What is Mind ? It doesn't Matter...and What is Matter? Never Mind :-) the perpetual riddle and the eternal wisdom

The rationale : The unity of Matter and Energy is a perpetual and intriguing part of human thought. This paper is an overview of the exploration to see unity of Matter and Energy as traced in the ancient Indian scriptures like the Upanishads and the Vedas: its reiteration by many like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo and the same expressed by leading scientists like Heisenberg, Bohr, Tesla, Einstein and others. Though the quest is perpetual, the trigger for this paper was a certain incident and reactions. It all started when a highly placed person claimed that cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in March 2018, once said that the Vedas have a theory that is superior to Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking equation, E=mc2. Neither the Vedic Rishis nor Einstein or Hawking needed such certificate to prove their inerasable mark and profound contribution in the evolutionary march. However, this utterance led to a bitter debate on cyber world and media. It also provoked many netizens to attack such seemingly far fetched and unsupported remarks. While it was perhaps right to point out flaws in such sweeping statements, in the process these critics went too far and questioned the very truth and uniqueness of Indian philosophy, its revelations and negated the consistent pursuit of it in our culture. One of the key aspect of this attack was proving the unscientific nature of the Indian thought. Whether Stephen Hawking really said the above statement or not can be always debated and it may remain a mystery since the great scientist is no more. But it is true that mass and energy being one is already proclaimed in ancient Indian philosophy of the Vedas and the Upanishads and same was stressed by Swami Vivekananda in his talk to Tesla and in public forums. We can see it again in the works of Sri Aurobindo and many other sages and philosophers. Einstein was in fact refuted by Hawking when the later said that Universe does have indeterminism as God does play dice. So there is somewhere a profound truth in this whole issue. Problem is when people on either side try to connect these links more out of ego than out of dispassionate enquiry and put it clumsily without proper linkages. The beginning of this work was while refuting an unsymapthetic and unprovoked attack by one such netizen who challenged that there is no reference of such unity in ancient Indian scriptures, nor has ancients as well as modern science proved it experimentally. He said that any attempt of saying that Vedantic texts had any scientific notion like this is pure fiction if not suffronization. We will explore the truth through a series of questions and answers that ensued. Q 1: Modern Science has proved things experimentally. The ancients never thought of it or they only faintly thought about it. Even Einstein’s equation was proved in laboratory by J.J. Thomson. J. J. Thomson was not just an experimental physicist, but also a philosopher. He conducted cathode ray experiments to prove his theory that an atom has electrons. Whatever theories scientists proposed, they were experimentally verified later and then were confirmed. So to say that experiments in physical laboratories always preceded scientific discoveries is misleading. In modern science, many things are proven by thought experiments and not by actual experiments. The famous Schrodinger’s cat is one such experiment. Now about your proof of the equation by experiment: Thomson a natural philosopher in 1881, John Henry in 1884, Henry Poincare in 1900 wrote about the matter energy unity and it was 1904 when Fritz Hasenöhrl created a thought experiment involving heat energy in a moving cavity. All this paved way to Einstein’s papers which started getting published from 1905 onwards. No fission experiment was done then: it was human thought and mathematics. Still Einstein himself was not convinced with his conclusion in initial papers and wrote many papers in next 40 years to patch the gaps. Nucleus and Protons were proposed in 1911 and 1913 by Rutherford and others. The experimental apparatus with which Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission was in 1938. This again proves that thought preceded and was able to conclude that which experiments only verified later. Scientists even found some particles by intuition and the actual presence of those was proved experimentally much later. Q 2: But we don’t see any proof of experiments in the Vedas. It seems audacious to say that there is NO such proof of unity in the Vedas. Really who claims that he knows all the verses of the Vedas and also knows exact meaning of each of them. The very secret of Vedas is profound and demands more study if not humility. The key words have many meanings. Even simple words like “Ashwa” and “Go”. The words mean different at different planes of mind but those details cannot be given here and should be read. Also opposite of experimental is not hypothetical. At mental level as well it is true and can be experimented. So mentally, rationally, it is proven, not all is assumed and everything is a hypothesis. In fact Tarka or Logic was one of the means of knowledge, there were other means like Pramana, Anumana, Pratyaksha, etc. but Knowledge by being, by identity is the highest way considered by the ancient Indian epistemology, and is reiterated by visionaries like Sri Aurobindo. The Unity of existence is the central theme of the Veda and the Vedanta, the unity of individual with environment, with society and with entire becoming is proclaimed and sought. So unity of matter and energy is essential and just a small subset of this theme. Q 3: Was this idea of duality of matter and energy always dominant in human societies? No. It became dominant as a result of some developments in recent centuries especially after scientific revolution. The medieval outlook of the world was mainly that of an organic, spiritual, and living universe. However, since the seventeenth century up to beginning of the twentieth century, the paradigm for the nature of existence has changed dramatically. That was the time when physics was seen as a true, exact science and the root of all other sciences. Thus, classical physics led to a mechanistic view of reality, and was largely shaped by three outstanding persons: Sir Isaac Newton with his mathematical theory, Rene Descartes with his rational philosophy, and Francis Bacon with his methodology of scientific experimentation. Thereafter, Matter was thought to be the basis of all existence and the material world was declared to be an assemblage of different objects in a huge machine. Thus, it was believed that any complex phenomenon can be understood by reducing it to its elementary building blocks and by understanding the mechanisms among such blocks. Q 4: When did this materialistic view got its first shock? In their victorious investigations, scientists soon came across the phenomena of magnetism which was not explainable by mechanistic terms. This was taken up by Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) who further discovered that there is not only an entity like force but also something called as force-field. This means that there is something which is independent of material bodies and yet real and powerful. This led to the discovery that even light is an electromagnetic field behaving like waves in space. Yet, the dominance of Newtonian mechanics was so strong that Maxwell himself tried to explain these waves as resulting from the elastic behaviour of ‘Ether’ Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) and Hendrik Lorentz (1853-1928) developed this idea further and found that matter itself is elastic. John B. Stallo (1823-1900) raised the doubt as to how the atom can be solid as well as elastic! Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) described the atom as a spinning vortex ring in the ether. However, the problem is this: If one starts with basic building blocks adding them up to make any object, then the smallest particle would have no properties and not even magnitude. Q 5: Give some details of this shift in thinking about Matter. This happened when the normal limits of observations were crossed. That is while experimenting at smallest possible levels like atomic experiments and at the largest levels like astronomy. Every time the scientists asked a question in their atomic experiments, Nature answered them with a paradox. The more they tried to clarify, the sharper became the paradoxes. The view of reality that emerged depended on what questions were asked, and thus there was no certainty. Opposites appeared as equally true and logic wasn’t working at those smallest levels of matter. Neils Bohr (1885-1962) explained that these were not pairs of opposites but pairs of complementary things. Their coexistence and equal viability meant that they were complementary to each other, and thereby completed the whole of which they were mere parts (Jitatmananda, 2002, p64). Scientists found themselves in doubt for the first time due to these shattering findings which were shifting the entire foundation of science. Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) rightly asked, ‘Can nature possibly be as absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?’ Q 6: So what is meant by Energy and Matter unity? Energy is matter and matter is energy. The fact that particles are not isolated entities but are wave like probability patterns and they have their existence due to relations of these patterns make them to behave in a peculiar way. This means that more the particles are confined, the faster they move. This also means that there is certain restlessness in matter, though at the macroscopic level it appears inert. In a sense, it is alive at microscopic dimensions. Modern physics sees Matter as a continuously vibrating and dancing motion whose rhythmic patterns are predetermined. This comes to a decisive point in the nuclei of atoms where confinement is in the smallest area, with the protons and electrons moving at a velocity almost equal to that of light. At such high speeds, Einstein’s relativity theory must be taken into account to make it understandable. Relativity theory changed the notions of space and time radically. Space and time form an interrelated entity called space-time, where time is the fourth dimension in addition to three-dimensional space. Although scientists have now understood intellectually the concept of space-time as an entity, they do not have actual experience of the same and so find it difficult to really grasp the situation at such levels. In certain experiments on particles there is a time axis, but no sign as positive time and negative time. Thus ‘before’ and ‘after’ don’t have any meaning. This breaks the chain of causation so much celebrated by scientists in their exploration. Q 7: What then is the meaning of the famous equation E = mc2 for a layman? The most decisive effect of relativity theory was on ‘mass,’ which was realized to be nothing more than a form of energy. Even an object at rest has energy stored in it. The relation between mass and energy is given by the famous equation by Einstein: E = mc2 where E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light. Thus matter is no more indestructible, it can be transformed into energy. In high energy physics, matter is continuously created, destroyed, and transformed. Mass today is measured through energy. It is thus clear that there is no stuff in the basic elements of matter, only bundles of energy. This energy implies continuous motion, process, and interaction with other particles in the same space-time continuum. The space aspect makes them to appear as a being with mass, the time aspect makes them to appear as a process with energy. The view of universe is thus an indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially related and can be seen as patterns of a cosmic process. At the subatomic level there are interactions and interrelations within parts of the whole which are more fundamental than the parts themselves. There are motions but no moving objects, or as Capra described, there are no dancers and yet there is dance. Q 8: Do mental or conscious aspects have any role in this unity? Of course yes. According to Wigner, the next important breakthrough will be to treat physical and mental phenomenon as not divergent or unconnected to each other. Wolman B.B. in his handbook of parapsychology wrote that a number of systems in the Eastern mystical traditions and philosophies have a precise correspondence with formulations of quantum theory. This is an obvious invitation to exhibit the two, Matter and Consciousness, as aspects of an `integrated understanding of the world.’ Inventor Nikola Tesla agreed with such integrated exploration and prophesized that the day science starts studying nonphysical phenomena it will make more progress in one decade than what was made in many centuries. Q 9: Is this unity seen at individual level only? It is important to see how from Individual to Cosmic Mind and Cosmic Consciousness, this unity is seen. In the ongoing evolution of matter, life emerges out of non-life, and mind and consciousness emerge out of the higher domains of life. This evolutionary concept does not divide mind and matter as Descartes once did. It reduced reality either to non-living matter as in materialism or assimilates it to a non-material mind as in idealism. It does not keep them perpetually separated and divorced as it is in dualism. Interaction of our mind and consciousness with the Ether / Aakash / Quantum vacuum links us with other minds around us and also to the planet. This oneness and relation of our mind with society and Nature has been known to mystics, saints and seers for ages and now this recognition is coming to science. The exchange between our consciousness and the rest of the world is constant and flowing in both directions. This takes the whole new paradigm to another height where not only are matter, life and consciousness one in essence in each entity, but they are also one in totality. With concepts like cosmic life, cosmic mind, and even cosmic consciousness getting acceptance in rational and intellectual forums, there is more room for debate and experiments in supraphysical domains. (Note : The answers are based on the thesis by the same author, Dr Narendra Joshi: A study of philosophy and futurology of Artificial Intelligence in the light of Sri Aurobindo at SACAR, Puducherry and Hindu University of America. Chapter 5 : The New paradigm : A hierarchy of wholes : page 62 to 69.) References: Sri Aurobindo ,(1999). The secret of the Veda. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publications also www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/downloadpdf.php?id=30 Capra, F. (1977). The Tao of Physics . New York, NY: Bantam. Capra, F. (1983). The Turning Point: Science Society and the rising culture. London: Flamingo. Fontana paperbacks. Capra, F. (1989). The Uncommon Wisdom . London: Flamingo. Fontana paperbacks. Capra, F. (1997). 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