The Absolute and the relative

``GOD DOES not play dice,'' Einstein had said. ``But the evidence is that God is quite a gambler'' said Stephen Hawking at Mumbai (The Hindu, Jan. 12).

Neither statement was made lightly or in jest. Both these scientists are amongst the greatest physicists who have revolutionised concepts of time, space, causal determinism and energy functions. The reference to God arises when they are applying their ascending understanding of cosmic origins at the macro-level and atomic structuring at the micro-level, and shifting from Newtonian rigid chanceless determination of physical laws, to the flexible probability functioning revealed in quantum mechanics.

Though sounding light-hearted, these connote what are indeed the heaviest statements pronounced by the greatest intellects of science based on observation, experimentation and analysis, when they find they cannot altogether ignore comment on a concept that has for ever been an overpowering component of the human psyche, God. They would like to re- invest the word with a focus that, they believe honestly, is emerging from their strivings.

Such a focus was sensed and stated by the seers who observed the energy-system that moves (permit me) thought-particles in knowledge- field. They were the ones that gave it the name God. The nearest spelling of that word today by the scientist seems to be DNA.

It is possible to juxtapose the two conclusions and attempt an overview.

Science and philosophy

The great divide that separates science and philosophy rises from the understanding of mind and matter. Science asserts that mind (consciousness) is a product of matter (brain). Philosophy reasons that consciousness is an energy and energies function through appropriate equipment (here brain), but are not produced by them. Energy manifest through matter. Its existence is independent of the equipment, but its expression is dependent. Electricity exists without bulbs, gives light only through a bulb, and does not perish when the bulb fuses. Enquiry must start with the right answer to this question about brain and consciousness. Otherwise all else would amount to logical sequences built upon an illogical foundation.

Consciousness is all-pervasive, like space. Only, space is inert and insentient, whereas consciousness is self-aware (being the stuff of knowledge, intelligence, will). As space cannot take a walk (for want of ``outer'' space to walk into) total consciousness cannot produce a thought-wave simply because a wave needs ``space'' for amplitude and ``time'' for frequency. Therefore the generative ``thought'' for starting thought-flow, which is mind, which is creation, can be assumed as a tremor in the still ocean of consciousness, like the first wave rising upon the still surface of the ocean. Use the word ``God'' there, and it would be his ``small shake''. We will come to the ``big bang'' in proper sequence, for it is a small matter ``relatively''. Creation and mentation must be probed together.

The scientist has recently caught up with one more ancient footprint upon this trail. He has knocked down Space and Time from their pretentious pedestals of Absolutism. He has fused them into a continuum where each is limited by sharing the destiny of the other, and both (that are now one) are shaped and changed by masses of matter. Further, the scientist says all events are conditioned by the observer who personifies the terms of observation. If the observer is not another temporal-spatial derivative, but an observing consciousness too, then we have to specify ``observation'' in terms of our natural and factual experience of the human faculty of observing.

Einstein himself spent the last years of his life searching for a ``unified field'', a total statement on creation.

Yet he knew with the instinct of genius and the humility of greatness that ``as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality they are not certain, and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality''. He knew that reality is Absolute and the Absolute is not an extension of the relative. Theories of relativity would be the farthest reaches of the human mind and the Absolute could never be locked in an equation as it stood apart, alone, unequalled, unrelated.

Progressive quest

Yet, the relative cannot stop relating, for it exists only as a pair of opposites, always in comparison and contrast. By this compulsion to relate, the mind structures, through its verbal felicity, the ultimate conceptualisation of an Absolute as the opposite of the relative. The relative is the mind's reality, the Absolute is its intelligent conjecture. Thus man speaks of God.

Whatever the mind has discerned one day as truth, the mind has later exceeded that in its progressive quest, and has conceded a relative falsity in its precedent assertions. The mind which itself possesses as much reality as a reflection does, cannot go beyond its inherent limitation in reaching out for the Absolute. Thus matter has its name changed to energy, energy to fields, and fields to the distant whisper of a unified field. Determinism escapes persecution by changing its name to probability, and coexists with a consoling premonition that both may yet meant the same, hedging the final outcome by postulating ``hidden variables'' by way of abundant caution.

What can you not do with words?

Yet, what can you do with words after all?

But then, have we not been able to say this too with words!

Knowledge and existence have a synonymity and simultaneity which we can sense or deduce, but when we separate the functions and attribute to existence a reality outside knowledge, we have to bring in a knower and fuse the knower and the existence into knowledge of the thing.

In the fusion arises the ``particle'' Time. This construction of a thought, the building-brick of knowledge, gives reality to an event, otherwise consciousness is an eventless horizon. A wave is a becoming on a still ocean, a thought is a becoming in the still consciousness. Being does not admit time. Becoming cannot occur without time, it is a process, a movement, requiring time. The movement is of, and in, consciousness, which is itself energy, which is the feel of living that you and I possess. Time is a descriptive word for the way the process of change and flow is experienced. Time has no energy to move, it can only measure the movement in mind, and the mind is mine.

I-ness

So where will you locate time without an I-ness being there? In any attempt to understand creation you are looking at consciousness in movement, at an I-ness continuing through a process of becomings. It is the same I-ness that you and I know so intimately as the quintessence of our living. It was always a personalised expression of consciousness, and we have seen that this seeming modification or change or mutation, from the total to the partial, has to be understood as occurrence in a plane of reflected consciousness. Change cannot apply to the Absolute concept, it can only be accommodated in the relative frame.

Total consciousness is an Absolute, indivisable by name, form, or thought (conjecture). Personal consciousness is real to one's personal experience, and so it can only possess a relative reality, like a reflection, a dream, an echo. If so, I, the observer, must inevitably be part of the relativity.

In every observation, which is an I-know-that, there is the object ``that'' located in time and space; there is the kinetic energy of consciousness which ``knows'', and there is the ``I'', an assumed subjectivity. ``I-know-that'' is the unit of thought, thought-flow is mind, and mind is the seal and insignia, be it of a scientist or a philosopher.

To articulate the all-important distinction, mind shall be termed as ``reflected'' consciousness. That is man. That is relativity. Total Field-of-consciousness would then be (we need a word) God. That would be Absoluteness.

If we numerically describe space-time as a four-dimensional continuum, then we should concede that the truth of phenomenal reality should be sought in the five-dimensional continuum of space-time-consciousness. They are coeval, they coexist and are co-terminal in the observed universe.

So to talk of the beginning of time, we have to investigate the beginning of the I-sense. Since time tells no tales, do not ask time. Since ``I'' never stops telling tales, ask the I. There never was, nor can be, time apart from the experiencer. So if you want to say that time began with the big bang, you should posit a conscious I-ness alongside. (Do not worry about the risk, for heat and pressure can destroy the body of man, they cannot destroy consciousness, which is the knower of heat and pressure too).

Small shake

What started I-ness? It was not the violent jerk of condensed matter strangled beyond endurance; it was the first ripple upon the silent sea of Total Consciousness as an urge of Self- expression.

I-ness and Time had to begin together, because when I is subjective consciousness, a ``subject'' means there is an ``object'' (or event) to perceive, and an object requires time- space to be in. So I and Time did not start at the big bang, much less because of it. That momentous honour does not go to the big bang of matter, it goes rightly to the small shake in consciousness.

Mind's other name is relativity. The mind measures, divides, opposes, categorises and compares. Its ``absolute'' is a word it accommodates in relativity. It is a picture in which the painter has painted himself also as painting the picture. The canvas does not contain the real painter. The mind persists with changing ideas about the changeless and zealously prefers to believe that the next idea will be the perfect one, and commits itself to continuity, like the gambler who is sure that the next throw of dice will make him a millionaire such is the lure of the game. So has it been with the beings of reflected consciousness projected into the casino of creation. We - you and I - are the conscious forms playing the dice inside, we do not really have secure observation-posts outside. So we keep playing. Meanwhile please do not waste your sympathy upon Absolute Consciousness, the Creator, by wanting to feel reassured that God does not play dice, while your observations indicate that He seems to be doing just that. Do not worry about Him for He remains at the same time the absolute owner of the casino! When He plays, the right hand picks up what the left hand loses. His status remains unaltered.

We need only to look out for ourselves.

V. DWARAKNATH REDDY

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : It suits the season
Next     : Hindutva: the religious incongruity