Science and mysticism

Science  and mysticism
By Marinus Jan Marijs

Mysticism

With mysticism is not meant theological speculation, not organised religion or dogmatic pronunciations.
  With mysticism is meant not a conceptual but a perceptual approach to the transcendent.
 A direct contact, a union.
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W. T. Stace wrote:

“Bertrand Russell, a philosopher who cannot be suspected of sentimentality, or of softheadedness, or of a bias m favour of mysticism, wrote in a famous essay as follows: “The greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism.” He adds that the union of the mystic and the man of science constitutes “the highest eminence, as I think, that it is possible to achieve in the world of thought,” Further, “this emotion [mysticism]  iS the inspirer of whatever is best in man.” ^ This, it will be seen, is a remarkably high estimate of the value of mysticism.

As examples of this union of mysticism and science in the greatest philosophers, Russell mentions Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, and Spinoza, but this list is obviously intended to be only exemplificatory and not exhaustive

“Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, London, Longmans, Green & Co, Inc, 1921, pp i, 4, and 1 “
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Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy:
“Mystics may be mistaken in their interpretations of their experiences. But they ought to know what the experiences themselves are like better than Russell does. And they invariably say that they are more like perceptions than emotions;

the perception of a subjective but quasi-physical light which sometimes, but not always, accompanies the onset of mystical consciousness — as due to molecular rearrangements m the brain.”

Plato was deeply influenced by mystical ideas, and there are several passages in his writings which suggest that he was him- self a mystic.
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Quantum theory

Quantum theory, is the most successful framework modern physics
The equations based insist upon them, they predict phenomena with an astonishing accuracy.
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There is a number of similarity between the worldview which mystics described for millennia and the worldview of the modern theoretical physicist:     

Faith and science: A scientist has to have faith in the mathematical intelligibility of the universe, which is the basis of science,
How mystical and scientific insights converge

Pythagoras said everything is number and the modern idea in theoretical physics that everything is information, that information is more basic , more fundamental than mater.  (The Logos)

Quantum theory:
Schrodinger wrote about  
the relationship between universal consciousness and individual consciousness,
 which is captured in in Sanskrit in the Vedic slogan :  “This Atman is Brahman” , or  I am  This Atman – Brahman

Schrodinger one of the creators of  Quantum mechanics, credits this slogan to having taken him to the discovery that a state function  of a physical object should be described as a superposition of all possibilities. 
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Paul Davis: “Every theoretical physicist is a Platonist, whether they realis it or not.”

Roger Penrose is a strong Platonist.

Heisenberg one of the creators of  Quantum mechanics  wrote that Quantum theory proved that the world is platonic.
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The Creative Cosmos
Ervin Laszlo:
“Scientists speculated that the world to which language and the ‘text of science ‘refers is mental rather than material. ‘To put the conclusion crudely, ‘said Eddington, ‘the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.’ Jeans agreed :  ‘… the cumulative evidence of various pieces of probable reasoning makes it seem more and more likely that reality is better described as mental than as material…the universe seems to be nearer to a great thought than a great machine.’ Heisenberg, perhaps the most philosophically orientated of all the great quantum physicists, took recourse to Platonic idealism. Just as Plato had dissolved the materialism of the pre-Socratic philosophers in the abstract world of ideal forms and ideas, so today the deterministic world of classical mechanics is dissolved in mathematical formulas.

They would tend to diverge and diverge rather than converge and unify.”

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  Heisenberg  on Plato
See: article on this website:
www …..
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The beginning of time
 
Until the twentieth century scientists did believe I a steady state universe, until cosmological observations (the red shift and the background radiation) showed that there was a beginning of time,
This was already claimed in the book of Genesis.
 
Augustin and the beginning of time
Augustine of Hippo; also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions.
Augustine was asked:” What did God before the creation?
He said that there was no before, because time started when God created the world.
This corresponds with the idea in modern cosmology that there was no time before the Big Bang.
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Cosmological fine tuning

The early universe appears to have begun in a state of extraordinary low entropy.
This special condition allowed structure, complexity and ultimately life to arise  
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The simplicity of God and 70 cubits
It has been claimed that you cannot explain the complexity of the world, by postulating the existence of a God  because then Cod must be even more complex.
However,
 while todays supercomputers can handle about 240 trillion calculations a second.
Quantum computers so far don’t have more than around 70 cubits ot play with but it’s a testament to how much [power quantum rules give you, that already Quantum computers can do in seconds with just that number of cubits, some calculations that would  take todays classical supercomputers a billion years or so The simplicity of God means not only that God is not made up of his attributes, but in the bible

God is the most simple being; for that which is first in nature, having nothing beyond it, cannot by any means be thought to be compounded; for whatsoever is so, depends upon the parts whereof it is compounded, and so is not the first being: now God being infinitely simple, hath nothing in himself which is not himself, .

Technically spoken something that is outside space and time cannot be complex.
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Kalpa and the beginning of the solar system
Our solar gystem is 4.56 billion years old.
A Kalpa is a duration of time in Hinduism covering a complete cosmic cycle from the origination to the destruction of a world system
A kalpa has a duration of 4.32 billion years is close to the age of the solar system.
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Plato and Near death experience
 
The Myth of Er from Plato’s Republic tells the story of a soldier, Er, who is thought to be dead and descends to the underworld. But when he revives he is sent back to tell humanity what awaits them in the afterlife. Er describes an afterlife where the just are rewarded and the wicked are punished.
This is a description of a. Near death experience.
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Theosophy and the neutron, isotopes by a brit his theosophy by paranormal perception 

In Dean Radin’s book; ‘Entangled minds’

Radin, Dean: “Entangled Minds”. Paraview, New York 2006, there is the following story:

“Sir J.J. Thomson at Cambridge University (who discovered the electron), hired Francis Aston as an assistant. Aston had read a 1908 book; ‘Occult Chemistry’ by British Theosophists Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater. In that book, Besant and Leadbeater described their clairvoyant vision of the internal structure of atoms, including a new form of the element neon, which they called meta-neon. They claimed that meta-neon had an atomic weight of 22.33. In 1912, Aston discovered a substance at that atomic weight while analysing neon gas. He also dubbed it meta-neon in a paper presented to the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Aston’s discovery was later labelled an ‘isotope’, and it became a key discovery about atomic structure… …Aston received the 1922 Nobel Prize for his work.”
(Page 67 – 68)

A more elaborate description of this story is to be found in the Journal ‘Physics World’, in the September 2003 issue is an article by Jeff Hughes: ‘Occultism and the atom: the curious story of isotopes’.

Dr. Stephen M. Phillips, a qualified ‘theoretical physicist’ (MA from Cambridge University, UK, and Ph. D from the University of California, Los Angeles): “Besant and Leadbeater had discovered in 1907 the neon-22 isotope by psychic means five years before scientists found it…
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Neon/Atomic mas  s(atomic weight)   20.1797 u

In 1985, the Commission reduced the uncertainty of the standard atomic weight further and recommended A_r(Ne) = 20.1797(6) by combining the earlier results with new calibrated measurements.

Atomic Weight of Neon | Commission on Isotopic … – ciaaw

Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights

https://ciaaw.org › neon  

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Concepts which mystics described for millennia and the worldview of the modern theoretical physicist:

Telepathy: This implies Non-local connection.
Non-locality is proven within theoretical physics.
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Evidence for the paranormal

Seven sigma  Dean Radin 
Several research papers and publications by Dr. Dean Radin, often in collaboration with others, have reported results exceeding seven standard deviations (7-sigma,

typically in the context of the Global Consciousness Project (GCP) or double-slit interference experiments.

A “seven sigma” result indicates that the odds against the observed effects being due to chance are extremely high (roughly 1 in 390 billion). 

Here are the key publications and related PDFs from Dean Radin regarding these high-sigma findings:

• Global Consciousness Project (7-Sigma Results)

For a physicist  to announce a discovery, they must achieve a certain level of certainty referred to as five sigma, which means the event has only one in 3.5 million chance of being a fluke, to  achieve this certainty level  requires high-level statistical techniques and a deep understanding of theoretical productions combined with knowledge od the field.
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Precognition:   The simultaneous existence of the future in a block universe gives a theoretical framework in which precognition can be placed.
The block universe and the concept of precognition
  foreknowledge of an event, especially as a form of extrasensory perception, has been postulated for millennia in religious writings and its existence is supported by modern parapsychological research.
This seems to suggest that the future  already exists.
This corresponds with:
The four-dimensional block universe, supported by Einstein’s theory of relativity, is a world where past, present and future are equally real.
               

The Absolute is a theological concept, which corresponds with the platonic realm from the mathematicians.
According to the Vedanta and  Neoplatonism, in the beginning was only Being; the Absolute, One without a second. Out of itself he brought forth the cosmos and entered into everything in it. There is nothing that does not come from it. Of everything it is the inmost.

Marcus Aurelius was Roman emperor from 161 to 180:

“All things are linked with one another, and this oneness is sacred; there is nothing that is not interconnected with everything else. For things are interdependent, and they combine to form this universal order. “
— Marcus Aurelius 121 –180 AD

Mohandas Gandhi :
“I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore also of humanity. 
What though we have many bodies?  We have but one soul.[21]”
 — Mohandas Gandhi, 1869-1948

Albert Einstein wrote:

“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

 
Creation, which implies a beginning of time is a theological concept, which corresponds with the Big Bang cosmology.

Omnipresence is a theological concept, which corresponds with
non-locality  in physics
The state of omnipresence is described to the presence of God everywhere at the same time.

Non-local ity
Physicists like John Bell and Alain Aspect have established that the universe at its most basic level is non-local  that information doesn’t travel between two distant points, because it does not need to travel anywhere at all – it exists everywhere. This presents us with the vision of a participatory universe in which everything is interconnected and interdependent, a seamless whole of mind-stuff, i.e. consciousness.

Hinduism uses a similar image to describe the interconnectedness of all phenomena. It is called Indra’s Net. When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web a pearl is tied. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought about, every piece of true information is a pearl in Indra’s net.
Every pearl is tied to every other pearl by virtue of the web on which they hang, and on the surface of every pearl is the reflection of every other jewel on the net. Everything that exists in Indra’s web implies all else that exists.
(This is strogly reminiscent of Leibniz monadology)

The concept of a transcendent organising principle from theology. Corresponds to the data relating to the the \of fundamental constants from Physics and mathematica.

Faith and science:
A scientist has to have faith in the mathematical intelligibility of the universe, which is the basis of science.
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Similarities between mystical insights and scientific discoveries

Akasha chronicles and the block universe
The concept of the Akashic Records

Is that all information is encoded in a non-physical plane of existence. Because it is believed that the records are encoded into the inherent fabric of space, some have likened the concept of a block universe.

 
Thomas van Aquino  and nonlocality
non-locality which was put forward in quantum theory in the 20^th century, was already postulated in the 13^th century by Thomas van Aquino     

Platonic realm, wave function
Plato described the Platonic realm and the platonic forms  as being outside space and time, the wave function is nonlocalised in space and time..
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Consciousness within many spiritual traditions, is the ground of being, from which everything materialises, and that there is only one universal consciousness.
Many famous thinkers  have said similar statements.

IN 1931, Max Planck, a great pioneer of quantum theory, said:

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.[1]

The Nobel-prize winning quantum physicist, Erwin Schrodinger said:

Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.[2]

Sir Arthur Eddington, one of the founding fathers of the new physics, said:

The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind… To put the conclusion crudely — the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.[3]

Or, as astrophysicist Erich Jantsch said:

God is not the creator, but the Mind of the universe.
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Eddington summed up in his epigram: “The stuff oft world is mind-stuff.”
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Mathematics works not approximately but exactly to incredible precision -… the calculations agree with experiments to eight decimal places, that’s like predicting the distance from New York to Los Angeles and being off by less than the whith of a human hair (Richard Feynmam)
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From Wikipedia:

“The ultimate goal of mysticism is to realize the unity of self and the absolute-that “Thou Art That, “as the Upanishads say. Here, surely, is more than a passing resemblance to the 4-D, interconnected world model envisaged by modern science. Remarkably, through simple contemplation, mystics have reached an understanding of the deep structure of physical reality that Western science has only recently begun to appreciate.
Eastern thinking does not see time in the same way as does the Judeo- Christian  tradition- as a linear progression through a world separate from God to an afterworld heaven ( or hell ). In the Eastern vision, time, like self, is not real. The world as we see it is not real, nor is it slowly evolving toward some state of perfection; it is perfect every moment if only we are able to realize it. Truth exists in the timeless and universal Now, the eternity of every instant- the block universe of the space-time physicist.
We have imposed a dualistic split upon reality. Only by direct insight, the mystic believes , can we see the truth that observer and observed are one.”.
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The block universe
 
“There is no natural way in which time can flow in Minkowski’s space-time. At least within classical physics, space-time is a block- it simply is. This is known as the block universe view of time. Everything- past, present and future – is there at once. Some authors claim that nothing in relativity corresponds to the experienced Now: there are just point-like events in space-time and no extended Nows. At the psychological level, Einstein himself felt quite disturbed about this. Reporting a discussion, the philosopher Rudolf Carnap wrote :
  Einstein said that the problem of Now worried him seriously. He explained that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics. That this experience cannot be grasped by science seemed to him a matter of painful but inevitable resignation. So he concluded “that there is something essential about the Now which is just outside the realm os science.”
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When we  compare science  and mysticism ,they seem to have different validity claims.
And as science  is objective, external, mysticism is subjective internal.
However the formalisms on which scientific proof is based depend heavily on mathematics and logic. Mathematics  and logic are interior realities  ( nobody has ever seen the square root  of negative one out there in the empirical world).

But what exactly is mysticism and how can it be verified? The claim, after all , is that in some sense mysticism is disclosing TRUTHS about the Kosmos, and is not merely a series of subjective emotional states.

Mysticism involves a broad science of the higher levels of human development.
This has had numerous applications in the “real world “, from politics, philosophy, worldviews, ethics, social structures, art to education, and the motivation of scientists as well.
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Arthur Koestler in The lotus and the robot:

“In the West, in the days of the Pythagorean Brotherhood, and again during the early Renaissance, the great  scholars were also great mystics and considered the  pursuit of Science as a form of worship. This was also true of Einstein, who was a deeply religious man, or of Max Planck, the founder of the quantum theory; and Kepler, the father of modern astronomy, regarded Science as an approach to the ultimate mystery. How does this approach relate to Indian thought?

I asked His Holiness whether the doctrines of Hindu religion are meant to be interpreted literally or as symbols.

He answered:
‘Every such idea must be understood literally and not symbolically.’ He then went on to explain that ‘a comparative study of Hindu and Christian doctrines revealed that the fundamental philosophical truths of Hinduism appear in Christian religion as dogmas based on a misunderstanding of their original meaning’, Thus the ‘Adam’ of the Scriptures is to be traced to Atma, which in the original Sanskrit was Ad-ma, and ‘Eve’ corresponds to Jiva (the individual self). In the Upanishads there is a reference to two birds sitting on
 the same tree. One bird eats the fruit of the tree. The other simply looks on without eating. I’he bird which eats the fruit is Jiva ~ Eve. The bird which simply looks on is the supreme Atma-Adam. I hc tree on which the two birds are seated is the pineapple, which is akin to the Biblical apple. It is also known as the Bodhi tree, or the Tree of Knowledge. It was while sitting under it that the Buddha got enlightenment, Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge. But in the transition of the idea from India, the real significance of the Upanishadic motive was lost.
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