by Jonathan Davis
August 06, 2015
from UpLiftConnect Website

Spanish version

 

 

 

 

 



Does Science and Mysticism Agree that Reality is an Illusion?

You may be aware of the fact that tech billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX is now publicly stating his belief that it is mathematically impossible in a practical sense, that we are not living in a computer simulation.

 

His logic is surprisingly sensible.

 

In 1972 we had Pong, a rudimentary simulation of table tennis. Now we have games that are near photorealistic. If we keep to this course, we will create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, even if it takes us a few more thousands of years, it will happen.

 

So if it will happen…

  • How do we know it hasn't already happened?

  • How do we know we're living in the base reality and are not already in a simulation?


There's a one in billions chance

we're in base reality.

Elon Musk
 


Recently, a team of Japanese scientists also announced they have found 'clearest evidence yet' that the universe is a hologram.

 

While this may be the most recent effort to prove the holographic universe theory among numerous others, science has been perplexed by the insubstantial nature of reality since well before holographic theory existed - not to mention the mystics and philosophers who have been suggesting the same thing (in less reductionist terms) for thousands of years.

 

 

 


From the Ancient East to Modern West

Eastern mysticism has long held the perspective that our physical reality is really maya or illusion.

 

First century buddhist philospoher-poet Aśvaghoṣa put it that,

'all phenomena in the world are nothing but the illusory manifestation of the mind and have no reality of their own'.

While 13th century sufi mystic Rumi suggested that,

'this place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real.'

Jump all the way forward to the 1960s, and a wave of eastern mysticism crashed on the shore of western culture thanks to public figures like Alan Watts .

 

Perhaps out of everyone, his is the most captivatingly poetic rendering of the subject.

 

For the full experience, take a look at this beautiful new short film from Aaron Paradox:
 

 

 


'Kensho'

from Aaron Paradox
 

 

 

 

Quantum Conundrum

Since the emergence of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, science has struggled to reconcile the conundrum of reality no longer being able to be identified as something in any way permanent or fixed, and it was with impermanence that the first echoes of eastern philosophy began ringing uncomfortably within the walls of science.

 

Neils Bohr, one of the fathers of quantum theory is famously quoted as saying:
 


 Everything we call real is made of

things that cannot be regarded as real.

If quantum mechanics

hasn't profoundly shocked you,

you haven't understood it.

Neils Bhor
 


This sentiment was clearly understood by physicist Henry Stapp who said,

'There is no substantive physical world in the usual sense of this term. The conclusion here is not the weak conclusion that there may not be a substantive physical world, but rather that there definitely is not a substantive physical world.'

Einstein even described reality and an,

'optical delusion of consciousness' and stated that 'reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one'.

As eastern philosophy spread into the western world with the influence of figures like Alan Watts and Frijof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics (1975), the question began to spread as to whether quantum physicists were in fact observing phenomena with electron microscopes that had already been observed thousands of years before via meditation.

 

What has been even less known is that the founders of quantum physics were in fact students of the vedic texts, and were not just accidentally observing similarity.

 

They were looking for it, and found it.

 

Neils Bhor stated that he would,

'go into the Upanishads to ask questions'.

Werner Heisenberg shared that,

'quantum theory will not look ridiculous to people who have read Vedanta."

Irwin Schrödinger thought that,

'the unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. This is entirely consistent with the Vedanta concept of All in One.'


You are not a drop in the ocean.

You are the entire ocean in a drop.

Rumi
 

 


 In 1999 The Matrix

took questioning reality

to the masses.
 

 

 

 

From Recent History to the Not-Too-Distant Future

In the 90s, 'dark poet' comedian Bill Hicks helped awaken a generation with statements like his positive news story:

'Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing ourselves subjectively.

 

There's no such thing as a death, life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves… here's Tom with the weather', as well as his beautifully inspiring Just A Ride riff.

Then, by the end of the 90s we had The Matrix.

 

Like no piece of media before it, The Matrix was a pop culture breakthrough causing the very question of whether reality is actually real to be considered at least once by the tens of millions of people who have now seen it.

In the years since the turn of the new century, science has gained the courage to openly explore topics like,

We may well be witnessing a generational change on the kind of scale that Thomas S. Kuhn was referring to when he coined the phrase 'paradigm shift' in his seminal 1972 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
 


A scientific truth does not triumph

by convincing its opponents

and making them see the light,

but rather because its opponents eventually die

and a new generation grows up

that is familiar with it.

Max Planck,

one of the other fathers

of quantum physics
 


Will this paradigm shift bring a full re-unification of science and spirit?

 

Speaking on behalf of those who seek truth as much from outside the boundaries of rational reductionism as within it, I really hope so.

 

I know if I was a scientist, I'd have my mind on catching up with the the ideas of Nikola Tesla, (well known to have studied the Vedic texts), a man who like Copernicus, was born at least a hundred years before his time...