Species Universe is discovering the universe as a species by locating the ultimate missing link in solving the Quantum Conundrum
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” — Ancient Chinese Proverb
In this life, knowledge is an advantage. Your advantage increases with better, more accurate knowledge. Consider the evolution and growth of knowledge in this country: science and technology have moved in leaps in bounds over the millennia. Every piece of technology we have today, every advantage, is the result of growing and increasing knowledge.
Modern science is rooted in the moment it split from religious doctrine. While religion can succeed in helping certain beliefs, it can also hinder scientific understanding and growth. It came into direct conflict with science, for example, when scientific inquiry challenged certain religious beliefs.
The great split occurred around the time Galileo proved the earth revolved around the sun. This finding upset a lot of people who believed the earth was at the center of the universe. People lost their careers, their reputation, even their lives by challenging religious doctrines. Bruno, an Italian friar, was burned at the stake because he agreed with Copernicus, who said the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the solar system.
Over the years, scientists and philosophers developed an objective scientific method. This method made science stronger. It also offered advantages denied to faith alone. These advantages touched on, and improved, every aspect of life. Education and industry, health and politics, farming and economics saw revolutions. These moves changed the world, and we still live with their benefits.
Approach to unfoldment of knowledge may follow a cycle
Although science helped to understand and change our outer lives, it also affected our inner lives. It pushed religion and spirituality to the back while it changed our lives. This change from religion to science, however, might be part of a cycle. With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, we might be moving back from the outer to the inner approach.
This cycle has created a problem of sorts for Quantum Mechanics, what we’ll call the Quantum Conundrum.
How did this happen? It starts with the materialistic perspective. This view has long challenged religious and faith-based beliefs. In short, the materialistic perspective argues that nature and its observer are independent. Nature doesn’t depend on the observer: it exists whether you do or not.
As a philosophy, religion still challenges this view. As part of science, however, the materialistic perspective has led to important breakthroughs by allowing scientists to observe or measure parts of nature while adjusting for certain biases.
For centuries, this perspective has dominated. Its basis has gone unchallenged. Then Quantum Mechanics came along.
Quantum Mechanics developed out of an experiment known as the double slit experiment. In a nutshell, it showed that atomic states represent a particle-wave duality. [For more on this experiment, we suggest watching this video.]Understanding it is crucial to recognizing this Quantum enigma. Understanding this enigma may lead us to discovering the Universe as a Species—or, as I call it Species Universe. Let’s see how this works.
In a sense, Quantum Mechanics is concerned with probabilities. Probabilities aren’t certainties. Certainties are physical realities we can locate in space and time. A probability is something that can be located in multiple possible places inside a given area. Physicists refer to this as probability distribution or a probability wave.
Probabilities aren’t physical realities. They’re only possibilities. You can’t locate them in space and time. They’re non-physical, non-local realities. In a sense, they are nothing. This Quantum Enigma arises from the understanding that observation is required to collapse the particle-wave distribution into a certainty, into a physical reality. To put it simply: without an observer, there cannot be a physical reality.
Physics Encounters Consciousness and the Quantum Conundrum is Born!
Of course, this enigma only arises out of the materialistic perspective.
“Us scientists have been looking for a physical source to the physical Universe for over four hundred years,” Dr. Michio Kaku once said. “But after four hundred years, we scientists cannot find a physical source to the physical universe. In fact, what we do find as the source to the physical universe it—get this—‘nothing.’ We scientists do not know what it means to discover ‘Nothing’ as the source of the physical universe.”
The math of quantum theory works well. It yields predictions—and results. It’s not given a wrong answer. Not in a hundred years. However, from the materialistic perspective, it has generated a great mystery. Scientists still grapple with it. Yet they accept it as part of the theory. In fact, a materialistic scientist might also assert that anyone who claims to understand Quantum Mechanics is crazy.
We must shed the materialistic view
To the materialistic scientist, quantum theory will continue to present a problem. It points to a non-physical, non-local source of the universe. Yet they’re still looking for a physical source. If we’re to make any progress, we must shed the materialistic view.
Now let’s consider Albert Einstein. He accepted the notion that the velocity of light was an anomaly of nature—and the same for all observers. From this, he inferred Special Relativity. He also did what most scientists couldn’t bring themselves to do: he accepted the equivalence of acceleration and gravity. This yielded General Relativity.
The Unified Field physics is looking for has already been discovered!
While materialism searches for a physical source to the physical universe, let’s follow Einstein’s lead and accept “Nothing” as an anomaly of nature and the source of everything. If we do accept this, then we’ll see that the Unified Field, the single theory to explain everything, has already been discovered: it’s the “Nothing” of quantum theory.
Now we must wrap our heads around the significance of that statement.
Think about it. In what ways can we think of “Nothing” as the Unified Field?
- Nothing can’t be divided into parts. There are no parts in Nothing.
- Therefore, Nothing is the only thing that, ultimately, can be the same for all observers.
- Nothing becomes the Ultimate Certainty (that Albert Einstein was looking for).
Looking to light once again
What other concepts in science support the idea that Nothing can be the source of everything? What about light?
[Watch this short video here to listen to what Physicist Peter Russell says about light.]
According to Einstein’s Relativity, a clock stops ticking at the speed of light. No time passes. There’s also no experience of movement—that is, there is no space at the velocity of light. Einstein’s conception of the velocity of light shows us that light is based on a non-physical, non-local reality—in short, it’s based on “Nothing.”
If you think of things from the point of view of light, then you can imagine that, in a sense, light doesn’t go anywhere. No time passes while it’s moving. At the same time, we can describe light as experiencing being everywhere at once, everywhere at one point—instantly.
From our point of view (looking at light), that could be two things:
- The particle / wave duality
- A singularity / Big Bang (duality)
This understanding is significant. Take a moment to reflect on it. Did you see what we did? We just unified all of creation into a single light beam. We’ve also seen that all light beams are an expression of nothing.
All of creation, from the smallest and subtlest to the largest and grossest, is a direct expression of Nothing! This, of course, includes our awareness or consciousness. Why do we experience something rather than nothing? Isn’t something from nothing still nothing?
Yes. It is.
Something from nothing is still nothing
But how, might you ask, do we account for there being something rather than nothing?
If we accept that “Nothing” is the ultimate anomaly of nature and the Unified Field of everything, then we don’t have to account for something rather than nothing.
Instead, we have to think of something in a different way
We must accept the something we experience, if it’s also the “Nothing” from which it’s made, as an illusion. This might seem like a stretch, but how can we think of it as other than nothing if it is, at its core, still nothing?
The physical universe and everything in it, here on Earth or at the other end of the universe, is Nothing.
Think back to light: the nothing of the velocity of light is everywhere at once and the everywhere of the light beam is in a singularity all at once. This means every infinitesimal part of creation is a possible universe. Sound farfetched? [Watch this video.] Quantum theory says the same thing.
Modern physics states that any part of creation can end up an entire Universe. But how, might you ask, would this make a living Universe? How would it make us think of the Universe as a species?
How does consciousness fit in here?
If something from nothing is still nothing, if the physical universe is an illusion and reality is nothing, then isn’t our consciousness going to be nothing, too?
The answer is simple: Yes.
Let’s think of this as Quantum Consciousness. How does consciousness come from nothing? Let’s consider this question. Nothing has no limits. It doesn’t have an inside or an outside. There is nothing outside of nothing. There’s only nothing. Then nothing can only do one thing. Not being able to get outside of itself it can at best refer to itself, what we’ll call the self-referral property.
If you find this confusing, try to put it into perspective. What else possesses a self-referral property? Our consciousness does. Of what am I aware when I’m aware?
The Veda describes beautifully how this happens. Understanding this is working toward discovering the universe as a species, so bear with me here.
According to the Vedic tradition when non-existence becomes existent, consciousness becomes conscious, and awareness becomes aware. What exactly does awareness become aware of if there isn’t anything physical there yet? Awareness becomes aware of being aware.
Aware that you are aware makes an illusion of two. However, there is only one thing there – awareness.
The illusion of twoness is the seed of creation. Out of it, the entire physical Universe springs forth. So, the illusion of nature, or the physical Universe, springs from awareness. This is (even) true according to the oldest tradition on our planet, the Veda.
“Nothing” ties consciousness to the physical. They’re the same thing.
What we experience as consciousness then is the self-referral nature of “Nothing.” But isn’t this self-referral nature of nothing also the same property of light? Isn’t this nothing also the particle-wave duality of quantum theory? Isn’t this nothing also the singularity-Big Bang phenomena of creation itself?
If it’s the same Nothing, then why wouldn’t it be all of the above? It must be the same nothing.
How could there be more than one Nothing?
Therefore, it must be all the same something. If you can accept this, then you must also accept that you can’t separate the self-referral nature of nothing from the particle-wave duality or from the Singularity-Big Bang. In order to have one, you must have the other(s).
Accepting Nothing as the unified field science is in search of unifies everything, including your consciousness. If there exists a physical reality, then there will also exist an awareness or consciousness. If there exists consciousness, then a physical reality also exists. They’re inseparable.
The Vedic tradition can help us here too. It describes anyone thinking of the mind and body or consciousness and the physical as two separate things as being in a state of ignorance. When the mind and body or consciousness and the physical are perceived as the same thing, then you’re in a state of enlightenment.
The point of all of this is to understand that the source of the mind and the body, of consciousness and the physical must be the same thing. Quantum theory provides evidence for this. It points to the ultimate law of unity being nothing. So, too, does the Veda. It points to the ultimate law of unity to be non-existence—or nothing.
How could the Vedic tradition find this link if it really wasn’t there? Consciousness is experienced as a non-physical, non-local reality—or nothing. That is why I think it could be useful to use the word “consciousness” to describe the source of life. However, the word “nothing” makes for a more rigorous description because it unifies the subjective and objective realities and brings consciousness into the realm of science.
Nothing can’t change, so nothing as consciousness is going to be experienced the same for all observers, whether that be an atom or a person or a Universe. The only difference is going to be how someone appreciates the experience of consciousness.
Humans, for example, have a more sophisticated nervous system than a dog does; therefore, a human has a more sophisticated appreciation of the same experience of nothing as consciousness.
We will always experience nothing the same way. This conclusion is obvious. If you can’t separate the physical from the mind or consciousness, then even the Universe must be conscious. To accept this conclusion, you should realize that it doesn’t necessarily mean the Universe is a person, or even a God. However, we should think of it as a kind of living organism.
I choose to think of it as a living species, so I call it Species Universe.
The ultimate advantage
Remember there is only an advantage if our understanding reflects the true nature of things, not if it doesn’t. And if there is an ultimate unity to nature as everything indicates there is then there must be an ultimate best advantage. Just maybe we already have that ultimate understanding!
Now how are we to think of our relationship to the Universe as a Species?
Follow along as I bring more definition to this amazing new idea of discovering the Universe as a living species by locating the ultimate missing link in solving the Quantum Conundrum.
or as I like to say – Species Universe
John
Do you think this perspective of thinking that the Universe is a living Species has any merit,
let me know in the comments below…
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