LIFE – AN ENQUIRY
PART- 2
I had ended my last
posting on ‘Life-An Enquiry Part-1, The Holographic Universe’ Stating that my enquiry starts with the fundamental idea that has
been arrived at by one of the world’s eminent scientists, that “beyond the
visible, tangible world there lies a deeper, implicate order of undivided
wholeness”. This was David Bohm.
Bohm called the world of
sensory experience the “explicate order” and its underlying reality the
“implicate order.” According to his theory, the universe is a dynamic series of
movements—folding into, and unfolding out of, the implicate order.
Karl Pribram in
an interview has said, “if indeed we're right that these quantum-like
phenomena, or the rules of quantum mechanics, apply all the way through to our
psychological processes, to what's going on in the nervous system -- then we
have an explanation perhaps, certainly we have a parallel, to the kind of
experiences that people have called spiritual experiences. Because the
descriptions you get with spiritual experiences seem to parallel the
descriptions of quantum physics. Now what do I mean by spiritual experience?
You talked about mental activity, calling it the mind. That aspect of mental
activity, which is very human -- it may be true of other species as well, but
we don't know -- but in human endeavour many of us at least seem to need to get
in contact with larger issues, whether they're cosmology, or some kind of
biological larger issue, or a social one, or it's formalized in some kind of
religious activity. But we want to belong. And that is what I define as the
spiritual aspects of man's nature.
The holographic
model, taken to its logical conclusion, could explain a wide range of phenomena
such as precognition, telepathy, poltergeists, lucid dreaming, and near death
experiences, to say nothing of religious and mystical experiences. The theory
is that our brains habitually unfold the implicate order in predictable ways,
but as we can change the frequency or angle of a laser beam, perhaps we can
experience other places, times, and knowledge—all equally present everywhere in
the holomovement—given the right circumstances. This was the major thrust of The
Holographic Universe.
Fritz Capra
wrote ‘The Tao of Physics’ where he explores the parallels between the findings
of modern physics and eastern mysticism. In the epilogue he writes “Science
does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science, but man needs both.”
For Carl Jung,
“My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness,
which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only
empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix),
there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal
nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does
not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, ,
which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to
certain psychic contents.”.
Jung linked the
collective unconscious to mental forms
whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual's own life and
which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind”.
So where does
this get us to – David Bohm’s ‘a deeper, implicate order of undivided wholeness’,
Karl Pribram’s ‘the descriptions you get with spiritual experiences seem to
parallel the descriptions of quantum physicS’ and Carl Jung’s theory of the ‘Collective
Unconscious’. Is this the all pervading Brahman of Hindu thought? My enquiry on
life will continue.
