Try and imagine for a few moments that you, and the chair you’re sitting in, everyone else and the world around you – is not solid – but on the contrary, is made up of waves of dancing energy.
In actual fact, this is the underlying scientific reality – because when we look through an electron microscope at eg. one of our hands, deep beneath the world of the senses, down through the seemingly solid layers, we arrive at a level where there are only waves of dancing energy, and where there is no time and space.
Yet, we are naturally concerned with these three solid, physical and tangible dimensions, as if they are the only ones that matter. We analyse them, calculate to the micro-second rates of movement, and measure the spaces between them.
Yet, we know scientifically, as we go down through this seemingly physical world of matter, there is no real calculation or measurement to be made; for electrons/photons of light (the essence of physical matter) can be at one end of the universe and here at the same time i.e. they are omnipresent – having no time or space. Like a tiny drop of water in a rolling river, it is only possible to say I saw it there at that moment – but in the river’s great flow, that is really meaningless – because in trying to analyse and think objectively about such things, we are pretending that we are walking along the river bank – while in actual fact, we are also part of the great flowing river.
So what are we now to say about the underlying nature of reality?
Our three physical dimensions are not just physical – at the deepest level they are timeless and space less beyond the world of the senses; but when we are not living in our brains and analysing everything outside ourselves, we also know we can to some extent experience this deeper reality of timelessness and spacelessness eg when we are dreaming – we can experience a vast interplay of events where we can roam from one end of the world to another, and be involved in all sorts of ‘long’ adventures in the space of a few minutes. Or, when we are engaged in deep creativity, totally absorbed in some sort of artistic expression (writing, painting, sculpting, etc), on becoming conscious once again of these three solid physical dimensions, we are amazed at how much time has passed.
In the 1960’s a number of more thoughtful physicists (eg Fritjof Capra) realised that this quantum reality they were trying to describe, was also the same one that some mystics (and poets) were attempting to describe – albeit in religious language. In other words, both physicist and mystic were articulating something of the deeper world of dancing reality beyond our everyday senses of these three physical dimensions. Deep dreaming or creative expression are not necessarily merely personal articulations of the unconscious brain, but can have connectivity with the much deeper, atomic levels of physical reality.
In Star Trek, they say ‘the truth is out there’. I want to say that this is a materialistic view of reality, and instead say ‘the truth is through there’.
When one begins to try and grasp this (and it can’t be grasped by walking along the mythical riverbank of objectivity, pretending we are not part of these fields of dancing energy) one begins to realise the excitement engendered, as our waking consciousness opens us up to the fact that we are not completely bound by three physical dimensions, and how to survive in them, but that everything is held together by dimensions of energy that have no time or space.
So one may pose a number of questions. Firstly, where is the sheer proliferation and individuality of life coming from – from the quantum level or merely adapting over aeons of time at the physical/material level?
Quite reasonably, those who reject a fearful, religious reason for life on earth – a thesis which seeks to explain things in terms of God, His written word and revealed orders for existence – have produced an antithesis – a secular, three-dimensional, and linear narrative i.e. evolution.
Most creationists are time-bound in their interpretation of how life came into being: but so are evolutionists – the only difference between them being that the former believes in a creator God who bought the living earth into being in 4004BC at 9 o’clock in the morning, and the latter who, refusing to wrestle with the implications, insights and revelations of quantum physics, can only cling to these three physical dimensions, and pretend that life has a linear narrative that can be traced back in physical time to about four and a half billion years ago. Despite our wholesale destruction of each other and the planet herself, particularly today, they still believe in the idea of human progress, and that everything is getting better.
But, as we have seen, ‘through there’ , there is no time or space.
So how are we to make sense of this seeming contradiction? If we are walking along the riverbank, we know for certain that our ancestors had ancestors etc, and fossils show us a variety of animals that no longer exist today. But in exactly in which prehistoric period are we to place them? Indeed, how accurate is our understanding of time in these three physical dimensions?
What if there have been huge, cataclysmic changes in the physical universe which completely upset how our modern dating methods are calculated, or alternatively, ‘eruptions’ from the quantum level of reality into our seemingly solid, physical experience?
Let us take the first; any dating method must have a constant – a time to measure other things against. I was born in ‘x year’, my father 35 years before that etc. The Spanish Armada sailed 98 years before the Great Fire of London etc. However, the further we go back through recorded human history, the more tentative becomes our dating.
Take the radio-carbon method of dating which measures the amount of solar radiation that has been absorbed by something that has been alive eg (a tree or a human bone) and which then decays at a measurable rate. This dating method is usually expressed in terms of plus or minus eg 15 or 30 years. However, there are some dates that, even using this method, are hotly debated. Why? Could it be that we do not know how much solar radiation was hitting the earth at any given time? Has the ozone layer, that does much to protect us from harmful solar radiation, been thicker or thinner at any given period? Have massive volcanic eruptions cast dust clouds around the earth from time to time, such that far less radiation hit the earth, and thus organic material such as plants and bones took up much less?
Dendracology – the study of trees and tree ring development, shows that there have been at least five major eruptions in the last six and a half thousand years. The mythologies of ancientChina, ancientAmerica,Indiaand theNear Eastseem to describe near misses, or indeed impacts by comets or asteroids which caused huge earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions affecting much of the planet. Such events could instantly and completely alter, not just the geological landscape, but cause instant ice ages, and massive sea level rises and falls. Hence, if we accept these type of events, much geological dating can be disputed eg after the Mount St Helen’s volcanic eruption, sedimentary rock, feet thick, was laid down straight away.
Why do we ignore, or at least push back into the very distant past, this view of cataclysm? Is it because we have chosen to believe in a reassuring philosophy of gradualism, that pretends to have relinquished the terror experienced by our religiously obsessed ancestors, who had little understanding of time and space let alone science?
What if, instead of a ‘Big Bang’, (that many believe initiated linear time) everything in the great quantum dance of the timeless multi-dimensional universe, is continually expressing itself into our three physical dimensions, and continues to hold them together in a continuous dance of differentiation.
Our linear view of the past disappears into the mists of time a mere 6 or 7 thousand years ago. This recorded period (or at least its earliest artefacts) seem understandable to us with our more sophisticated technologies. However the hubris of the prevailing evolutionary narrative prevents us from asking why eg Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples, who we like to think of as small tribes of hunter/gatherers or semi-pastoralists, were even thinking about, let alone carving out and shifting vast menhirs weighing some 40 – 70 tons over vast distances. As with the religious, everything that does not fit the evolutionary narrative is ignored. Why have we inherited myths from American, Chinese, and Semitic peoples, as well as incredible structures many of which seem to be concerned with the heavens – with astrological progression, planets, asteroids and comets? They tell, and foretell of disasters befalling the peoples of the earth, and the need to propitiate the gods. Much of the origin of ancient religion can be seen in this fearful and terrifying light, but today’s prevailing evolutionary narrative all but ignores such events.
Unlike the more insightful quantum physicists and mystics, who strain towards an understanding of deeper reality, our materialistic culture has little interest in facing up to the implications of what has already happened to the planet, and what will inevitably happen again when the next comet or asteroid closes in on us, and once again wreaks havoc.
Two of the most insightful physicists of the last century, unhappy with the materialistic versus spiritual explanation for reality, posited a new revolutionary view – a unifying theory of matter, mind and consciousness – that increasing numbers of scientists are now taking seriously.
These are, David Bohm, a protégé of Einstein, and one of the founders of quantum physics, Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist (who wrote Language of the Brain). Both arrived at their conclusions independently. Dissatisfied with prevailing theories, they posited the idea that the universe is a sort of giant hologram. Since then, experiments have ‘demonstrated that the web of sub-atomic particles that compose our physical universe (the very fabric of reality itself) possesses what appears to be an undeniable holographic property.’
As Pribram said ‘ it isn’t that the world of appearances is wrong; it isn’t that there aren’t solid objects out there at one level of reality – it’s that if you penetrate through and look at the universe as a holographic system, you arrive at a different view, a different reality’.So what is a hologram? It is produced when a single, laser light is split into two separate beams. The first beam is bounced off the object to be photographed. Then the second beam is allowed to collide with the reflected light of the first, and the resulting interference pattern recorded on film. The film is blurry, and looks nothing like the object photographed. However, when another bright light source is shone through it, a three-dimensional image of the original object reappears – an image you can walk around, or through, or view from different angles. Further, if you cut the holographic film into bits, and repeat the process, you will still get a complete three-dimensional view of the object i.e. each bit contains the whole!
Question: how far away is the nearest point of the hologram to the fartherest? From our physical perspective, we can measure it. However, bearing in mind that every part contains the whole, and that the photons that create the hologram are everywhere and at once, at this level no measurement is meaningful.
Question: if reality is holographic, how far away are distant galaxies? From our physical perspective, we measure such distances in light years, but in terms of a quantum – holographic perspective, that light is always here. It is only because our atoms and molecules are resonating on this ‘seemingly’ physical frequency, that time/space is measurable.
If any of the above makes any sense at all to the deeper, reflective reader, they will perceive that I am trying to make sense of two very different attitudes to reality, i.e. there are those that live and operate solely on a physical, materialistic level, and those that also do the same, but yet retain a sense of the transcendent and mysterious nature of reality. What I hope is that, reflecting deeply, the ancient ideas of omnipresence and imminence will once again resonate in the deeper being beyond our analytical brains, and provide a greater understanding and acceptance of what – to our common peril – has all but been exiled.
‘Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God
But only he who sees,
Takes off his shoes’ (Browning)
20 October 2015
Jeremy Bell