Rakesh Kumar Pandit
Swami Vivekananda needs no introduction as he is a household name in India. The Govt. of India and particularly the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports of India, Rama-Krishna Mission and numerous other religious, social and cultural organizations of India are observing 2013 as the 150th birth anniversary year of Swami Vivekananda. Year long events and programmes are going on to highlight the philosophy, teachings and works of this great prophet of modern India. Swami Vivekananda the first great exponent of Vedanta Philosophy in modern times has explained the ancient truths of Vedanta in a language which would be acceptable to modern scientists and rationalists. I take this opportunity as a student of physics to explore the opinion and view points of some great physicists like Albert Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Stephen Hawking etc. about the relation between modern physics and metaphysics or it can be put in other words as the relation between modern physics and Vedanta, the most ancient philosophy of India as interpreted and adapted to modern thought by Swami Vivekananda. In the recent times another swami of Ramakrishna order Swami Jitatmananda, a well versed scholar of science and an authority on spirituality has produced some remarkable literal work regarding co-relation between science and spirituality.
Since Vedic times our thoughts have been influenced by social and political conditions and more recently by the impact of science. Swami Vivekananda insisted that Vedantic thought is not inconsistent with science and the two should go hand in hand. The discovery of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity in the 20th century have fundamentally shaken the perceptions and ideas of human beings about the nature and its study. In spite of these changes, it is Vedanta which seems to be in a position to absorb the tremendous impact of the New Science.
Swami Vivekananda’s interpretation of Vedantic philosophy brings out powerfully how the developments of physics and the philosophy of Vedanta are indeed interconnected. Discoveries in modern physics, especially the discoveries from the beginning of 20th century, are making it more and more evident that many of the conclusions of modern physics are exactly the conclusions of Vedantic philosophy enshrined in the Upanishadas and countless other Vedantic texts. Many Western physicists like Heisenberg, Schrodinger and others have been aware of these parallelisms. From 1970s onwards physics has slowly started moving towards something simple and unifying. The destination of most theoretical physicists today is the ‘grand unification’ dreamed of by philosophers and saints millenniums ago. Swami Vivekananda expressed the same idea that “Science has proved to me that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body in an unbroken ocean of matter, and Advaita (Unity) is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, soul.”
Prof. John A. Wheeler one of the students of Neils Bohr in an interview said, the grand unification that physics contemplates today is not merely a unification of mass and energy, nor a mere unification of different kinds of cosmic forces, but for the first time in the history of science, it is going to be a unification of mind and matter, subject and object, scientist and experiment. Physicists are heading towards this vision of unity not under the influence of any philosophy or religion, ancient or modern, but by the impact of the results obtained in the experiments. Physicists think that simplicity in physics may be gained by discovering, if possible a single force out of which all the other forces in this universe have been made.
The world of physics today deals with four kinds of forces. Electromagnetic, strong, weak and finally the force of gravity. In the 1960s three physicists Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg and Sheldon L. Glashaw formulated the idea of “electroweak” forces which brought the unification of electromagnetic and weak forces. They were awarded noble prize for the work in 1979. W+_ and Z0 particles were discovered at CERN in 1984. Discovery of W+_ and Z0 particles was a spectacular confirmation of the unified theory of electromagnetic and weak forces. Very recently theoretical physicists have made attempts at Grand Unified Theory (GUT) of electromagnetic, weak and strong forces. All the forces except gravity are under the process of ‘grand unification’ today. Thousands of years ago the Upanishadas realized this fundamental truth that the entire universe is one, interconnected and interpenetrated by ultimate reality which they termed ‘Brahman (Absolute Almighty)’. That reality, O Gargi, has interpenetrated the whole universe, says the sage Yajnavalkya. Noble physicist Schrodinger was aware of the parallelism between Vedantic philosophy and modern physics and declared by writing on the growing importance of consciousness in Quantum physics. “In all the world there is no kind of framework within which we find consciousness in the plural. This is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of the individuals. But it is a false construction. The only solution to this conflict, in so far as any is available to us at all, lies in the ancient wisdom of Upanishad (Vedanta)”. In 1896 Swami Vivekananda met Nikola Tesla the most successful electrician- scientist of America in those days. In a letter to E. T. Sturdy dated 13 Feb, 1896 Swami Vivekananda wrote, Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic Prana , Akasa and the Kalpas which according to him are the only theories modern science can entertain. Physicists are however dreaming of a ‘Super unified quantum theory’ that is ‘quantizing gravity’ which will not only integrate gravity into the one primeval force, but also offer a picture of the first few moments of the creation of the universe by the Big-Bang. They feel that if once the picture of the very first instant of the Big-Bang be reconstructed, then the whole problem of the ‘superunification’ would be complete, because the very picture of the first moment would offer a clear picture of how from one single force all the other forces were created.
What is the final vision of the world emerging out of the today’s physics? In many ways the emerging picture compares more increasingly with the Indian concepts of Kalpa or cycles of creation and the Vedantic theories of Brahman the Conscious, Knowledge, Bliss, Absolute as the eternal substratum and source of all creation. The Big- Bang may not be very like Genesis, but at least you can regard it as a creation, and you can involve God as a creator, says Stephen Hawking.
In 1964 J. S. Bell published his theorem. It was cast in terms of a hidden variable theory. 1n 1970s a successful verification of the Bell’s theorem by David Bohm confirmed that underlying far deeper the quantum chaos, there lies a unity, a fundamental interconnectedness in the whole universe. Stephen Hawking admitted,” It seems very reasonable to suppose that there may be some unifying principles, so that all laws are part of some bigger law. So what we are trying to find out is whether there is some bigger law from which all other laws can be derived. I think you can ask that question whether or not you believe in God”.
The entire world of modern physics is moving towards a knowledge of final unity in the universe. The Vedanta, the philosophical and the metaphysical portion of the Vedas, affirmed this as the very basis of all the existence and the ultimate goal of all the knowledge. Bhagavad Gita has propounded (chapter-6, verse-30) this unifying principle in a unique way, “For one who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost, nor is he ever lost to Me.” It means a person may appear to see all separate manifestations of the material nature, but in each and every instance he is conscious of Him, knowing that everything is a manifestation of His energy.
This unifying message of Vedanta was given to the western world of science and technology for the first time in the very language of todays physics by the Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda as early as the 1890s. In his very first appearance on the western scene in September 1893, Swami Vivekananda highlighted the future unification of western science and India’s Vedanta Philosophy. To the Parliament of Religions of Chicago held in 1893, Vivekananda declared: “Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress because it would reach the goal. The chemistry could not progress further when it would discover the one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all others are but manifestations. And the science of religion would become perfect when it would discover Him, who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever changing world, one who is the only soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations. This is the goal of all science”.
The convergence of modern physics and the idea of Vedanta is an important field of study in modern times to which an increasing number of thinkers are slowly turning their attention.
(The author is Assistant Professor of Physics at GDC Bhaderwah)
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