What is Truth?
Truth is a conclusion which a human arrives at based on two factors.
1. The input he receives from rest of the world through his sensory organs. By seeing things, listening to sound, reading books, doing experiments etc.
2. The processing of this input in his brain and relating it to information gathered from the past (called experience)
And the conclusion of the above two processes is again represented in a human spoken language. So the language should also contain appropriate constructs to absolutely represent the established truth. For instance, there are many terms in Sanskrit for which there is no absolute representation in English. Which is why we have entire books written in English on a single Sanskrit term, say for instance on “Dharma” or “Karma”. This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to accurately represent ideas from Sanskrit texts in English. And the main reason for this is English language developed in a society where materialistic science dominates. Where as Sanskrit was used by a civilization where philosophy and spirituality had prominence and materialistic science was only a subset of the whole.
Is Truth Universal?
Truth is a conclusion which the mind reaches based on (1) and (2) described above. And hence Truth is a human aspect or more broadly, a mind aspect (assuming there are aliens out there). And hence there is nothing like ABSOLUTE TRUTH, just like we dont have ABSOLUTE SPACE or ABSOLUTE TIME. Because there is no point in asking whether something is true according to, say a Galaxy. What does Milky Way think about whether Earth is round or not?
If I say the time here is 5 PM now, then on another part of the planet the time may be 5 AM. What is the time in space? How do you define it? It has to be relative to some part on Earth, because that is how we define time – in respect to some location on Earth.
The Nature of the Truth is Local
Let us say a person got injured in his leg. The person knows that it is paining because he is experiencing it. You or I can UNDERSTAND that the person is experiencing pain by looking at his expressions or injury and relating it to the knowledge of pain we have. Will somebody who has never experienced pain be able to understand it? Or let us say a person has had a wound, but is not expressing any pain, because the doctor has given him an anaesthesia near the wound. Now if we only see the wound without seeing the expressions of the person, dont we think that the person is experiencing pain, while in reality he isn’t. The reason here is we relate wound to pain.
Let us look at another similar example. We see somebody chopping off a tree. Does the tree feel the pain? Suppose we believe that trees dont feel pain because they dont have a centralized system which can communicate pain. So humans think that trees dont feel the pain. But what if trees had a different mechanism to feel and express pain? Only another plant or tree would understand it. But humans wont. Does that mean, the tree does or does not feel pain? The truth is, with respective to the tree or a human, pain is relative as experienced by that person. Whether somebody else knows about it depends on whether that somebody knows what pain is, and what he thinks about whether a tree or a human is experiencing pain or not. A wounded person may not be experiencing any pain when we may think that he is. A tree may be experiencing a lot of pain when we may think it is not.
Say if an alien visited earth and saw a wounded person. Now if for that alien there is no skin like we have, nor does it feel the pain like we do because its body is structured completely differently from ours. In this case the alien will never understand the pain of the wounded person.
Does that mean the person is not experiencing any pain at all? Of course he does. But there is no universal absolute frame of reference for this fact. Its like local frames of reference in general relavitiy. What we measure in the local frame is perfectly valid in that frame of reference, but need not be the same in all other frames of references across the universe.
Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/memory_collector/2907921658/
Truth and Moral Values
Ok how about moral truths. Like, it is wrong to hurt others. Well yes, it is bad, evil and wrong to hurt others. That is a take, and a take is not a truth, it is a conviction, a belief. Beliefs vary from person to person. Let me explain.
A Vegetarian person might say that it is wrong to eat non-vegetarian food because you kill other innocent animals in the process, which hurts those animals and hence is bad. But isn’t eating plants bad too? Plants have life too and what if it is conclusively proved that plants experience pain much like animals? Just like eggs are meant to hatch into chickens, so aren’t seeds meant to grow into plants?
Not really again. Nature has evolved hens to lay multiple eggs, and trees produce millions of seeds because nature realizes that not all eggs or all seeds will survive. In fact the entire food chain is established in such a way that one species is the food of the other.
Tomorrow an alien who gets energy directly from sun light and has no digestive system might come to us and say eating both plants and animals is wrong – infact eating itself is wrong because it involves hurting and killing other species. So here again, its a relative truth. Morals are to be accepted and abided by based on one’s judgement of what is good and what is bad as applicable or experienced in the local society. Polygamy or Polyandry might be bad in a society with almost equal sex ratio, but in a society with highly unequal sex ratio it becomes a necessity for a social well being.
Eating other animals when I have an option to live only on plant food is bad. This is my take or my morals. But it need not be the same for all.
Isn’t it a truth that “harming another human being is bad”. Yes, harming another human being is bad. This is a truth (a take) in our society which is why we have laws and prosecution systems which will punish those who harm other humans in the society. But nations also have armies which harm fellow humans during war, and it is neither immoral nor illegal! At a national level, the truth gets modified to, “harming humans of the enemy country is necessary to protect humans of our own country”. You see the catch here? Morals are human created, and they vary at different levels of the society. We might consider some societies as uncivilized, and for those societies ours might be an uncivilized society. What is moral in one country or society might be immoral in another country or society. We consider humanity as a largely civilized society and call ours a “Civilization”, but for an extra terrestrial civilization humans might be uncivilized because we are polluting the planet, terminating other species, destroying life on earth and so on.
Like what Agent Smith says in the Hollwyood movie “Matrix”
I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.
In fact we really can’t classify moral values as truth. They are more of a rules or takes or perceptions created in our societies by ourselves taking into consideration the pros and cons of human activities or actions and concluding about their positive or negative impacts on the entire society, and so are again very relative. What Agent Smith said in the movie Matrix is Truth from his perspective. If only other species on this planet were able to communicate and talk like we do, every other species on this planet would have sided with Agent Smith, isn’t it?
Should we Ignore Morals, because they are Relative?
If morals are relative, does that mean there is no meaning for morals, and you can do whatever you want? Wrong, just because what is applicable to you is not applicable universally does not mean you should not follow it. Just because a soldier can terminate another soldier does not mean you can harm a fellow human in your society or country. It may be relative, and not universal, but definitely is applicable in your local domain. You may not hurt yourself if you fall from a three store building on another planet whose gravity is very weak. But then you cannot rely on this fact and jump from a three store building on earth. The same applies to morals. If an action has a negative impact on our society, then it is definitely immoral.
But how do we arrive at what is right and what is wrong in such cases then? This is what the Sanskrit term ‘Dharma’ is all about. Its about deciding what your duties and responsibilities are, and living by it. If you know that what you are doing is wrong from your heart, then it is bad. But that is not all. There are situations of “Dharma Sookshma” where one sees a conflict of interests between acting or not acting, where both seem to be bad. For instance, for a family man, it is his duty to protect his family – It is called the Graha Dharma or the duties of a family man. But for a king, his subjects and citizens come first and family comes next. The king has a “Raja Dharma” or the duties and responsibilites of a Ruler to follow. If he finds himself in a situation where “action” would mean protecting his citizens which in turn would harm his family – then what is he supposed to do? Infact, he might have a greater love for his family and would want to protect them even if it means harming his citizens. Here his own intuition says that allowing his citizens to be harmed is fine to protect his family. But the Raja Dharma says that, the King should assign priority to protecting his citizens over protecting his family. What is Dharma or Moral for a family head need not be the Dharma for a king.
Your Dharma is Your Truth
The greatest psychological text of all times, the best available commentary on what a human should do and should not, when and when not, the best guide for personal development – The Bhagavadgita was discoursed by Krishna to Arjuna when Arjuna was confused caught between whether to fight his own kith and kin and teachers or not to fight against them. The person who understands it when Krishna says in Gita, “Do your Dharma, dont be bound by the fruits or failures of your actions” – will be the one who will best enjoy the world and find greatest success, and yet not be bound by it.
Truth and Scientifically Established Facts
Are not scientifically Established Facts absolute truths?
Diamond contains Carbon. True, we all know diamond contains carbon. But remember the first time we learnt about it in our schools we were surprised? I remember being surprised on learning that Sun is a Star, on learning that Blood contains Plasma and Plasma exists at high temperatures on Sun, confused by similar names to blood plasma and the fourth state of matter. I remember being surprised on learning that while Mercury is a Planet, Mercury is also an element. So Truth as we know it EVOLVES as we learn more facts and naming conventions or names.
But can anybody deny that Diamond contains Carbon. No, not those who know it. But think about some alien who never knows what Carbon is. How will you even explain it to the alien? To make it easy, let me put it the other way. Suppose an extra terrestrial being visits us whose technology is more advanced than ours, and tells us that Diamond has some k-particles in its structure. But we are not even aware what those k-particles are, nor are able to find those k-particles no matter what experiments we do. Does it mean there are no k-particles in the Diamond. We think so, while the extra terrestrial thinks otherwise.
Irrespective of whether what we believe or what the extraterrestrial believes – isn’t it a fact that Diamond contains Carbon in it? Ok, but who will validate that fact? Is there an absolute personality there who knows everything and can validate whether Diamond contains Carbon or not. For those who have discovered or read about it, and understand what Diamond and Carbon is, they know that Diamond contains Carbon in it. For those who dont even know what Diamond or Carbon is, it doesnt make any sense at all.
The catch here is there is no absolute frame of reference which can validate truth. And yet we insist on something being true because we believe that what we believe or feel should be believed or felt universally. Isn’t it possible that another extra terrestrial planet might have a substance exactly similar to diamonds in structure but made of some other element instead of Carbon? How about Diamond being made up of Lithium in a parallel Universe where the constants of Physics have a different value?
Let me give another clear example. Sun rises in the east. Can somebody deny that? Isn’t it an established fact – truth? True, for all those who can experience the four directions and call the direction in which sun rises as East – Sun rises in the East is a fact – Truth. Now consider an extra terrestrial who has no sense organs which can intercept light – in other words their body has evolved in a way that they only have sense organs to hear sound ie ears – they dont have any eyes to see. Now how will you make that extra terrestrial understand that Sun rises in the east?
Similary it might be also possible that there are other extra terrestrial beings who can see in 6 dimensions, unlike life on earth who can only see in three dimensions. So if you ask these 6 dimension vision beings, for them sun would rise in two directions, like say east in the 3 dimensions which we can see + another direction in the additional 3 dimensions which only the extra terrestrial can see.
So is Science wrong then?
In the real universe out there, there is nothing like Biology, Physics or Chemistry. It is a continuous unison of the universe. We have classified subjects for our convenience and the knowledge we have is only what we are able to observe and deduce based on that. Again to study overlapping areas we then have Bio-Physics, Physio-Chemistry, Bio-Chemistry and so on. There are no such classifications in the universe out there. Nature does not classify species as mammals, viruses, humans etc. These are our classifications. In nature there is only evolution. Which is a bird that cannot fly, which is a mammal that does not feed its off springs? Why is Tomato a fruit and not a vegetable? All these questions arise because we have classified them to be so and so. There are no such rules in nature like, “This defines a mammal”, “This defines a fruit”, etc. Some other intelligent forms of life on some other planet might classify life on earth quite differently than us.
Our Science is not some ABSOLUTE SCIENCE. It is the observational knowledge gathered by humans and is not a Universal Truth. It is a local truth applicable on our local plane of existence – and is always an evolving set of information.
The answer is to understand what exactly is Science? Science is the collective knowledge which WE HUMANS have deduced based on the observations we are able to do and the conclusions arrived based on the collected data and our interpretations of that. There is nothing like absolute Science. An extra terrestrial civilization might have a completely different matehmatics and so a completely different Science altogether. An alien civilization who can only hear and not see will have a totally different type of science. What is Science to us might be nonsense to them, and yet we both are correct in our local frames of reference.
When the ancient Europeans thought Earth was flat, ancient Indians knew Earth was round. Ancient Europeans had their own science based on their observations, and Ancient Indians had their own science based on theirs. Ancients thought Sun went around the Earth, then science was upgraded, or say corrected saying Earth went around the Sun, then Einstein came in and showed that Earth and Sun only follow their local space-time curvature. Earth doesnt know that Sun is out there 8 light minutes away from it. Earth only follows its curved local space-time path.
So Science applies to a local domain. What is Science to us might be nonsense to an even more advanced alien civilization. Not just in the sense that they know more science than we do, but that their way of interpreting universal phenomenon might be completely different. For instance, we say there are three primary colors – Red, Blue and Green. An Alien Civilization whose eyes are more advanced might say there are Ten Primary Colors. They can see a million more colors than us, and since their eyes detect Ten different wave lengths, even the colors they see will be different from what we can see, I cant even explain how that would be, because simply there is nothing to relate it in terms of what we humans know. The aliens for instance might be able to see Ultra Violet and Infra red wavelengths. We simply paint data obtained by instruments in these wavelengths using Red and Violet colors so that we humans can see it. Just imagine how the world would look like if we were able to see in Infrared or Ultraviolet wavelengths. Or if humans only had ears and no eyes – how would Science be then for us? What would be the science of Bats, if bats were able to evolve as intelligent beings?
Tat Tvam Asi – Neti Neti – The Universal Truth
The Universe or nature doesnt care about what is truth or not. Earth doesn’t care whether Sun moves around it, or whether it is moving around Sun or if there is some local spacetime curvature. Interpretations are done by humans or say intelligent beings or say local consciousness – and varies from one to the other – is relative. As Jiddu Krishnamurthy said ‘Truth is a Pathless Land’ – one can stand at different places in that land and still claim to be on the side of the Truth, and still be right.
So is there no ABSOLUTE TRUTH at all? Of course there is, but one. There is ONLY ONE absolute truth. It is ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ – a Mahavakya (Great Sentence) which appears in the Chandokya Upanishad explains what this truth is. The non-dual nature of the Universe is the only Universal Truth – Thou Art That. When consciousness is under the influence of Maya, duality appears to be the truth, which in reality is a mere illusion.
The nature of this single universal truth is defined in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad as “Neti Neti” – neither this nor that – implying there is no equivalent expression which one can provide to define this truth. Suppose there are aliens who cannot see Red color because the cells in their eyes cannot catch the wavelength which accounts for red color in the electromagnetic spectrum. How will you explain that “Roses are Red” or what Red looks like to these aliens? By simply saying “Neti Neti” to all other colors they can see.
Rigveda indicates about the same Universal Truth when it says ‘Ekam Sat’ – there is but only one Truth. Please note that, it is not merely enough if we just “believe” in this one truth, we need to “realize” it to really understand it. Believing that space-time is curved is different from “understanding it”. Most engineering students can solve problems of Calculus using different formulae they have mugged up. But how many really “understand” or “realize” what it all actually means?
This was the realization about the Universal Truth which Buddha underwent when he got enlightenment. This is the realization you will be able to understand if you can read and realize what is mentioned in the Bhagavadgita and the Upanishads. That one ultimate truth is to learn, understand and most importantly REALIZE the true nature of this Universe. This is what the ancient sanskrit scriptures mean when they say that the world is ‘Maya’ – an illusion. This is what is implied in the motivational quotes like ‘You are what you think you are’, or ‘The world is what you think it is’. This is what quantum physics means when it says ‘Observation can alter the outcome of an experiment’, that there can be no mere observers in an experiment who are insulated from the results of the experiment. There are only participants in a quantum mechanical experiment, no mere observers. That shows the true nature of the universe, because quantum mechanics deals with the most fundamental aspects of the universe. You can change what happens by merely observing it, which would have otherwise happened something differently.
This is also the prime reason why famous quantum physicists find comfort in reading the books on veda and vedanta which speak about the philosophical aspects of the universe and the nature of truth and reality. Below are some such quotes by famous quantum physicists and writers.
“I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.” – Niels Bohr, Famous Quantum Physicist
“After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.” – Werner Heisenberg, Famous Quantum Physicist
“The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves. This life of yours which you are living is not merely apiece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.” – Erwin Schrodinger, Famous Quantum Physicist
“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.” – Carl Sagan, Well known Astrophysicist
“Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries” – Robert Oppenheimer, Father of Modern Atomic Bomb
“The juxtaposition of Western civilization’s most terrifying scientific achievement with the most dazzling description of the mystical experience is given to us by the Bhagavad Gita, India’s greatest literary monument.” – Robert Oppenheimer, referring to the description of atomic bomb in Bhagavadgita
“When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.” – Albert Einstein
“The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.” -Romain Rolland
Lots of interesting arguments for relative truth, but I found myself unconvinced. It seems to me to make more sense to distinguish our *perspective* from the reality our perspective is about. We all represent reality (and truth) differently through our personal perspective, but it doesn’t logically follow, as far as I see, that the reality (and truth) is itself perspectival… Seems like a category mistake to me. In conclusion, from my perspective, truth is not perspectival or relative. But I could be wrong. :) (And again your post is very well articulated.)
Exactly, the one species is the food to the other one, by natures law, thus human’s are to be veg.
Dharma is entirely performing an act by human or any living being for which he is designed and intended to do.
If a Lion exist , it is entitled for its work, i.e survive by hunting and so it does and so applies to other living being.
Brilliant work!! Something i try hard to explain to people and never manage to get it across! You have given the right examples for anybody to understand the context well.
Excellent article GuruJi. Should have classified not just under logic, but also under the Veda and sci-fi category. Thanks for make me realize.
Have I lost my comment or what
All is good except that you take the sruti statement “tat tvam asi” as interpreted by advaita as supporting your argument while in fact the very interpretation of that sruti vAkya by advaita is prone to too many logical inconsistencies. There is no support for the doctrine of maya in vedas, upanishads, bhagawad gita or the brahmasutras. The reference of maya in Gita or Srimad Bhagawata refers to the mysterious power of the Lord and not an illusory one as explained by you.
When you say that universe is illusion and tat tvam asi is the only truth, where does Dharma come from? Where do morals come from? In an illusory world (like your dream) there is no right or wrong and hence there is no place for morals and ethics in an illusory world.
Also when you say that there is no absolute space and absolute time, you should once refer to the Lorentz’s claims and Newton’s Scholium. They give a different perspective to absolute space and time.
Guess you got the context of the article wrong. The truth I spoke about was whether one statement is applicable universally or not. For instance take the case of Dharma as mentioned by you. What is true for a Grahastha Dharma is not true for a Raja Dharma. So such truths are not applicable universally, though they are perfectly true for a local domain (King’s duties are definitely applicable to a king, for instance)
So I didnt mean there is nothing like truth – just like there is yuga dharma – rules applicable for certain period of time – there are also other dharmas – rules applicable for a society, for a profession, for a place etc. So there is no denying that. The context of the article was whether just because one statement is valid for a particular place or time or society, does it mean it is applicable universally everywhere, at all times.
Maya is there in the upanishads – Shvetashvatara Upanishad mentions about Maya clouding our true nature and preventing us from realizing Brahman.
Even Brahma Sutra talks about Maya in the same sense. For instance in the second chapter it says that we all are ansh (part) of the divine. In the third chapter it talks about how under the influence of Maya a soul keeps reincarnating in different forms of life. At the end of the first chapter it says that this world is both manifestation of Maya and embodiment of the divine. Even in Gita Chapter 18, Hymn 61 talks about how Maya makes a person live the life according to his Karma.
Yes having gone through various commentaries and interpretations I find Advaita more close to my heart. Maya doesnt mean illusion in the literal sense like somebody is doing a magic on us. Maya is the reality for now for our senses, but when compared to Brahman, the absolute truth, Maya is not the truth. Maya does not mean it is not real, all it means is it is unstable and temporary and is not the stable eternal truth, and infact it hides the eternal absolute permanent truth.
It is like somebody being born and living inside a cave where no sunlight ever falls. The door of the cave which blocks sunlight is like the Maya. For those who have always lived inside the cave, that is the real world – they live alongside darkness. But once the blockage at the entrace opens (Maya goes away), the so far real world becomes unreal. But that does not mean one should not have rules, dharma, morals inside the cave while living without sunlight. So the presence of Maya doesnt mean absence of Dharma and morals. And the realization of Brahman is the ability to be able to distinguish between what is Maya (inside the cave) and the Ultimate (outside the cave).
At the same time, Maya is just the absence of knowledge about Brahman and the world of Maya lies within the Brahman itself. Its like how spider creates its web and stays inside the web – web comes out of the spider and spider stays inside the web – the Brahman is both container as well as what is contained inside the universe – Universe comes out of Brahman and Brahman is contained in the Universe. If we see a large web and consider it to be the truth then that is Maya – the next moment we see spider swallowing its web back into itself – what we thought to be the truth is now unreal – spider (Brahman) is the only real truth. All those things that took place in the web were Maya.
There is no absolute space or time. Newton’s Scholium all belong to classical physics which were later proved wrong by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Infact Einstein’s theory solved the mysteries like the moving of the perihelion of Mercury which could not be solved using Newtonian physics.
Absolute time does not exist because time slows down and speeds up under conditions depending on speed and space time curvature. For instance just one second will pass near a black hole when one years passes on earth, and near another black hole two minutes might pass when one year passes on earth and so on. So time is not absolute. So is space where the length measured varies again depending on space time curvature, a stick which measures 1 kilometer on earth if measures from earth when taken near a black hole might measure just a few milli meters. So there is no absolute space or absolute time – this is the accepted stand of physics today and has been proved repeatedly in different experiments wrt special relativity and general relativity.
So does it mean …. In very slow time progress condition I will never die….????
What do you mean by different mathematics ….. Would 1+1 will be 3 in different universe.
Yes certain rules of chemistry and physics would definitely change in mathematically predictable and conceivable manner, thats it, I am not surprised, in fact i expect it because i know little bit of math here.
I also think that “There is great similarity between ancient scientists and modern one and that is desire to know the absolute truth “.
I also contradict with your assumption that, modern science will never reach absolute truth… because one day , i think eventually modern science and ancient science (there is no boundary as such) are going to merge, agree and recognize the absolute truth. We won’t be able to see defeat or victory of either.
I have seen many spiritual teachers to deny modern science and vice a versa as if they are conflict with each others. I see it as two group of people looking at same thing from different points with different approaches and in the course, at-least I hope, are negating each others flaws.
One more thing, I think, You are going too far while proclaiming, and touting the “principle of uncertainty in QM”. This principle says that there is inherent degree of uncertainty in QM experiments and hence quantum particle behavior, when off course someone observe it, that is because to observe it, you will have to drop a photon on it and hence influence experiment and disturb it. So your observation by Photon action is making you participant in experiment.
But in no way one should attach conciseness/awareness to quantum particle, saying that “see electron is aware of its observer, awareness is conciseness”…………………………………….so this is omnipresence of consciousness and then blah blah blah.
Time is perceived by our local biological clock – so even if it appears slow in some other frame of reference, in the local frame as experienced by the person it will be the same. You can read about electromagnetic signals sent by a space ship approaching a black hole and how it slows down when being received from earth, even though the space ship is sending it once every second, as it nears the black hole, the interval between two signals received on earth may even go up to days or more depending on black hole gravity.
What do we mean by 1+1? Looks very simple? How do you define it and prove it? :)
If I say, it means take one thing and another similar thing and keep it next to each other, then I call it two. Well somebody else are free to call it three. By the way, what is one infinity kept next to or added to another infinity? Is it two infinities, or is it just one infinity? We are still using math from our own universe, from our own planet as we humans devised it and already 1+1=1 in case of infinities.
You should read “Principia Mathematica”, one of the best works on mathematical foundations, published in three volumes, written by Whitehead & Bertrand Russell. There they take 300 pages to prove 1+1=2
How do you define 1, what exactly is + and = signs? And what do we actually mean by 2? These are not some spiritual books, they are one of the most important works on core mathematical logic.
Yes you are right, be it science as we are establishing today, or truth as was being searched by ancient seers, the goal is to understand this universe – and since truth cannot be two different things – both have to converge finally. So it would be inappropriate for one to deny the other.
Regarding QM, of course there is consciousness in QM – Uncertainty Principle of QM is NOT our inability to measure it accurately where the disturbance by dropping the photon changes the values, and its not just about position and velocity, it is the NATURE of quantum particles. The uncertainty principle states a fundamental property of quantum systems, and is NOT a statement about the observational success of current technology.
Read ‘The Emperor’s New Mind’ by Roger Penrose to know about quantum consciousness, and then there is the Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment, a variant of the double slit experiment where the photon DECIDES what to do. There are various quantum mind theories too by Bohm, Penrose, David Chalmers, Henry Stapp etc where our own consciousness is explained by the quantum mechanical nature of the universe.
Remember classical physics CANNOT explain consciousness. Quantum entanglement – how does a particle separated from another entangled particle which is light years away instantly know what is happening to the other particle? How can information travel faster than light? Einstein suggested Hidden Variable Theories, but Bell’s Inequality Theorem proved that false too.
And off late, even reality seems to be non-existent (remember the ancient seers called this world a Maya – an illusion?). Here is a similar link, this time from quantum mechanical experiments http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640
Smart…… ;) I appreciate… enjoyed the thought process, though not convinced 100% and got confused x%….
One thing is sure that, you know the stuff about QM, I need to study and
think more, I accept..:) .Thanks for the pointers you provided. I am
definitely going to go through all that…
Still,
-> Chemical processes advancing differently in different space-time curvature, may be true, is incomprehensible for me.
-> In can not think that concept of infinity will change in different universe.:):(:):(
->You are giving over importance to symbols, and saying that, they
will change, they will change..off course they will, they do change in
my own home. An idea behind them will not.
The information you provided about QM is awesome. Already gone through
some of it. I am thinking.., Can we induce group consciousness among
Quantum particles..and thus in each non-leaving thing therefore..
There are 100 questions there then… Does matter (QP) is conscious, or
conciseness and matter are separate i.e Does electron die??? ;)
Namaskar,
Not sure if you look at this comment because I got a chance to put it after long time since the initial post.
Anyway , let me tell you that your understanding of “Maya” is not correct .
Maya as you said is not illusion as per Shruthi , you quoted Svetaswatara, BG, BS etc., but the purport of establishing Maya is different in those texts. “Maya” is not exactly illusion, if it is so then the very “knowledge” you got from those texts itself is illusion and you are collapsed into infinite regress.
Also your understanding of Advaita is not correct , Advaita never had a scope for second entity other than pure-concsciousness .. that’s why whatever you see,feel, know is called illusion and ultimately doesn’t exist at all, they mean “Maya” neither exist nor not-exist, it is just anivrachineeya and when individual “i” realizes it become pure consciousness and maya ceases. It has lot of logical fallacies, and can not explain the world.
BTW, in BG or other scriptures, Maya is termed as a power of “Mayi” the lord of it (you can get the word Mayi in Svetaswatara itself), in BG , Lord explained it more clearly that “prkrithi” and “spirits” are his properties, but they are not illusory.
People get confused with the nature of ever changingness of prakrithi, it leads to the theories of “maya vada”, which try to completely demolish the existence of “prakrithi”.
I can discuss on this topic at any length if you wish to.
But the truth is far beyond your understanding..
We have to remember sruthi vakya which says “who thinks he knows it, doesn’t know it ..who thinks he doesn’t know it ..know it” that is the what Brahman.
Advaita Brahman is mere concsiousness without any attribute even “self-awareness” which purely illogical on any ground.