In the view of Physics, the "material world" is losing it's "reality". Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle was scary to Einstein and others, but I didn't really get why until I read Heisenberg on the subject. The Uncertainty Principle isn't a simple statement that some things can't be known about matter, when other things are, because it's a bit fuzzy and just intrinsically impossible to measure. It's strongest and most resisted assertion is that it's not that we don't know (for instance) the position of a particle because it's un measurable, it's that the POSITION of the particle is a factor of the degree the particle is "real". A thing's position is obviously a fundamentally important result of it's realness. What Heisenberg is saying (while trying very hard not to say it out loud) is that the EXISTENCE of particles, the degree of their being - being here, moving there and so on is subject to uncertainty, that things aren't real, they just have a degree of positionness, of velocityness. The very existence of a particle, a piece of matter is not an absolute thing, the particle just has a possibility of showing some aspects of realness, if it is observed. Now, things have gotten stranger. String theory has now been superceded by Mtheory - which it has an 11th dimension membrane positioned just infinitesimally away from the 3D universe it gives rise to. I'm not saying that's accurate, It's just my best shot at a quick description of what they're saying. The reason I'm even touching on this subject (Yeah, what has this got to do with meditation?) is that in my journey, the 100-year old physics I'd been taught at school was a considerable obstacle to my spiritual movement. I had taken to a world view composed of incorrect data, fraudulently presented as "fact". Not conducive to the spiritual life, the quest for Truth. I notice they are teaching the same incorrect stuff to the kids still. Of course, where would one find a school teacher that could explain M-theory in a halfway understandable manner, along with the main features of competing theories? The Newtonian view of reality underlies many of the dysfunctional
aspects of the current world culture. For example, in a Newtonian view,
time can only be experienced in a linear manner. Experientially, however,
the "timeline" can
be edited. Trauma in the past can be healed, not by covering it over
with later experience, but by accepting what was true, but resisted
at the moment of trauma. We are beings that live experientially, subjectively - and Science is based on an "objective" viewpoint. Even if the systems of Science supported objectivity, the "observer" is after all a human being with only his subjective experience to go on. Technology is a different thing to science. Sometimes it is "science that's been made to work", and sometimes technology advances with no regard to scientific theory. It's not suggested that one believe in technology - it's there to be experienced. Strangely, unscientifically, Science is something the culture wants its member to believe in. Look how mainstream media treat statements of disbelief in Science. Examples: 1) George Bush's lack of belief in evolution, which conflicts with his fundamentalist beliefs. 2) Thabo Mbeki's lack of belief in AZT as an AIDS cure (and it seems well established now that it isn't) was motivated by listening to leading researchers outside the influence of Pharmaceutical Industry hype. Both surely have every right to question the assertions of Science, from whatever viewpoint? Not in our culture they don't. An obvious, but overlooked issue with all science since Heisenberg is that these guys have revealed that the Newtonian view errs, yet their experimentation continues with devices with workings based on the Newtonian view. The mental flexibility required for exploration of the nature of existence is absent. A mind that has been impressed by the education system to the point at which it would be acceptable to the peer group, the Scientific Community, is crippled by it's own belief systems, of no use for exploring the great mysteries. Strangely, the main criticism of mystics now applies to scientists too. The criticism is that a mystic's discoveries depend on years of specialised training, often requires particular controlled circumstances, and only very few people, with particular training can claim to understand and appreciate the meaning in the work of their peers. Poor Science. Time to meditate. And, by the way, maybe there's something to the Physics Meditation. Eienstein looks mighty close to it sometimes: "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 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 us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." To a mystic, those are the words of a bhodisattva.
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