Physicists around the world are busily working on a single theory to unite the major physical forces of nature once and for all. Known as the unified field theory, or half-jokingly as the Theory of Everything (TOE), this grand mathematical unification of spacetime involves mathematics so complex it hasn’t even been invented yet!
Can it be done? Well, Isaac Newton invented calculus to solve elusive mysteries of the cosmos in his day. Maybe scientists can do it again.
Some scientists, like Richard Dawkins, suggest this theory will once and for all render obsolete the need for a supernatural creator. Once the final variables describing the physical properties of the cosmos are locked into place, God will be out of a job.
Will the TOE put God in the unemployment line? Let’s take a look.
Rumi, Carlos Castaneda and David Hawkins: the path needs love
In Question #6—”Can science prove the existence of God?”—we explored the simple mystical assertion that without love there is no truth. Sounds like a bumper sticker but it’s true. That includes grand unification theories with fancy eleven-dimensional math.
From a spiritual standpoint, we can observe without absolute context, there is no unification. In Question #4 we explored the idea of changlessness, and discussed how absolute understanding of something renders change meaningless. For example, if I know the essential essence (akin to their Soul or Spirit) of maple trees is that they change color each fall, that fundamental essence won’t change in my eyes during their annual fall color-switch. They’re still maple trees in my eyes.
Every fall people say, “Oh the trees are changing!” like it’s a big surprise. To believe in change one must abandon one’s understanding of the totality of any essence; the fundamental error that created spacetime in the first place.
Einstein proved space is made up of energy down to its core. Even empty space has energy called zero point energy or quantum fluctuation energy. Yet energy is the capacity to cause change as we will explore in depth in a later post. I should say the perceived capacity to cause change. In ultimate reality, where essence is never considered apart from creation, there is no such thing as change.
Having absolute context about anything renders its various conditions simply part of what or who it is. We can call this the Grandparent’s Effect. Ever notice how parents—especially new parents—freak out about evevything their kids do that may be slightly out of line? Yet the more “attrocities” grandparent’s hear about their grandkids, it seems the more they just smile and say, “Kids will be kids.” With perspective and wisdom grandparents come to realize that the more kids change, the more they remain the same, as the saying goes. That’s continuous loving perspective comes from experience, patience and wisdom and can lead us down the road to understanding what absolute perspective might look like in an absolute universe.
Yet until we pull our awareness back “out” of spacetime and into the absolute knowledge of Spirit, then there is no unification of its constructions. Period.
There is no such thing as unified factual knowledge; only a unified experience, as Gary Renard has observed. The reason is simple. In the purely non-dualistic understanding of Spirit there is only oneness. In other words you must become one with all knowledge. You must literally become that knowledge, the Native American principle of knowing by being.
Thus all real knowledge must be experiential knowledge that you must self-identify as “my Self.” This is a Buddhist principle called absolute knowledge, as described by physicist Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics.
Rumi said love was the astrolabe of the mysteries of God. Meaning, if you want to know the secrets of the cosmos, use love to find them. David Hawkins says love opens the door to truth, always in that order.
Carlos Castaneda offers the same basic advice in The Teachings of Don Juan, as quoted by Capra in The Tao of Physics:
Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you…Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question…Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.
Physicist David Bohm: No love, no unified theory
One of the greatest ambassadors between modern physics and the spiritual community was David Bohm, an Einstein contemporary and personal science advisor/friend to the Dalai Lama (see the Dalai’s The Universe in a Single Atom).
Bohm offered a comprehensive model of spacetime called the implicate order, detailed in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order. On his spiritual journey, which included a number of years studying with Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, he seems to have come to the same conclusion as Rumi, Hawkins and Castaneda: no love, no truth.
Here’s writer Renee Weber on Bohm’s vision for a unified field theory, as detailed in Ken Wilber’s The Holographic Paradigm:
[Bohm’s] vision is a unified field theory undreamed of by science, in which the searcher and what is sought are apprehended as one, the holomovement becoming translucent to itself. That unified field is neither neutral nor value-free as current scientific canon requires, but an intelligent and compassionate energy, manifesting in an as yet unborn realm where physics, ethics and religion merge. For human life, widespread awareness of such a realm will be revolutionary, leading us from information to transformation and from knowledge to wisdom.
The pursuit of the Unified Field Theory slams into Einstein’s Tree
Einstein too believed, like Bohm, that true knowledge comes from a unified source. He said, “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” We’ll call this idea Einstein’s Tree. Unfortunately, it stands squarely in the path of the unified field theory.
How can a “Theory of Everything” not include the branches of its own tree?
The map is not the terrain. The branch is not the tree. Everything must include everything.
If we are not exploring a theory that can unify science and religion (Einstein and Bohm’s vision), we’re headed down the wrong path. And as Castaneda said, there’s no harm in abandoning it.
Here’s Indian philospher Jiddu Krishnamurti in Total Freedom on the necessity of unified knowledge:
…every…form of revolution is fragmentary and, therefore, inevitably brings about further problems. But the man who is seeking out what is truth, what is God, is the real revolutionary because the discovery of what is truth is an integrated response and not a fragmentary response.
The question for physicists is, are you after ultimate truth or not? If so, then the unified field theory that wholly ignores any branch of Einstein’s Tree isn’t going to get you there.
Integration is truth, Krishnamurti said. Truth is union, A Course in Miracles says. This is the foundational principle of non-dualistic spirituality. Absolute knowledge is oneness.
You can’t be the number 3.14159. You can’t be the equation E=mc^2. You can’t be a mathematical theory. Does a theory feel love, or joy or peace? Do you?
The Unified Theory doesn’t kill God; it doesn’t even kill human love
So when atheist author and scientist Richard Dawkins insists that one discipline—modern physics—will somehow burp out some magical, universal constants (see his article in Time magazine, 11/13/2006) that will provide answers to everything within spacetime, thereby obliterating the need for God in one fell swoop, this is ego-driven nonsense.
We discussed in earlier posts that psychologist Carl Jung and Nobel-prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli believed the discipline of physics and psychology would merge. How can physics alone, wholly ignoring the fact there is no such thing as equations for human experience, claim to possess the absolute truth on anything that encompasses sentient beings, including spacetime? If our sentient awareness isn’t in spacetime, where is it? And if it is in spacetime, can I see the equations that govern it, please? Certainly it would be included in any unified field that physics would bind into one mathematical equation.
Brain researchers claim our consciousness is simply electro-chemical brain activity. Isn’t electricity included in the unified field theory? Then let’s see the equations governing human cognitive functions.
Here’s Ken Wilber on the necessity of combining physical understanding with psychological understanding:
…[Bohm] faces the conclusion that modern microphysics must deal with information defined psychologically, i.e. through behavioral observations.
Thus modern physicists and modern perceptual psychologists have converged onto a set of issues that neither can solve alone. if the psychologist is interested in the nature of the conditions which produce the world of appearances, he must attend to the inquiries of the physicist. If the physicist is to understand the observations which he is attempting to systematize, he must learn something of the nature of the psychological process of making observations.
So, you have the Dalai Lama’s science advisor/physicist David Bohm saying the unified field theory as it is currently being pursued is way off in left field. We have one of the most skeptical, hard-nosed physicists of all times—Nobelist Wolfgang Pauli—saying psychology and physics will one day merge. You have Einstein saying all sciences and religions are branches of the same tree.
And finally a quote from Nobelist and quantum-mechanical pioneer Erwin Shrödinger from The Essence of Vedanta by Brian Hodgkinson. It puts the kicker on our discussion:
You may ask—you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simply enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity…know yourself.”
So, we have one of the giants of physics—Nobel-prize-level—saying physics doesn’t have any scope or value at all if it is not united with other branches of human knowledge.
No love. No truth. It’s that simple.
A path that excludes love—and its absolute power to unify and contextualize—is a dead end. Not of some value; no value. A path we should abandon.
Yet, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, the master contextualizer, any path—even the hunt for the unified field theory—can become a radiant, shining path of salvation, illuminating the structures that bind the human mind in suffering, as we will examine in Part 2 of this question.
Without the contextual power of love, the unified field theory
is the Spam Filter from Hell
Absent love, the unified field theory is none other than the Spam Filter from Hell (see Question #7) dressed up in eleven-dimensional, mathematical clothing. It is a perceptual filter; an attempt to block out everything but physical reality. Calling love itself false and mathematical projection laid over truth real.
What is the equation for love? How many vibrating strings does peace have? What’s the formula for freedom? Again, we come back to Rabbi Yehuda Berg’s research in The Power of Kabbalah: the things human beings truly desire from life are non-quantifiable, non-mathematical, non-scientific inner experiences.
How can physics avoid this continuous tendency to build an impenetrable mathematical fort around their branch of Einstein’s Tree? Put first things first, Stephen Covey says.
Scientists should ask everyone they know—including themselves—Berg’s bottom-lining question, “What does a human being truly desire from life?”
Study the answers to that question and see for yourself they are not found on a map, on a scale or in an equation.
Putting first things first should most certainly include prioritizing the experiences humans most desire from life. What profession should not put the deepest desires of humanity at the core of their field?
Einstein again:
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
You continue to produce these amazingly insightful blog entries at a blinding pace. I have no idea how you do it!
Thanks for the email – I will get back to you soon! Just wanted to drop by quickly to let you know I’m still reading these.
Peace and lots of Love (Without love there is no truth! 😉 )
Brother Gi
O.K. Tom, time for you to write a book.
Thank you for all the Love and effort that goes into your writings.
The scientific community has painted itself into a corner of a room within an infinite home, where they are helping us all by showing us God from their limited perspective.
Math, language, etc., can only point to Truth, much like a finger points to an object within a subjective experience. Only Truth by its very essence is that in which we are attempting to describe.
The energy of the Creator is the unifying field (intelligent and harmonious wave, particle, light, LOVE), and if we humans are one day able to detect this energy and merge with it, it will then and only then be truly known and understood.
Merry Christmas