Maya – The World of Quantum Physics from a Hindu Perspective

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the western world considered India to be a most mysterious land crawling with snakes, tigers and naked fakirs. Hinduism was regarded as inferior. Driven by racism and bigotry, many outside India stereotyped Hindus as worshipers of weird gods having hundreds of heads and hands, believers in absurd superstitions and rituals. However in the late 19th and 20th centuries many of the great scholars of Europe like Voltaire, Max Mueller and so on, discovered the Vedas and Upanishads and realized that there was much more to Hinduism than was revealed on the surface. In fact the 20th century brought about a revolution in the minds of educated people all over the world in the way they perceived the world. With the discoveries of quantum physics, scientists were astounded to see the solid, implacable character of the world they lived in, disintegrating before their very eyes! Strangely enough the opposite was the case with those who had studied the various aspects of Hindu thought about the nature of the world. All these years westerners had laughed in scorn at the idea that the world was “maya” or illusion as the Hindus proclaimed! Surely their own five senses were the best instruments to understand this world, they thought.

However with the discoveries of quantum physics they realized that their five senses were actually giving a distorted vision of reality. Those who were capable of reflection and those who had gone deep into the wisdom of the Vedas started to realize that almost everything about the world as depicted in the ancient Indian scriptures more than ten thousand years ago made perfect sense when seen through the lens of the quantum world.

The greatest thing that quantum physics did for Hinduism was to show that the world as the senses tell us and as the Newtonian scientists had been telling us, is not a solid thing. Physicists who delved into the heart of “matter” were astounded by what they saw. Matter was not solid at all as our senses tell us but merely energy in motion. (e=mc squared). That is to say matter is not composed of hard, rubbery atoms but is made up of subatomic particles that have no design or shape and do not follow any standard order. Sometimes they behave like waves and sometimes like particles and sometimes they are both. It is a haphazard world in which we live, where nothing can be predicted with the certainty that science demands. The solid world of matter which the senses enjoyed, disintegrated into a dervish dance of protons, neutrons and energy particles. It was only now that intelligent people all over the world began to think that the maya theory of the rishis had some truth in it – the world of the senses is an illusion. The rishis had known this thousands of years ago but naturally it would have been meaningless to the common people of that time and even in this time, so they cloaked their knowledge in metaphorical words. It was only in the 20th century that physicists actually proved the maya theory in a scientific way! The rishis have been telling us the truth about the unreality of the world as the senses perceive it, for centuries but we, with our dependence and total belief in the theories of western science were most scornful of it. But now when the same words come out of western mouths, we are forced to believe it albeit reluctantly since our senses belie this truth. Actually speaking Hinduism is the only religion in the world which is scientifically accurate in every single detail. All the great teachings of our saints and masters had been thrown into the dust bin, labeled “superstitious nonsense” by western scholars but every one of these was now found to be based on pure scientific facts.

The second shock to the western mind came with Einstein’s theory of relativity. Time and space had always been accepted as absolute and unchangeable facts of life by Newton but many of the scientists who came after him proved that time and space are relative. This was a shocking idea which even , we, who are bound to our clocks and time schedules, find hard to accept. The Bhagavad Gita as well as all the Hindu scriptures have always declared that what binds us to wheel of samsara (transmigrational world) are the three mental conditionings known as desa, kaala and nimitta, – space, time and causality and that these are purely mental bonds which we have created ourselves! This has been said in all Hindu scriptures centuries before such a thought even occurred to the western scientists.

We have created this world of concrete objects and superimposed a false reality on them. This concrete world which we think we “see” is “maya” or an appearance. It has no permanent reality. It is only a passing show and has no permanence. Our bodies which are made of the same material – the five elements are also perishable. BUT we are not solely these bodies. Our reality is something far greater since we are actually the atman or divine spirit, which is imperishable and eternal and untouched by the changes of the body which take place in the world of Space /Time. The Hindu scriptures reiterate that Absolute reality is beyond these three upadis (conditions), desha, kaala and nimitta or space, time and causality. The moment we demarcate ourselves as belonging to one specific place and time, that very moment we separate ourselves from our divinity (which is beyond space and time) and thus come under the law of cause and effect which in turn brings suffering in its wake. We are the creators of time and space and therefore the creators of our own unhappiness. We have been conditioned into accepting space and time and causality as the only truth. By some strange act of cognition, when we bring energy to conscious awareness, through the act of perception, we create separate objects that seem to exist in space through a measured continuum called time. By creating time and space we create our own separateness from our divine reality.

Until the last century even those people who tried to escape from the harsh facts of science by resorting to religion found themselves having to wrestle with these opposing views of life and having to defend their positions to the scientist. Now the boot seems to be on the other foot. The 20th century brought about a most profound change in the outlook of science as to the nature of the world and the nature of the human being.
Discoveries were made that proved what religion had always accepted- that the human being is far more than a collection of flesh and blood – a machine for re-producing the species with no vital role to play in the universe and no purpose or goal in life as Darwin stated.

Another important thing that the physicist discovered was that these subatomic particles had no meaning by themselves in isolation but only in relationship with everything else. At its elemental level, which is the quantum level, matter could not be chopped up into intelligible units but was completely indivisible. If we want to understand the universe we will have to see it as a dynamic web of interconnectedness.

We are all made up of packets of energy and float about in a field of energy like bubbles in a pond which are made up of the water they float in and which are connected to every other bubble which is floating on the water. Of course we are also directly connected to the pond. This ever active water of the pond in which the bubble exists is the central point of its existence. The bubble can never exist by itself. Thus we can never be estranged from anything else in this universal pond!

Since we are totally connected with everything and every creature in this universe, for each of us to strive to better ourselves without regard to what happens to others is the most foolish thing that we could do. Human suffering stems from this very fact, that we have cut ourselves off from our roots and have condemned ourselves to a life of isolation. This was not how nature meant us to be. Modern physics has thus given us a correct evaluation of our place in the world. The human consciousness (as the Hindu scriptures have always told us) is a crucial factor in making up this universe. Sub atomic particles settle down from their constant erratic movements and take on solid shapes only when we observe them.

The zero point field is the most fundamental state of matter and this is a heaving sea of energy – one vast quantum field. On the quantum level all living beings including human beings are packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with this inexhaustible field of energy, which is known as the “chitta’ in Hindu terminology. Information about all aspects of life is relayed through the interchange of information on the quantum level. Have you watched a flight of birds winging their way across the sky and how suddenly all of them veer to a different course as if at some hidden signal? The same phenomenon can be noticed in schools of fish. Till now it was assumed that these birds and fish had a novel method of communicating with each other by some radar or some noise signal which we cannot hear but now experiments on the quantum field proved that they are all in touch with this field and receive their orders simultaneously from it. The functions of our minds –like thinking, feeling etc draw information from the quantum field which is pulsing simultaneously through our body and brain. In fact we resonate with the universe. Every breath we take is part of the universal breath and every breath we give out is our contribution to universal life. This prana, this life force is the same in everything and everyone and is spread everywhere simultaneously.

Our lives can become perfect only if we participate in this great interchange with nature and the universe. As the Gita tells us in chapter 3, “Sahayajna praja sristwa purovacha prajapati.” – The creator created all things and instilled the idea of yajna or selfless action in them. The sun shines, the rains fall, the tree gives fruit and so on with no thought of gain. They do it as an offering to the divine that created them. In this orgy of selfless giving the human being lives, utterly selfish, with an eye to his personal comfort alone. Hence it is that the human being has such a capacity for unhappiness. This is because Nature did not mean him to live in such a way, totally unconnected with everything else. No man is an island and no one can live without any sort of dependence. There is no “me” and “mine” as we think but all things are connected in an amazing way to the energy field which in Hinduism is known as chitta. In Hinduism, “mamta and ahamta” (me and mine) have always been considered to be the two knots which alienate us from God. Any alienation from our divine foundation will bring sorrow in its wake. In this unified field there is no place for me and mine.

If you hurt others you are actually hurting yourself even though you may not know it. “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” is a basic dictum of all religions. “As you sow so you shall reap.” Anyone who performs actions only for himself without any care or consideration for others and for the world around him, will have to suffer. This is the law of nature. Any selfish act immediately isolates us from the world and from nature and many such acts eventually bring unhappiness, discontent, ill health and continuous bad luck which we blame on others and on our fate etc, never realizing that it is only a consequence of our own selfish actions.

So actually speaking the quantum world deals with shadow symbols, it is a dream world but this is not the ultimate reality as the scientists themselves are willing to admit. This is exactly what the rishis meant when they called this world – “maya”. It is a shadow world and we see only the shadows of things but not their reality. The shadows appear to be the whole world and this is because of a strange phenomenon in which our minds get bound up in the cocoon of time, space and causality and we start to imagine the shadows to be real. This is the world which the Gita describes in the 7th chapter. “Bhumi, aponalo vayu, kham mano, buddhi eva cha. Ahamkaram itiyam me bhinna Prakriti ashtada.” “My lower Prakriti is eight-fold and is composed of the five elements, earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect and ego. But this is my lower nature which is available to the senses and which we believe to be real.” Krishna then goes on to say “Apareyamitastwanyam Prakriti viddhi me param.” “But know this to be my lower nature. My higher nature is that spiritual being which sustains this entire universe and which is totally different from this.” Krishna continues in the 7th chapter, “These two natures form the womb of all beings. I am the origin and dissolution of the entire universe.”

Modern physics can only tell us about this lower nature. In fact it has gone up to the chitta which is the boundary between the lower and higher but till now it is unable to tell us anything of the nature of ultimate reality. Eddington declared that the great difference between old and new physics is that, though both are dealing with shadow symbols, the new physics has been forced to accept the fact that it is indeed dealing with shadows – a set of abstract equations and not with reality itself. All the pictures that science draws of nature which can be proved, are mathematical pictures. However it is unable to formulate the ultimate reality. Even though these physicists were able to reduce matter to its ultimate and fundamental level and put it into mathematical equations, yet to date they have not been able to reduce God into a mathematical equation. This is where Hinduism has the advantage over quantum physics.

The rishis of old as has been mentioned before also knew that this is a shadow world. But they asked the million dollar question “If this is a shadow world then what is the Being that casts the shadow? A shadow obviously cannot exist on its own. What is it that holds all these things together? All our scriptures have given the answer. This shadow world is a “becoming” but there is a “Being” which is the cause of these shadows. This exists because THAT exists. If THAT were not to be, then “This” will cease to be. Krishna declares, “All things exist in Me but mark my mystery, I do not exist in them.” What he means to say is that God in not a sum total of all creation. Even though they are in Him, he is not in them and that is why no amount of enquiry into the shadow world can give us the truth of absolute consciousness. The fish exist in the water but the water does not exist in the fish or because of the fish. Fish cannot exist without water but water can and does exist without fish!
In another simile Krishna says, “Everything is strung on me as pearls on a string.” The necklace has a shape and value only due to the string which holds them together. If the string is broken the necklace will no longer exist. The pearls will roll around in a random fashion like negative particles.

The position of the western scientist is that of the jijnasu or enquirer on the path of truth as the Gita puts it. They are eager and anxious to know the Truth but somehow this ultimate truth seems to defy all attempts at generalizations. Hence we see that even though we live in this highly scientific age, yet there is a great belief on the part of even educated people to believe in the occult and the miraculous. There seem to be some things in the world which defy scientific investigation. This is where Hindu spiritualism steps in to show us that some things exist which are beyond the level of the mind. They can be known only by going above the plane of the mind. However to give them their due, the quantum physicist did discover something novel which the ancient physicist could not accept – that the only thing which can be called real in this shadow world is the consciousness of the spectator or the experimenter. Without that consciousness even this shadow world would not exist. Everything is centered round the consciousness of the experimenter. This was a great break through. Till now the experimenter’s job was always to get out of the way of the experiment and not interfere with the purely mechanical process involved in the experiment. Now it was proved by the scientist that the individual consciousness has everything to do with the final outcome of the experiment. This consciousness stems from a phenomenon known as super-radiance which is a state of perfect coherence.

Normally quantum particles act in a haphazard fashion of chaos or disorder but when the individual consciousness is brought to bear on them, they lose their individuality and begin to act as a single unit. This coherence extends into the world. This coherence of consciousness represents the greatest form of order known to nature and can help to shape and create order in the world. In meditation and especially in the state of Samadhi (super conscious state), our brain reaches that zero point field of the chitta which has perfect coherence. This was the method taught by the rishis to go beyond the mind and attain that state of pure knowledge in which everything else can be known. This is how they gained the vast amount of knowledge which is given in the Vedas. This is the substructure which underlies the whole universe. It is a recording medium of everything, by which everything can communicate with everything else and by which perfect knowledge can be gained, which is undiluted by causality.

Living consciousness is not an isolated entity. It is not the personal property of one individual. This much has been discovered in the quantum field. We think that each of us has a separate atman even though our scriptures tell us that when this apparently separate atman is covered with the body, it is called the jivatma but this jivatma is the same as the Paramatma – meaning to say it is not an isolated entity. This lives on even after the body dies since it has never been isolated from the whole so there is no question of going back. It simply slips into what it ever was. Like the water in the bottle returning to the water of the pool when the bottle is broken. This consciousness of people has incredible powers. It can increase order in the world and make it as we wish it to be. If a number of individuals concentrate and wish for the same thing it has even greater force. That is why we say that communal prayer has more power. The all absorbing topic of the day is how to control the climatic changes which are being increasingly felt all over the world. If enough people had a burning desire to change the situation, they would do far better if they got together and meditated on this topic, willing the minds of people to change and thus stop the terrible effects we have brought upon ourselves. This would be far more effective than holding conferences and reading papers.

Another great thing the scientist did for Hinduism is that they found out that individual consciousness is not fully associated with the death of the body which is what Hinduism has been saying all the time. Krishna says, in the Bhagavad Gita, “Like a man changing his old clothes, the spirit changes one body for another. But the spirit lives on so why grieve when someone dies. It is only his body, which was unreal in any case, which has passed on to the elements from which it came into existence. His reality is the atman which was never born and thus can never die.”

Scientific experiments have even proved that there may be something called a life current or energy flowing through the universe which Hinduism calls the Brahman. Science seems to have provided some sort of evidence for what mankind has had faith in, but no solid evidence, from the dawn of time. Thus science has put an end to dualism in the final sense. They have proved in the laboratory that the dualistic world which we think we see, is a myth, a shadow cast on the wall. The only reality is that higher collective consciousness which exists for all time in all places. This is what our Hindu scriptures have been saying from time immemorial. That is why Abrahamic faiths fear Hinduism’s pluralistic nature and core. In their heart of hearts they know that Hinduism is based on inclusive science but if they admit that, they would be exposing their own weakness. And this they will not dare to do. Hence the only way they can prove their superiority is by deriding Hinduism and trying to put down Hindu thought. This is has been in vogue since the British times and is continuing even today. Both these religions have a controlling authority which decrees what is right and wrong and what should be done by their followers. The individual is given no freedom to express his opinion as is the case with Hinduism. These religions do not really care to discover the true nature of the god they worship. They have a narrow understanding of the word salvation which is reserved only for those who believe in their god! The clergy is only interested in getting power and money for themselves. Greed and lust have replaced mysticism and love of God. They encourage their votaries to kill for the sake of a God whose nature they do not understand. They believe that he is some sort of monster living on the blood of the infidels!

It is high time that Hindus start to come forward and try and educate these people and make them understand the greatness of that Being which is given in our scriptures. Hindus should shake off this sense of inferiority which has been enforced on them by their western conquerors and start to take pride in their own culture and religion.