenhagen school (Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Max Born) interprets wave function as a degree (extent) of our knowledge/ignorance of the system state.
K.Laurikainen (The message of the atoms. Essays on Wolfgang Pauli and Unspeakable) sums up Heisenberg's and Born's views on this issue: "quantum mechanics describes our knowledge of the atom world, not the atoms world in itself". With an approach like this, there are absolutely no difficulties with understandig the quantum Zeno's effect; as well as EPR paradox and the kindred phenomena:
"Let's suppose a certain person X regularly commutes between Leningrad and Moscow, spending, in average, equal time in any of these cities. Observers in Moscow and Leningrad "measure" daily presence or absence of X in the relevant city. The long-run statistics will give them the probability of X's presence in the city being Ґ. However, if we take into consideration only those obervations of Leningrad watcher, made on the day when Moscow watcher's observations give 1, we receive the probability of being in Leningrad equal to zero. So much for wave packet reduction!" (L.Mandelshtam, Lectures on optics, relativity theory and quantum mechanics)
However, problems arise elsewhere; as it turns out, a physical law (Schroedinger's equation) says something not about the physical world itself, but rather about quite subjective matter. V.Pauli was perfectly consistent in this respect, speaking of physics and psychology as of two complementary (in Bohr's sence) ways of describing reality, equally fundamental and irreducible to each other. He wrote even about the symbolic nature of the quantum reality (cf. Laurikainen). For most physicists however, such an approach appeared way too radical. Reluctance to admit to physics the notion of mind leads to conclusion of physical reality of the wave function. However, some advocates of this approach are aware that the modern quantum mechanics allows such interpretation only at a great stretch, yet they are looking forward to changes of its principal laws (for instance, with account of quantum-gravitational effects). Penrose (already quoted) suggested an interesting program of such a forthcoming development.
In our opinion, a shortcoming of this construction is underestimation of the role of dissipative environment. As already dicussed by the example of Schroedinger's cat, if one takes into account the environment (surrounding?), then many paradoxes, considered insoluble by Penrose, are in natural way cancelled, within the bounds of existing formalism.
On the other hand, questions are persisting, if one attempts to apply such ideas to human mind (consciousness) (although, strictly speaking, any scientific proofs are lacking here). Particularly, a number of psychic phenomena and experiments tell about non-destruction of interference effect. Here we can mention causeless long-distance correlations, some mystic "quantum-like"coincidences in everyday life, telepathic interaction of minds of different people etc. Another evidence, that primary laws and true connections between events (also called karma in eastern culture) are established and preserved not in our classical "thermodynamic" world, but rather in superior "quantum" worlds.
We can suggest various speculations by applying quantum mechanics to the Universe as a whole. It is worth mentioning, yet, that by such broad adaptation, problems will arise with any physical laws (as an example we can recall a well-known old conclusion from the second Law of thermodynamics predicting "the thermal death" of the Universe. However, in the quantum case (which, apparently, was realized on the earliest stages of the Universe evolution, when classical objects did not exist at all), difficulties only aggravate. Just like from the Schroedinger's cat paradox, from the quantum effect of Zeno, one can draw a conclusion that destruction of quantum interference and fixation of the Universe in one determinate state (i.e. creation of order from chaos of quantum probabilities) could happen in the presence of its observer.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it,
whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production.
Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation,
whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven,
He verily knows it, or perhaps He knows not.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it,
whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production.
Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation,
whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven,
He verily knows it, or perhaps He knows not.
(Rigveda 10.129)
According to the Hindu philosophical system sankhya, our Universe ( the material world, Nature, Prakriti) does not exist without the Overseer (God, Purushi). The world is a living being, stirred by an animate driving force, seized by processes of death and rebirth. An observer of a physical experiment plays the God's role. Similarly, in any thermodynamic systems, however large they might be, an observer is obligatory. From this we receive the scale of consideration, assigning either locality or globality of the system at this particular level. For transition to reversibility we have to introduce a broader sub-system. Maxwell's Demon and God are two principal overseers, supervising the physical realm. From this point of view, the biblical angels hierarchies; dominions, principalities, authorities(cf. Dyonisius Areopagit's works), represent levels of exploration of a local self-contained thermodynamic system.
For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities - all things were created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:16)
On a higher level, according to Hindu terminology - in heaven's palaces of Buddha, there are situated thrones.
Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. (Ephesians 1:21)
While lower worlds are reigned by classical physics laws, the world as a whole is the quantum world.
....
All the causes, which are located outside time, can be described only in terms of lila (game). Game is the main quality of the quantum world, it is frivolous and causeless. Vishnu is the passive body of the manifested world, it is influenced by the active unmanifested source. Bodies of beings are bodies of the law, individual combination of dharmas. Besides static states, there are dynamic interrelations, that is, all possible manifestations of laws and conditions. This is exactly the language suited for description and discovery of new physical rules.
By the elements, by nature itself, by the culture, by the karma and by time are all these eleven of the mind modified into the hundreds, thousands and millions who do not follow from one another nor from themselves, but from the knower of the field.
The physical elements, nature, the original cause, culture, destiny and the time element are all material causes. Agitated by these material causes, the eleven functions transform into hundreds of functions and then into thousands and then into millions. But all these transformations do not take place automatically by mutual combination. Rather, they are under the direction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
By the elements, by nature itself, by the culture, by the karma and by time are all these eleven of the mind modified into the hundreds, thousands and millions who do not follow from one another nor from themselves, but from the knower of the field.
(Bhagavata purana 5.11)
The manifested saguna-brahman is the body, a form of the false identification of God. In the Bible, this Brahman is called Adam. The mentioned material causes are reflecting the confused consciousness (mind), multiplying itself and ramifying into millions of variants; these causes correspond to the principal laws of classical mechanics; eleven is their symbolic number.
Nature is the field for manifestation of the laws; the original cause gives an impulse to a local system in its acme, from this point, the system starts its directed evolution. It is useless to study the laws of the world in themselves (like, e.g., physical constants, given in reference books), what is more important, it is their changing forms of manifestation and existence, dialectics of their interrelations. The True Cause of the occurring changes does not belong to the material world and is invisible.
The division zone between the earthy (mundane) and heavenly (celestial) is a mirror in a way; in this sense, the quantum physics isbeyond the mirror. Local levels, corresponding to classical physics, are derived from the superior Reality by reflection. In cabbalistic tree, made of ten (sometimes, eleven) sefirots, the mirror is dividing three superior worlds (spheres) from seven inferior ones; the lowest sphere, the sefirot malkhut represents the classical mechanics world.
But by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. (Exodus 6:3)
A mirror that is looked into, is not shining any more, since it is already non-quantum one (decoherated as a consequence of measurement). The light in this case is a prototype of the quantum reality; the light is neither a wave nor a stream of particles, yet rather something different from both. By seeing the light, the human eye is perceiving its individual particles (proved also experimentally by a physicist S.Vavilov, cf. his book "The Eye and the sun"); the wave nature is owned, for instance, by the darkness, by female element. One can enter only into the darkness, since before entering, we have to single out ourselves from the world. Thus the Bible says:
He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light. (Lamentations 3:2)
Cosciousness is measuring and therefore is creating the world; the usual, classical world with irreversibility and necessity of choice. The Universe "before the Fall" (when still integer, not divided into "consciousness" and "matter") is similar to a quantum system in the ground state (physicist might use the model of boson condensate), where everything is interlocked with each other and everything is non-local.
"In God, our distances here are not distances in the least... Therefore, everything that is distant in time in this world, is simultaneous in the face of God; and if something, being opposite, is apart from the other, is joined there; and what is different here, is the same there. (Nicholas Cusan, Of possibility-existence).
As soon as there is a part singled out (an individualty, the though "I am"), there appears in the system a "wave of decoherence", creating the world. In this sense, according to the buddhist interpretation of "creation" (Abkhidharmakosha, ch.3), the consciousness that is the first to awake in the beginning of the new kalpa in the empty Brahma palace, IS Brahma, creator of the world.
"It was easy for God to create the world in 6 days; after all, he had not to care about compatibility with former versions" (Programmers' joke)
Next, there comes splitting, a conflict of individual consciousnesses, each of which creates its own world (in the Bible, cf. the foes-brothers Cain and Avel); there happens a destructive interference. As a result, the world deteriorates; the fiction literature, especially fantasy gives us impressive descriptions of such destructive interference, cf. for instance, "Melchor dissonance" in Silmarillion by J.R.Tolkien or "A story of shobics " by Ursula Le Guin. In Christian terminology, it is the Church that is forming the constructive coherence; the Church is the Christ's body, while individual humans are its members. Unnecessary to remind, that the Church in question is the heavenly Church (which is the bride of Christ and God, according to christian interpretation of Song of the Songs), not the social clerical organization.
Contrarily, by the end of the kalpa, the world turns out to be populated way too "tensely" by decoherence waves from uncorrelated individual consciousnesses. As a result, salvation is impeded, the freedom to create worlds is exhausted. Consciousness fades away (declines) and the empty world, depleted of consciousness, is collapsing.
...
According to Talmud, before his fall, the single (whole) Adam posessed all plenitude of knowledge and was seeing the world "from end to end". The plenitude, completeness (perfection) as a precondition for salvation is often mentioned in Buddhist writings.
"A layman asked: If I would become buddha, where would I go? The Teacher replied: If you would become buddha, you would have nowhere to go to. You would fill all the vast universe from end to end. Yet, if you will become some other being, you will find a place to go to" (Bankay).
It is very accurate remark about plenitude from the quantum point of view; if there is something in this world except for you (considered separately from the rest of the world), you can not exist in pure state of freedom. A polysemantic notion of pleromarepresents therefore a description of quantum reality, supplied with all the completeness of interrelations and where love is triumphant.
That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:21-26)
Notions of internal and external prove to be closely intertwined here - and again, by way of mirror.
A number of physicists assert, that the role of the Universe "observer" might be played by a usual physical mechanism; gravitation field, acting within the Universe. However, we prefer more deep supposition of fundamentally unclosed nature of the observed "physical" Universe, effected by external factors of the higher order (again reminding Plato's demiurge God). A at any case, it seems indisputable, that the modern physics apparently approached the border, beyond which it cannot further develop in form of traditional natural sciences, strictly
Speaking more specifically, it is the question whether one can consider the physical Universe as a self-contained system. Any religion is undoubtedly answering to this question in the negative. According to religious tradition, creation of the world "from outside" is still in progress:
My Father is working still, and I am working...Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise. (John 5:17, 19)
God renews every day his creation. (Talmud)
We have created you, why do you not then assent? Have you considered the seed?
Is it you that create it or are We the creators? We have ordained death among you and We are not to be overcome, In order that We may bring in your place the likes of you and make you grow into what you know not. (Quran 56:57-61).
When thou givest to them, they gather it up; when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things. When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed; when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground. (Psalm 104:28-30)
When thou givest to them, they gather it up; when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things. When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed; when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground. (Psalm 104:28-30)
Great in counsel and mighty in deed; whose eyes are open to all the ways of men, rewarding every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings (Jer. 32:19) -
- might be considered as a centre of the supportless unsupported? quantum world. Just like the human brain, he is emitting the directional stream of impulses for all the body as for the manifested world; at his disposal, he has all the control program, all details of physical laws. He is assigning (determining?) all realizations of the laws: paths and fruits, emerging in our world.
The body cannot refuse to accomplish deeds prescribed to it. The eye is an orifice, a black hole, through which it connects with the superior world.
As already mentioned in Chapter 4, in Orthodox dogmatics, the notion of divine energies is playing very important role. According to St.Gregorian Palama, these energies do not belong to the created world; their continual effect (action?) in our world means the unclosed condition of the latter.
The wording "the world is only kept through God" is, as we already discussed, a mere traditional formula. In "physical " language it means that the quantum interference of the Universe, as a whole, or, in other words, the quantum chaos of probabilities, is continuously being destroyed by Observation; the Observation is keeping the Universe in a certain state.
This world is existing and evolving only due to changes occurring in the un-manifested, quantum, mythological world.
The dynamics of the manifested world is solely determined by the dynamics of the un-manifested world. There are no real events in our world; what there is, it is only succession of scenes; the succession incomprehensible and obscure from inside, seemingly meaningless. Quite the contrary, the quantum world is the invisible real non-existence.
As I looked, thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days took his seat; his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. (Daniel 7:9-10)
In fact, it meaning not the usual waves (the word wool is akin to German welle, wave), but rather quantum states, which, in certain order, are going over into the manifested world from the Unconditionality center. Wave is change of phases, a certain succession of quantum states in the superior world; the succession is appearing discretely (non-continuously) and leads to transition of measurable values in an exact determinate order; as a result of this, the unconditional becomes the conditional. As long as discontinuity has not appeared yet, each element of the superior world is located in its own place, in stationary state. The entire world of idols located in high places, which is austerely abhorred by the Bible, is at the same time the quantum world. In themselves, the idols are immutable, soulless, vigorless: unable to act, to move, to eat, drink, feel the pain, to kill. These are states of absolute unconditionality, total void - also known as Buddhist shunyata.
What good does the offering unto an idol? for neither can it eat nor smell: so is he that is persecuted of the Lord. (Sirach 30:19)
Idols are made of the tree of life, material of thought, energy of the manifested world. These are attributes of God, the discontinuous fractional forms at the at the border between two worlds; but not God (originless, category of the Whole), not quantum mechanics.
All these attributes only appear where there is a local system. The invisible manifests itself in this world as form of religious worship of superior. With transition to quantum physics, one cannot avoid falling on one's knees, as sad as it may be.
...
The heavenly hierarchy (different grades of angels and archangels, including rule and authority) are only degrees of myths roughening (myths=quanta) by transition into the classic world; a formalization of religion. By honest rating, this strict hierarchy is not in the least better than the secular authority (cf. St. Paul epistles).
When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that no evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that no evil? Present that to your governor; will he be pleased with you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:8)
"Offering lame and sick " can be interpreted as praying to God from the position of classical mechanics. More likely, He wants non-dual, non-ambivalent states. The governor [of this world] is evidently the biblical patriarchy Abraham
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)
The quantum world is like the body of a living being; by means of our world, it is passing through different eras (periods of formation, cycles) as a local thermodynamic system. Cause-and-effect relations appear only in the manifested world, while quantum processes are, still, primary. The manifested world is local and passes from one enthropс state to another, while non-local, non-determined world exists above it.
On the other hand, there is no conditional without un-conditional; the inferior world has mutual effect on the superior and secures its existence.
"Whitening" in the quoted excerpt is the process of infection spreading; leprosy in the quantum world, symbolized in the Bible ashouse (Lev.14:34-44).
The quantum world is an unmanifested prototype for our world as the Abraham's household; Land of Canaan. The "whitening" is mortification of the world, appearing as formation of foam; this foam is giving birth to Aphrodite: the principal character is, as usual, awoman, also known as the white death.
On the myths level, we see erasing of some superior laws and stages, those manifesting in our world, now, in time (since there is no time above). As a result, different energy states are obliterated below; some processes reflecting global quantum phenomena are wiped out.
There happen unusual events, breaches of habitual physical laws, miracles and signs, cracks in human fates, natural disasters and cataclysms and finally, the system collapse happens, also known as the Last Judgement. Apocalypse arrives not as a change of fixed laws (steady world supporting posts), but rather as disappearance of those in whole blocks. Therefore so ridiculous appear sensational discoveries of "new physical laws" by "geniuses" of parapsychology and occultism, periodically emerging on pages of gutter press.
A detailed analysis of different aspects of relations between God and the world, quantum and classical, manifested and un-manifested, is given, for example, in Hindu writings. As a sample here is an excerpt from Vishnu-Purana (1.9):
We glorify him who is all things; the lord supreme over all; unborn, imperishable; the protector of the mighty ones of creation; the unperceived, indivisible Narayana; the smallest of the smallest, the largest of the largest, of the elements; in whom are all things; from whom are all things; who was before existence; the god who is all beings; who is the end of ultimate objects; who is beyond final spirit, and is one with supreme soul; who is contemplated, as the cause of final liberation, by sages anxious to be free.
(Vishnu purana 1.9)
Vishnu is known as the World Keeper. By obserbing the Universe, he is keeping it in certain state, retaining the whole Universe as it is , from the level of elementary particles (prime elements) to the largest. Purusha is the Son, the human aspect of deity, Christ, also the first man Adam. It is exactly the Human Son appearing as the Creator of worlds. Vishnu-purana tells about deliverance as an exit beyond limits of all worlds into the superior undivideed Reality, that is, as a return into quantum state.
In whom are not the qualities of goodness, foulness, or darkness, that belong to undeveloped nature. May that purest of all pure spirits this day be propitious to us.
(Vishnu purana 1.9)
Various names of Vishnu present His various attributes, yet in Himself, He is totally different from all his traits and attrributes, is devoid of Qualities. In the world, there is only His shakti acting, also known as shehina in Judaic tradition, non-created energy of St.Gregorian Palama, the third thing of Ibn-Arabi. Only through shakti, we might be honored by appearance of the Divine mercy. More technically speaking, the shakti is effecting the process of quantum meauserement, stabilizing the Universe.
May that Hari be propitious to us, whose inherent might is not an object of the progressive chain of moments, or of days, that make up time. May he who is called the supreme god, who is not in need of assistance, Hari, the soul of all embodied substance, be favourable unto us. May that Hari, who is both cause and effect; who is the cause of cause, the effect of effect; he who is the effect of successive effect; who is the effect of the effect of the effect, himself; the product of the effect of the effect of the effect, (or elemental substance). To him I bow. The cause of the cause; the cause of the cause of the cause; the cause of them all: to him I bow. (Vishnu purana 1.9)
On quantum level, there is no causality. Quantum phenomena are not conditional (uncaused), yet are causes for themselves. They simply are. God is the cause of causes and the effect of effects, the beginning and the end of all discontinuous logical deductions, the alpha and omega (Rev.22:13).
Another parallel from a basic Taoism writing:
Man conforms to the earth;
The earth conforms to the sky;
The sky conforms to the Way;
The Way conforms to its own nature.
(Tao Te Ching 25)
Vishnu-purana is proceeding with:
To him who is the enjoyer and thing to be enjoyed; the creator and thing to be created; who is the agent and the effect: to that supreme being I bow. The infinite nature of Vishnu is pure, intelligent, perpetual, unborn, undecayable, inexhaustible, inscrutable, immutable; it is neither gross nor subtle, nor capable of being de-fined: to that ever holy nature of Vishnu I bow. To him whose faculty to create the universe abides in but a part of but the ten-millionth part of him; to him who is one with the inexhaustible supreme spirit, I bow: and to the glorious nature of the supreme Vishnu, which nor gods, nor sages, nor I, nor Sankara appre-hend; that nature which the Yogins, after incessant effort, effacing both moral merit and demerit, behold to be contemplated in the mystical monosyllable Om: the supreme glory of Vishnu, who is the first of all; of whom, one' only god, the triple energy is the same with Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.
Even the greatest wise men, like the legendary Shankara (a modern man would refer to Einsten, Schroedinger or Dirac) are unable to comprehend the quantum Reality. However it is NOT incomprehensible in the least. "God is superior not only to knowledge, but also to incomprehensibility" (Gregorian Palama). Zealous yoginas, who are devoid of virtue and sin, purged themselves from the world, exempt from " the decohering effect of dissipative environment", are able to see the Truth in the divine syllable Om. Even superior gods of the Trinity, the Creator Brahma, the Keeper Vishnu and the Destroyer Shiva, are only forms of shakti, mediators between the world and the True God, who is superior to distinction between creation, keeping and destruction.
The mythological picture of the world, introducing the pantheon of "pagan" deities, is only a vague reflection of Reality (yet, much more adequate than the picture of the world by a modern positivist or a scientist of principle).
The manifested two-parts world, the measurable world of classical mechanics is personified as biblical Abraham, his (its?) sins constitute a local system in the fixed lower state. As soon as the system cannot stay in this state anymore, God makes it different, alters it through quantum world categories (attributes of Superior), while carrying out some reorganizations also in His department. These changes are unmeasurable and energetically indeterminable. As already said, in fact, there is no interaction between wavesand particles, between the mobile and the immobile in this world; rather, there is only manifestation and seeming abolition of quantum states (although above, in fact, nothing happens). The principal state of the quantum world is the apocalyptic state; having cognizedquanta, the world cannot exist any more. Approaching the threshold of the quantum world, a physicist is nearing some understanding of final times of the local system. As soon as the quantum knowledge becomes accessible, it starts disappearing.
In one of apokalyptic books of the Bible we can find such description of the end of the world:
Nevertheless as coming the tokens, behold, the days shall come, that they which dwell upon earth shall be taken in a great number, and the way of truth shall be hidden, and the land shall be barren of faith. But iniquity shall be increased above that which now thou seest, or that thou hast heard long ago. And the land, that thou seest now to have root, shalt thou see wasted suddenly. But if the most High grant thee to live, thou shalt see after the third trumpet that the sun shall suddenly shine again in the night, and the moon thrice in the day: And blood shall drop out of wood, and the stone shall give his voice, and the people shall be troubled: And even he shall rule, whom they look not for that dwell upon the earth, and the fowls shall take their flight away together:
And the Sodomitish sea shall cast out fish, and make a noise in the night, which many have not known: but they shall all hear the voice thereof. There shall be a confusion also in many places, and the fire shall be oft sent out again, and the wild beasts shall change their places, and menstruous women shall bring forth monsters: And salt waters shall be found in the sweet, and all friends shall destroy one another; then shall wit hide itself, and understanding withdraw itself into his secret chamber. (2 Esdras 5:1-9)
The last phrase evidently is alluding to the threat of ceasing the Observation (Watch), which then would imply the death of the world. However that may be, a human will never be relieved of ethical responsibility, since he still is existing in THIS world, with its consistency of events.
[Unentrinnbare Verpflichting zur Selstbeobachtung: Werde ich von jemandem andern beobachtet, muss ich mich naturlich auch beobachten, werde ich von nijemandem sonst beobachtet, muss ich mich um so genauer beobachten.]
Indispensable obligation of self-observation: if I would be watched by somebody else, then of course I must watch over myself as well; but if nobody else would watch over me, then even more carefully should I watch over myself. (Kafka's Diary, 7.11.21)
CHAPTER 15.
Irreversibility, entropy, and the problem of evil
When everyone in China will learn
what a beautiful is beautiful,
then there is ugly.
When all learn
that a good is good,
then there is evil.
(Tao Te Ching)
Discussion of the notion of freedom naturally leads to the problem of evil in the world. Attempts to consider ethical issues from scientific view are generally based on the second law of thermodynamics and are related to the identification of evil and entropy (chaos, disorder). We give two quotations from the very different thinkers, which had a significant influence on the intellectual atmosphere of the second half of the XX century:
For a variety of reasons (both scientific and dogmatic) it is no longer possible to consider the original sin as a simple link in the chain of historical facts ... To satisfy both the experimental data and the requirements of faith, the fall can not be confined or at a certain time or in a particular place. It did not fit our past as a particular "event." But going outside (and becoming the universal curvature) of time and space, it "defines" the very environment which takes place in the depths of all the fullness of our experience.
... In the most general and fundamental sense of the word, death (i.e., decay) begins to reveal itself practically in the atom. Entering the very physicochemical nature of matter, it just reveals in its own way a structural atomistic nature of Universe. Therefore it is impossible to get out of "death state" (and thus out of the scope of the original sin), not leaving the world itself ... If the original sin is in the world, it can only be in it everywhere and always, from the very first forms to the most distant nebulae.
(P. Teilhard de Chardin. The Divine Milieu)
Yet in their recognition of a fundamental element of chance in the texture of the universe itself, these men are close to one another and close to the tradition of St. Augustine. For this random element, this organic incompleteness, is one which without too violent a figure of speech we may consider evil; the negative evil which St. Augustine characterizes as incompleteness, rather than the positive malicious evil of the Manichaeans.
(N. Wiener. Cybernetics and Society)
For comparison we give a few quotes from the treatise by St. Augustine's "City of God", which apparently is referred by Wiener:
For evil is not any essence, but the loss of good is called evil (Book 11, ch. 9).
A man who lives for God, and not for man, should be a lover of the good, and therefore to hate evil. But since no one is evil by nature ... a living for God must have the correct hatred of evil ... (Book 14, ch. 6).
Good can exist without evil, as there exists God himself, the true and the highest, as there exists above this gloomy air every visible and invisible heavenly creature, but evil can not exist without good (Book 14, ch. 11).
This theme is developed by many Church Fathers, both Eastern and Western. Largely following the ancient ideas, they perceived existence of the world (cosmos) as a divine perfection and completeness of the good and the evil and chaos - as void and shadow around being (see, e.g.: S.S. Averintsev. Poetics of early Byzantine literature).
So, in all things there is no evil. In fact, if all things come from the Good, and the Good embraces all things and dwells in it, then no evil can be in existence, otherwise it is necessary to recognize that the evil is in a good ... Evil itself is not anywhere, it occurs not as a result of its power, but because of the impoverishment of [good].
(Dionysius. The Divine Names 4:21,34)
Evil is nothing more than a deviation from good, and therefore evil is secondary to the good.
(John Chrysostom)
Evil is not an entity, but good is an entity.
(Thomas Aquinas)
In the Bible, a secondary origin of evil and death, is claimed by the non-canonical book of the Wisdom of Solomon (1:13-14), which is also written in the mainstream of the Hellenistic tradition. On the other hand, the Old Testament prophetic books are constantly reminded of that evil, like goodness, is sent to people by God (Isaiah 45:7, Am. 3:6, Lamentations 3:38).
In space, there are no concepts of "right" and "left." Similarly, the reward and punishment is only here, in our world, but not in the kingdom of the Messiah.
(M. Buber. Ten degrees. Hasidic parables)
Moreover, God is able to turn evil into good according to His purposes (see, e.g., Genesis. 50:19-20).
God can always turn evil into good, but that justifies in no way the villains. Understand, this is extremely important. One must come to grievances, but woe to him through whom they come (Matthew 18:7). When sin is multiplied, indeed grace abounds (Romans 5:20) - but it is forbidden by God to deduce from this that it should be plenty of sin. Way of the cross leads to the top of earth's history, but there is no excuse for Judah.
(C.S. Lewis. Suffering)
In other words, the person should be good in the sense of the ordinary, "earth" ethic. This condition is necessary, but not sufficient: the the Lord deeds are happening not in this world, and according to other, unknown to us laws.
And why not say, "Let us do evil, that good may come'? - as some slander us and say that we are so teach? Their condemnation is just!
(Romans 3:8)
Very complex question of when and under what circumstances a person can get "beyond good and evil," to rise above the human truth. No one can solve this myself. First of all here, as always, important personal meaning: a person must turn evil into good in itself, and not to throw out his outer world.
If we say that we have no sin, - we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
(1 John 1:8)
According to the St. Augustine, "Love God and do what you want", - it is meant that a man, who loves God, is no longer able to want to do anything wrong.
No one born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him, and he can not sin, because he is born of God.
(1 John 3:9)
For those unable to "love God" ethics (moral law) is needed as the prosthesis of Love not available for them:
When one moves away from the Great Way,
there occur "humanity" and "justice."
When there are a lot of clever people,
there is "a great mistake"
When in the family one does not get along with each other,
there are "filial love" and "piety."
When in the state there is clutter and confusion,
there are faithful servants.
(Tao Te Ching 18)
Giving all these explanations, we can repeat the thought by the founder of Hasidism:
Turn bad into good, for the bad is a stand for good.
(Besht)
Or, accepting the language of oriental symbols, "lotus flowers grow out of the earth's dirt" (a language used by tantric yoga). The same idea can be found in many other sources:
And then I said to myself: You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.
(R.P. Warren. All King's Men)
Being closed to itself and to the lower world, the purely scientific approach does not give grounds for optimistic conclusions:
Thus the question of whether to interpret the second law of thermodynamics pessimistically or not depends on the importance we give to the universe at large, on the one hand, and to the islands of locally decreasing entropy which we find in it, on the other... In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.
(N. Wiener. Cybernetics and Society)
Fundamental ethical and philosophical quality of this world is death (the biblical prince of this world, the buddhist devil Mara ...). In the thermodynamics he is compared to irreversible processes.
...According to the course of this world, according to the prince of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.
(Ephesians 2:2)
However, in the heavenly ("quantum") world all is different.
For I the Lord, I change not: therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
(Malachi 3:6)
There are two opposite categories - alteration and destruction. As in His manifestations God is unchanging and constant, all the processes in the world, that have a beginning and an end, retain. In these processes, the beings born and die, but are never destroyed. "This" and "that" worlds are connected. In the long run there is no changes, but all the time very fast transition take place, which from a higher point of view are free (unconditioned). Here we can be find cause for optimism:
Outside is icy night of desert.
This, the other night inside flares hotter.
Let landscape is covered by barbed crust
here we have a soft garden.
The continents are blasted, cities and villages - all
becomes burned blackened ball.
Our news are
full of sorrow about the future,
but the real news here, inside,
is that in general there is no news.
(Rumi. Divan)
In the human idea, description of the fast processes is: born, died, born, died ... and so on to infinity. World is the vale of tears for the livings, where death is the most striking manifestation of immutability. For something being born, something else has to die. Death is a necessary attribute of life and, paradoxically, the greatest source of hope:
We are always carrying in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also manifest in our body. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also opened in our mortal flesh, so then death worketh in us, but life in you.
(2 Corinthians 4:10-12)
Quantum states are unchanged, although indirectly manifested in classical laws - one is a continuation of the other. So interact continuous and discrete, quantum and classical. They invisible, and even illusory boundary runs through a staggering human consciousness, as just say quoted texts of the Bible. There is no quantum and classical physics, but there is the level of understanding by the person of some processes that exist eternally. Reaching the limits of classical physics, a human who himself is on this side of the border, begins to speak of the quantum world and can move to a different state - beyond. For this living soul - jivatman (classical mechanics) should merge with the transcendent - Paramatman, go in a completely free quantum state. On ethical language, saving person merges with God (the Absolute, Brahman, Atman which is the identity). Buddha said: I saw all the living creatures are Buddhas, but none of them knows it. Scientists only suggest the existence of quantum physics, but no one understands it. Knowledge is in every human being, but he has to turn into one, for which the world will be available. The transition is not performed by the classical instruments and measurements that are now becoming a burden, but by an internal way - through consciousness, the only tool of quantum physics. Instead of the huge laboratories, now single persons in jackets come to the fore again that solve the problem for themselves. They are coming to the edge of the old world and trying to push head through it, as shown in the famous medieval engraving. But to stick to the beyond only the head is impossible, you can jump there only as a whole, having made a somersault, self-denial, the intermittent inversion. To pass, the law holds: all or nothing. All the old assumptions and ideas, measuring principles and thinking, scientific authority, accumulated knowledges are canceled.
About the quantum world can write not a good physicist and intellectual, but a poet or a prophet:
Let our life be
shadows of melting clouds
Yet at the heart of the foundations
there are no changes.
(R. Rilke)
Shadow of melting clouds - image of summary information about the system. This program (a sequence of zeros and units), according to which the events will develop, is written for a certain period and the scale of the local system. In contrast to God, it has a beginning and an end, the direction of development, it produces permanent disappearance of the free energy. In addition to the local system, there is the quantum world, which is not subject to change.
Who of what, ridiculous or clever,
Can conceive, that for no one
In the brain appeared before him?
(Goethe. Faust)
The work of human thought is the work on reading written before. Human writes his destiny (karma) by his affairs and thoughts and can read previously recorded by him. Everyone is writing the script of the play, in which he plays himself. Physicist, studying classical mechanics, explores the history of this issue, that is, the knowledge accumulated in the past. Big Bang is the transition from a quantum state into discrete one, the beginning of the classical world. Formation of a black hole is the end of classical physics. This end is for a time, and not completely: then there will be a new evolution, which means both the invisible collapse and destruction of the quantum world. Every time an explosion occurs at a certain time scale, this is the end and the beginning of a certain indeterminate period. Such processes coexist at different measurement scales and occur not only in cosmology, but also in the life of human communities and individuals.
The Supreme Lord is not affected by the time.
(Bhagavata Purana 7.1)
God himself is the Time in his manifestation. Life belongs to only one category of God - saguna or bhutaman, the manifested material form, which, in contrast to the self-existent yogamaya, expresses itself in the form of mahamaya - the great illusion, deception, and death in this world. In this case, the creatures live, and there is no God in them. Physical laws are combinations of discrete states of mahamaya and dialectic of their relationship, which is actually determined by invisible and unmeasured. Thus, the non-material influences the material through the links, which are also visible.
God encourages the time to act in many ways, but He never biased, even when killing demons. (Ibid.)
A quantum system is always present in the dying local system, where the main quality is the time giving the main law of its evolution. Not the space, but the time (discrete state of manifestation of continuous) determines the mechanical system. Demons are different states of a complex system, programs, composed from discrete commands. They all exist in the category of time, as certain cycles - turns of the world wheels with different diameters, which set the scales of the local system, from the atomic ones to the universal time period (but God Himself is "less than less and more than more"). To change the system at a given moment and wrap it back, you need to destroy these time carriers (death and life), and, with them, the time itself. Then the wheel starts to spin in the opposite direction, the time will turn, realizing the dream of many physicists - a time machine. God, commanding all the demons, causes them to life for a certain period and then kills; the body of each cycle is the body of a certain daemon-program. There is also the main Manager of the universe, preexisting Son of Man, the body of which is partaken by the whole world; he shows the invisible God, taking from Him the power. As chief physician of the world, time-Christ heals all diseases (Luke 5:15): any period ends, and with it ends the fate, and there comes a new existence. Phenomenal world as the body of the universe is also called Adam, its energy - Eve, the principle of its selfishness - Abraham.
Time is the cause of fear. Time is the Lord Himself. Showing His power, the Supreme Lord arranges these items, getting into them as the Supreme Soul. After the Lord impregnates the material nature by His internal energy, material nature frees the universality of the cosmic mind (mahat-tattva), called hiranmaya. Mahat-tattva occurs in the material nature, when predestination (daiva) of the conditioned souls breaks the the equilibrium of gunas of nature.
(Bhagavata Purana 3.26)
Fear is measuring own life, estimation of unidirectional vector, the vision of own end. A person can see the future, not realizing this, but only a certain period of exploring the way. The internal energy is yogamaya, quantum mechanics allows us to calculate the principles of duality, life and death. Ten commandments (laws) are the mechanism for existence of a manifested, expressed in a negative way (do not kill, do not steal...). Owing to these commands-limitations, the classical world lies in sin, and without them the world would be quantum (free). Fulfilling the commandments, no flesh can be justified (Gal. 2:16). To this end one has to go into the quantum world; this requires the negation of negation, denial of the law, the rejection of all causes. At the same time, the initial cause (predestination) is God Himself. As a result, in the local thermodynamic system (also in the whole universe), the mechanism of self-destruction is included. As soon as an individual (the time carrier) gets rid of his sinful nature, selfishness, conscience, - he is ready for freedom, and the world is deprived of its reasons for existence.
In Buddhist texts, clearly looking to a specific person, we also find the "psychological" rather than ontological turn of evil theme:
When we learn so, bad actions are manifested as a continuous space of that has never been done. Inspired by this exhibition, seeing the light of the fact that bad actions are not carried out, the practitioner finally gets rid of them. Just at this time, when the beginning, middle and end are manifested as unrealized bad actions. Bad actions are not created by conditions - they are just not made; bad actions are not killed by the conditions - they are just not implemented.
(Dogen, the Zen tradition)
Thus, whereas the beginning of spiritual practice is to depart from evil, as a result evil is non-existent - the man is just not able to make it. Despite the seeming "impractical" and "unrealistic", these provisions are very important just for real practice. M. Mamardashvili in "Psychological topology of path" writes about masculinity (male) approach: "I have to be good, without regard to whether the world is good around," and (with example of Alexander Blok) about the "female" soul dreaming of a "good boss." Of course, we use, following to Mamardashvili, terms of male and female not in order to enrage feminist- minded readers. Our goal is to remind what was written above, in section 10, - the symbolism of male and female, in particular, the masculine nature of the Law. The point, again, is in isolation from the "unclean." In this connection, one may be recall the famous words by St.. Seraphim "Acquire the world - and thousands around you will be saved", which are also oriented to the "male" way to solve external problems through internal, and not vice versa.
Such views are opposite to dualistic (Manichean) views that emphasize the presence of an external source of evil. The most important evil for us is death, which, from the point of view of science, is the transition of a highly organized state of living matter in the lowly organized one, with higher entropy. E. Schroedinger in his famous book "What is life?" wrote about getting rid of the excess entropy as the very essence of life processes. Of course, the contradiction with the second law of thermodynamics does not arise, since the decrease in entropy of living organisms is overcompensated by its increase in the rest of the universe. Then the state where without evil should be identified with a state with zero entropy.
In both classical and quantum physics, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy increase) is associated with an open character of the system. According to classical mechanics, the evolution of an isolated system is fully reversible: if at any moment we reverse the rates of all the particles that make up the system (which is not in conflict with any laws of physics), it will reproduce exactly all its previous states in the reverse order. Increase in entropy is connected with the instability of motion of dynamical systems (in the awareness of this fundamental position, the decisive role was played by works of A. Kolmogorov, J. Sinai, D. Anosov, V. Arnold, S. Smale and other mathematicians, performed in the second half of the XX century). Thus, an arbitrarily small interaction with the environment, or an arbitrarily small variation in the positions and velocities of the particles at some point lead to chaos, that is, roughly speaking, to the state described by the second law of thermodynamics.
In the quantum case, an isolated system with zero entropy is, according to von Neumann, in a pure quantum state which can be described by a vector of state, or wave function. "Quantum" creatures are on the other side of life and death (good and evil) - for purely quantum evolution is reversible. Here, there is still no fundamental difference with the behavior of an isolated classical system. The difference, as discussed above, is another. Quantum beings have absolute freedom, which is above a possibility of choice: they do note need to chooose, since move in all possible paths at once. Association with the Eden state before the Fall, described in Genesis, seems quite reasonable. Then Fall is an analogue of a giant "measurement process", which "shut up" the universe in a single state. Such universe inevitably will be "full of evil" - not a positive evil by Manichean, but a negative evil of fathers of the Church, i.e. evil understood as imperfect, as the lack of good, as the growth of entropy, i.e. chaos.
Until the god Ea created people,
monsters tribes were crowding on solid earth,
devils of Apsu - the heart of utter depths - and of the dark
Mummu Tiamat, the chaos of the deep.
Warriors with winged bird body were insane,
litters of crown-head demi-humans bred,
and herds of bulls trampled ground -
huge, with a human head,
Dogs barked unceasingly - fierce creatures,
four-body, with tails of fishes.
Then the good creator Ea and the other gods
mercilessly wiped out this evil
and put in a paradise His creation - Man
(but, alas, not for long he was there).
(C. Cavafy)
It is very important to understand the difference between the classical chaos, being traffic over a single, but very complicated trajectory, and quantum indeterminism, which just means a higher freedom (see Chapter 13).
It is very emotionally difficult to accept conclusion about the inevitability of evil in the created world: it seems to almost justify the atrocities that men do, and too many examples of them are given by just ended century.
That's why I'm searching for the causes of our defeat in us: I was brought up so from childhood. But instead of "guilty of person" I see a stochastic [random] process that led us into a hopeless impasse. You, a fugitive from the country of shot ones, experience too much your innocent face of disaster, and are looking for its source not in us ... Say, we have no blame - so Others decided.
(S. Lem. Voice of the Lord)
The extremely deep story by the same author "Repetition" is about a failed attempt by almighty Constructors to build consciously the universe, free from evil.
Clearly, in the world, developing in ergodical way, that is, in accordance with the laws of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, any states will be achieved, including those that correspond to the tolerability limit of nervous system of living beings in this world. This is just the ultimate evil for that particular material universe. If the system is in a mixed (i.e., not in the pure quantum) state, it evolves according to the second law of thermodynamics, so that the increase in entropy, and, therefore, death are inevitable, and evil is necessary - as imperfection, as entropy, as chaos. Metaphysical sense of evil in the world is very keenly felt by many poets:
Space, Time and Number
Fell quietly from black heaven
In the moonless sea vents.
By dumb fragment, heavily
Spirit plunges obediently
In the moonless sea vents.
And everything dies with it, everything is gone,
Thought, memory, life-giving genius,
Space, Time and Number
In the moonless sea vents.
(Charles de Lille. Vilanella)
Christ's words, "Be like children" can also be understood as a call to inner freedom: in the childhood, there occurs a loss of a "quantum" paradise owing to "fall".
When I think of my very earliest time, I think that then the inner and outer worlds were almost not separated. When I crawled to something, it was carrying me on the wings. And when there is something more important for us, we not only worried about it, but even things started to boil. I do not want to say that while we were happier than later. We did not yet possess ourselves. We were, in fact, not even existing, our personal states were not separated from the states of the world. It sounds strange, and yet it's true when I say that our feelings, our motives, and we ourselves were not yet fully within us. Even more strange, with the same right, I could have said: have not entirely moved away from us. After all, if now you, when you think that wholly possess yourself, ask yourself as an exception, who you really are, you will do just that discovery. You'll always see yourself from the outside, as the object. You'll notice that in one case you are angry, in the other - sad, just as your coat is sometimes wet and sometimes - lukewarm. No matter how many watch, you can get rather the fact that is behind you, but not yourself. You remain outside of yourself, no matter what you take, and the exceptions are just the few moments when one would say that you're outside yourself. True, we reward ourselves as adults, by the fact that on every occasion we can think, "I am" if it gives us pleasure.
(R. Musil. The Man Without Qualities)
A result of interaction with the "dissipative environment" (the social environment, society) is the reduction of "many-world" quantum picture to the average one, the perception of wole wealth of relationships (correlations between everything and everything) in the world is lost. In mathematical language (more precisely, in the jargon of theoretical physicists), there occurs a reduction, coarsening of the description, the transition from "true many-body" description to the so-called mean-field approximation. Instead of unique individual things with their unique relationships that form the whole world, we begin to work with the average concepts, types (see books by Mamardashvili "Psychological topology of path" and "Arrow of knowledge").
Not occasionally, for a man of XX century, when the dictates of society exceeded any conceivable limits, the mythology was so appealing, which in something close to child's consciousness. Mythological creatures are beyond opposites, inevitable for "empirical" beings.
He was mortal, and he was immortal. One died in him, then the other, evaporating like a cloud in the sky, and he is alive: neighs and gallops, and laughs, and his tail and mane rustle in leaves. The monster was nicknamed centaur. He was unlike the forest brothers, unlike anything earthly. Sometimes only cloud in the sky will suddenly take his image.
(J.E. Golosovker. Myths about Titans)
He [poet] must achieve social and spiritual independence at whatever cost, learn to think mythically as well as rationally, and never be surprised at the weirdly azoological beasts which walk into the circle; they come to be questioned, not to alarm.
(R. Graves. White Goddess)
While the human mind is in the world of first two states - particles and waves - it can not use the category of non-deterministic, free states: they simply do not exist. In order to effectively work in quantum physics, one has to draw up a new vocabulary to invent fabulous new definition of "non-existing" fields and their relationships. This dictionary is called a myth, which tells about the sense of the life processes; to understand something is possible only through the mythology. Religion writes a dictionary of human lives and sins, science - the same handbook of physical laws. When the old terms are no longer active, we need to create a new story and dream. Pleroma is the quantum state from the first to the last, which is quantitatively measured only on the new technical language of myths. In myths, there is no beginning and no end, and each episode can have many outcomes that meet different fates and systems of moral evaluations. Moral judgment in classical physics is the practical benefit, the benefit of a particular measurement and its application in technology. In quantum physics there is no such uniqueness, final points here are never placed, all conclusions go continuously into each other.
Purely mythological world view is "right-hemisphere", that is wave-like, female. Here connection of phenomena is far beyond the normal space, time and causality: Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that myth is a machine for destruction of time. That's why myths, containing the most common and stable laws (patterns) of human life, are eternal, refracting differently at different stages of human history, and breathing life into it.
Primitive man is not able to connect logically and causally objects of his experience. He does not view them either as a chain of causes and effects, or even as separate phenomena, but as a kind of connectedness, in which nothing can move, without disturbing anything. In other words, hitting something, we influence it.
(L. LИvy-Bruhl)
Of course, such an absolute picture of the world contains serious dangers, not by chance one of the most harmful books of the last century being called "The Myth of XX century." The thing is that the myth should not and can not be converted into a system a doctrine. The wave picture of the world just completes (in Bohr's sense) the corpuscular one, it is no deeper than the last one, it is just different. The system, "locked" in the wave representation, is also "decoherent" and deprived of quantum freedom (wave pattern acts as a pointer state, see Chapter 11). A full spiritual life requires a synthesis of wave and corpuscular, male and female, mythological and logical, "child" and "adult":
Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
(Matthew 10:16)
I would have you wise unto that good, and simple concerning evil.
(Romans 16:19)
In malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.
(1 Corinthians 14:20)
If we identify the quantum (not wave!) state with paradise, the fall must play a role of the measurement process, which destroyed the quantum coherence. The physical universe is already "burdened with evil", which is entropy. According to modern cosmology, it (the Universe) came from the Big Bang. Some modern Orthodox authors, referring to the teaching of St. Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa, identify the Big Bang not with the creation of the world (which is typical of Catholic authors), but with the fall. According to this view, our universe is the result of the collapse of the original sinless world:
This world where we live was not created by God, God did not create evil, - but in this world, as we all know, evil is rife. Its source is not God, but the "prince of this world" (John 12:31, 16:11). But there is a True World - the genuine world of God, which came out of His "hands" in God's creative action, at the very beginning of All, in that truly creative act, after which God said: "very good." So wherefrom did that "mixed" world come, in which good and evil, life and death are so intertwined? From Scripture we know about the Fall, and the expulsion of the first people from the Garden. From scientific point of view, this tragic event can be placed within the context of the "big bang" theory, adopted by the modern science ... What was before the "big bang", what kind of world existed before this push - the science does not know ... The answer to this question for us, Christians, is given by the Bible: there was a fine world created by God - the habitat of the first people.
(Bishop Basil (Rodzianko). Theory of the Universe Decay and the Faith of the Fathers)
From this point of view, the fall is a giant act of "measurement", which shut the universe and man in a single state. This only state is the "personality", being opposed to the Hindu Atman (the Self), which is identical with Brahman, that is, God.
Understanding the fall as a measurement naturally leads us to a discussion of ways to save, that is, return to the heavenly state of completeness. After the restoration of the pleromam the world in our sense ceases to exist.
For where there is envy and strife, there is an incompleteness; but where there is unity, there is completeness. Since this incompleteness came about because they did not know the Father, so when they know the Father, incompleteness, from that moment on, will cease to exist... Certainly, from that moment on, form is no longer manifest, but will be dissolved in fusion with unity. For now their works lie scattered. In time unity will make the spaces complete.
(The Gospel of Truth 24-25)
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.
(William Blake. Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
According to quantum mechanics, the coherence can in principle be restored by external fields, which suppress the interaction with the environment. On the associative level, it is appropriate to recall the Christian doctrine of salvation by faith and grace:
God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order to manifest in the coming ages surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves the gift of God.
(Ephesians 2:4-8)
In classical physics, there is no difference between the laws of cosmology and microcosm, the world is quantum only in its beginning (or end). However, these "beginning and end" (Alpha and Omega) occur together with the evolution of consciousness and the knowering mind of human, in particular, physicist.
All that takes the spirit from chaos,
will ever in handy for living;
let this be takeoff of our thoughts -
and it will be dissolved in general blood,
to flow further...
(R. Rilke)
Chaos is the force that drives the system after the original law has been approved in it, in this case the chaos is a treasure house of knowledge, the quantum mechanics of the world. Once more, we recall the difference from the classical concept of chaos: it is in the interference of different ways, in the fullness of the quantum picture of the world (the pleroma).
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man - and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
(Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spake Zarathustra)
Spirit is a human knowing factor of measuring physicist that determines the laws of classical mechanics, creates technologies and uses them to build the enginery. The development of human society is determined by a hidden quantum physics, giving the whole amount of knowledge, and goes along with the evolution of the human, including genetic one. The mechanism of extraction of knowledge is the transformation of the continuous to discrete through the mind of man. Biological processes and civilization go hand by hand, knowledge becomes available as soon as a person reaches the desired level. It is sad, but, as a result of the processes described, world is moving toward its end.
According to St. Paul, the old reality is crucified and rejected, and a new reality comes into the world through Christ.
Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self (that is, the universal Adam Kadmon - Auth.) was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
(Romans 6:3-6)
CHAPTER 16.
Conclusion. The wind blows where it wishes
How it is small - know only what we know!
(Chuang Tzu)
And burgeons swell again
Spurtof green shoots
But your spine is broken
My beautiful miserable age!
And with a meaningless smile
Backward you look, tough and weak
Like an animal, once flexible,
On the traces of own feet.
(Mandelstam)
Here we have tried to provide some unifying concept based on both a modern scientific (quantum) picture of the world and the canonical texts of various religions. We tried to conditionally "translate" presentation of spiritual teachings to the language of physics and treat higher (transcendent, otherworldly) reality as a quantum one. At the same time, we always stressed highly personal nature of perception and presentation. For us it is of crucial importance: we believe that the possibility of worldviews, competing for an objective (dogmatic) truth, is in a large measure exhausted.
We would like to avoid any associations with (so fashionable now) relativistic (not in terms of the theory of relativity ...) and "post-modern" look. The difference is very simple: we do not see any possible views and opinions equally valid and do not doubt the existence of Reality, Truth with a capital letter, and the possibility of its realization. We believe, however, that Truth can appear in the created world only through a man, that is just personal (as Christ in us, as is claimed in many places of the New Testament). Of course, such a belief has nothing to do with the subjectivity. By the way, note that there are two authors, after all, with very sharply different "personalities." The latter, as we see, are not necessarily an obstacle to the knowledge of the Important Things with proper attitude. As physicists professionals, we have used images and associations related to our science. It is difficult to say to what extent it was necessary; in any case, we seem to have to demonstrate that it is possible. At the same time we are not insisting that the way to salvation through understanding of quantum mechanics must be regarded as obligatory. But we are confident that any such path must be personal. Moreover, one can show start of the way and some signs that occur here, but not its result that is not expressed by any conceptions.
Hey, you're back, do as I do!
This means - do not follow me!
This track is only mine.
Get out by your rut!
(Vladimir Vysotsky)
We recognize that we have chosen the method of presentation that may perplex the reader. Why, in fact, to try to confirm the conclusions of the sacred texts by modern physics, or vice versa? For the believer, this confirmation is meaningless, because he has a much more robust and reliable personal experience. Even more ambiguous is situation for the person who is only religious (in the sense of a formal affiliation with a religion), and, as a rule, does not need confirmations and is not interested in them. For "standard" scientist, who requires "objective truth", our approach (as well as any call to High) means profanation and is also, in the end, not convincing. We, however, believe that this is not so much our problem as a problem of standard scientific workers, jealously related to toys, located in their outlook.
Typical vulgarity reigned
In his little head.
(N. Oleinikov)
On the other hand, in the community (and in the "scientific community" as its part), undrestanding is growing that the current situation is intolerable and can not continue. In poisoned spiritual atmosphere of the modern "consumer society" both science and religion are at risk of dangerous and unpleasant mutations. In both cases, the corporate interests of communities are beginning to dominate the "heart of the matter," to borrow the title of the famous novel by Graham Greene.
The response to these processes also often takes still more ugly forms. As a well-known example is the fuss over "torsion fields." Of course, by itself, the desire to go beyond the scope of modern physics is not culpable. Trouble is just in insufficient radicalism of this desire and unreasonable attempts to spread the spirit and methods of modern science in the "forbidden" area. Talking about consciousness as a "field form of matter", forgetting the whole spiritual experience of humanity, is to try to acquire and develop the worst in modern science - its incorrect claim to universality and globality. Dubiousness of experimental results and theoretical considerations is already inevitable consequence inadmissibility of such interpolations. The actual founder of the "torsion" direction Kozyrev (barely mentioned in the works of followers, that is typical too), seems to be based on some personal mystical enlightenment, which, unfortunately, under the influence of scientistic "Zeitgeist" were set out in inadequate "naturalistic" form. Now it is a thriving industry of show business, quite successfully competing in the "turnover" with the official Russian academic science. The latter, in turn, is too concerned about the problems of his prestige, and even physical survival, to really worry about any "spiritual dimension." As a result, the official "struggle against pseudoscience", despite the thoroughness of the prerequisites, is perceived by the society in the context of banal market showdown rather than as evidence of concern for the spiritual health of the country. Unfortunately, the same market taste is felt in the religious life, for example, in a really difficult and painful question of the relations of the various Christian denominations. However, even in the West, prosperous by our standards, concern about the attractiveness of the package (chewing gum, "spiritual exercises" or scientific results - on equal footing) has long pushed the concern for Truth. As for the actual (not declared) situation of religion, we restrict ourselves to relatively low-key quote from the "White Goddess" by R. Graves:
Though the West is still nominally Christian, we have come to be governed, in practice, by the unholy triumdivate of Pluto god of wealth, Apollo god of science, and Mercury god of thieves. To make matters worse, dissension and jealousy rage openly between these three, with Mercury and Pluto blackguarding each other, while Apollo wields the atomic bomb as if it were a thunderbolt; for since the Age of Reason was heralded by his eighteenthcentury philosophers, he has seated himself on the vacant throne of Zeus (temporarily indisposed) as Triumdival Regent.
In any case, we recall that St. Paul "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God" (1 Cor. 10:20).
At the same time, the question is how well the god of science Apollo copes with the duties of the Regent of supreme deity. For a man of traditional society (to be specific, we talk about the European Middle Ages) the knowledge of higher transcendental reality had an absolute priority as compared to the knowledge of the created world (though the latter was, of course, not rejected). Scientific revolution of the XVII century was caused by including the spiritual needs of people of the time (though perhaps not completely healthy; roots of European science in magic and unorthodox religious views is discussed in detail in our book, "Ordinances of heaven", and here we do not want to repeat this issue). Unfortunately, mechanistic view of the world, approved during the XVIII and XIX centuries, was i"metaphysically" rather poor and unable to meet the deep spiritual needs:
They said: Come to us, we have full realism, living life, instead of your fantasies and dreams we will open alive eyes and physically feel the surroundings. And what happened? ... It turns out - that complete fraud and forgery. It turns: do not look at the horizon, it's our imagination, do not look at the sky - there is no sky... Do not believe your eyes, do not believe ears... My father, but where did we get in? What evil brought us in this chaos, where only empty holes and blind spots seem? No, mister, do not fool. You, mister, wanted to pull my skin, rather than make a realist from me. You, mister, are a thief and a robber.
(Losev. Dialectics of Myth)
As is now becoming clear, these charges are not baseless also for recent history. The efficiency of the science is still very small, especially if we bear in mind not only the material dimension: it is the most energy-intensive area, absorbing the lion's share of intellectual (and other) efforts of mankind. It is usually accepted to answer that Faraday and Maxwell, who laid by their penance experimental and theoretical foundations of electrical engineering, for a couple paid all expenses of science for the last three hundred years. But does this really justiy the existence of millions of "ordinary" scientific workers often busy by clearly uncreative and ineffective labor? Do not they sell their souls, doing the wrong business - by the fault of society, which has turned sophisticated spiritual practice into an assembly line? As for the references to the classics of science that supposedly justify our own rather modest professional achievements, it is appropriate to quote the New Testament:
God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul ... Certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, "I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches." This was done by some seven sons of Sceva Jewish high priest. And the evil spirit answered and said, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?"
(Acts 19:11-15)
Unfortunately, with the loss of a real understanding of what is science, its fruits can become harmful, especially if the references to the "scientific approach" play the role of simple spells or advertising slogans.
There is as much reason to be apprehensive about the long run dangers created in a much wider field by the uncritical acceptance of assertions which have the appearance of being scientific...What I mainly wanted to bring out by the topical illustration is that certainly in my field, but I believe also generally in the sciences of man, what looks superficially like the most scientific procedure is often the most unscientific, and, beyond this, that in these fields there are definite limits to what we can expect science to achieve. This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
(F.A. Hayek. The Pretence of Knowledge)
Science is a seemingly noble, but (even pragmatically) inefficient way to use life energy. It is sad, but the results of high gusts are usually insignificant mountain of effort generates mouse poor knowledge. Rare exceptions are not described by algorithms: one can not learn to understand something really important, just as it is impossible to learn how to be a poet (as opposed to craft "how to make poetry"). In quantum worlds, knowledge is achieved "for free, that is as a gift" (see popular cartoon "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day"), through the unity of subject and object of knowledge.
Intuition is a method of discovery, and logic is a method of proof.
(Poincare)
"Drag and drop" the insights produced by an intuitive way, that is, to say frankly, inspired by God, from free "quantum world" in the classic created world - is the work even more difficult than that "to pull hippo from the swamp". (Here iwe feel tch to add a couple of quotes from the book of Job, about the divine beasts named Behemoth and Leviathan, but astute readers might suspect that we scoff, and, in this case, will have a reason. Finding other similar places in the book is an exercise for astute readers; if it will seem that there are very much such places, it is necessary to temper their insight ...). Hence the low efficiency, and the monstrous energy spending (in the first place, we are referring to the spiritual energy), and questionable social impact of many scientific developments.
The practice is usually ahead of theory: per several unique cases of truly successful and nontrivial predictions (the nature of which is actually unknown to science), there are dozens and hundreds of thousands of "retroactive" explanations. Moreover, the technology is often ahead of the learning process, the scientific understanding follows it. Initially subconscious throws discovery from its unknown depths, an "intuitive" mechanic combines previously unknown thing (for example, a steam engine). Then a logical scientist and researcher comes - aristocrat Carnot writes the equation for the thermodynamic cycle. He will do this as long as meets the boundaries of possibilities yielded by the steam engine.
The true experiment is in the technology trade, which just gives the subject for reasoning. Most pragmatically successful application of quantum mechanics - the transistor - still does not seem to be really deep and interesting in a fundamental respect. At the same time, it really affected the daily lives of billions of people, as opposed to, say, the greatest triumph of human reason - the general theory of relativity (or, for example, the "quantum theory of gauge fields"). Quantum physicist is really desperate experimenter. Dramatically simplifying and dramatizing the situation, we can say that the technology is evolving, but the knowledge - knowledge of meaningful for a layman - is over. We note again that, for us, fashion "torsion fields" or talk of biological field and the "bio-energy" is the movement in the wrong direction, and an imitation of novelty only. Even if telekinesis and teleportation will be technically successfully implemented, this will happen on the table of craftsman, not of a physicist.
In such a situation, it seemed useful to recall that science, although becoming a mass profession, compromised by behavior of its "zhretsy (priests)" (by Landau, from the Russian word "zhrat (fress)") and degenerated, still has to do with serious things, - namely, to freedom and salvation. Fortunately, the world is one. Sufficient understanding of all aspects of reality leads to the area of transcendental. M. Mamardashvili, analyzing in the "Psychological topology of path" the creativity of M. Proust speaks of the possibility to gain the truth through the perception of the taste of cake, or a landscape - not necessarily beautiful and "sublime", - even through very "low-lying" in the common sense things (say, perverse sexuality). Whatever is one's attitude to science, it is not worse than all of the above things, - perhaps, no better (let's not argue about taste), but not worse. In any case, the interests and spiritual needs of modern time human are very different from traditional ones, and this cannot be disregarded.
Take out, my friend, of a shrine
the face of the Blessed Wife
Insert a family photo -
view of the planet from the moon.
(Brodsky)
But "God is not mocked" (Gal.6:7), one can do so.
But, o the stronghold of Notre Dame, as closer
I have studied your monstrous edge,
The more I thought: from the infamous gravity
I'll also ever create a beautiful.
(Mandelstam)
Over the past three centuries, humanity invested in the development of science its best intellectual and spiritual potential. Therefore, breakthrough in the beyond could easily happen just in this direction - and it occurred after the development of quantum physics. We do not in any case consider the conclusions of quantum mechanics as the ultimate truth, especially since very much here still remains unclear, even in the narrow sense of the natural sciences. By the way, two hundred years after Newton, Poincare began a fundamental revision and deepening of the classical picture of the world. It also proved to be much richer and more complex than it seemed, say, to Laplace (deterministic chaos, and so on). "The wind blows where it wishes" (Jn 3:8), and you can dig anywhere. But quantum picture of the world, as we have tried to demonstrate, already reflects many of the important features of the "ultimate reality." Now physicists have come to the closed gates of consciousness, where the area of the mind freedom begins, ownership of the spirit extends, and the power of the body ends. Further we can only hope for the promise of Scripture:
Our knowledge is incomplete, and our prophecy is incomplete, but when completeness comes, what is incomplete disappears.
(1 Corinthians 13:9)
"Incomplete", as discussed in detail throughout the book is discrete, fractional, plural; but the highest quantum reality is single and continuous. In the created world One is multiplied and divided into countless grains of sand, as promised by God to Abraham (Gen. 16:10). As stated elsewhere in the Bible (Genesis 3:16), concomitant human passions lead to many sorrows. Finally - a warning and a promise for those who wish clear and exact understanding of these complex issues:
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. The mutual rivalry for piling up (the good things of this world) diverts you. Until ye visit the graves. But nay, ye soon shall know (the reality)... Ye shall certainly see Hell-Fire! Again, ye shall see it with certainty of sight!
(Quran, Sura 102. Hunting to Piling Up)
THE END
**
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Valentin Yu Irkhin was born in 1960 in Yekaterinburg. Doctor of Sciences (1992), chief researcher at the Institute of Metal Physics, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Works in the field of solid state physics, especially the electronic properties of strongly correlated systems and quantum theory of magnetism. He has published about 150 scientific papers in leading Russian and international journals.
Mikhail I. Katsnelson was born in 1957 in Magnitogorsk. Doctor of Sciences (1985), Professor, Head of Laboratory, Institute of Metal Physics, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Known for his work on magnetism, metal theory, quantum mechanics. He is the author of over 300 scientific articles and several books.
In addition to its core academic specialty, the authors devote much time to teaching, while paying great attention to the philosophical problems of natural science. In 2000, they published the book "The ordinances of heaven. 16 chapters on science and faith" (Ekaterinburg, U-factory). One of the motives of their activities in this area is that the writings on the subject, held by psychologists, philosophers and other specialists in the humanities, and especially in the media, "esoteric" literature account natural-scientific picture of the world is almost always suffers superficial, if not directly mistakes. Specialists in the sciences are turning to religious and spiritual issues is rare, because it usually falls out of their ken. The authors hope that they have sufficient knowledge to fill this gap in the literature.