If life is Maya, an illusion, as the Vedas say, or that there is more to reality than meets the eye, as scientists have proven, then what is Reality? What lies behind the veil of appearances?

The Cheshire cat, in Alice in Wonderland, is the wise one, always ready with an answer to Alice’s questions. It appears and disappears at will. Sometimes the cat is gone and left behind is its smile. Reality might be like the smile on the Cheshire cat. The cat is illusory and the smile real.

When I look out of my window I see trees with branches and leaves. The tree is separated from other trees by empty spaces, the branches are separated from other branches by spaces between them, and the leaves too are separated from other leaves by spaces between them. Without the spaces the tree would be a big mush. Without space there would be no objects. When we remove objects all that is left is spaces in between, like the smile on the Cheshire cat. Does space give rise to objects? Can there be one without the other? Is the nothing of space something?

The next frontier in science is to gain an understanding of “nothingness” of space.  At first, scientists believed that space was filled with the mysterious substance ether. This idea was experimentally put to rest by Michelson and Morley in 1887[1].  More recently, physicist John Wheeler commenting on Einstein’s theory, had this to say about the nothingness of space “Mass tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells mass how to move.” This put nothingness of space on the same footing as matter. Nothingness of space is not emptiness but is as much a player (or should I say a dancer) as objects are in Shiva’s cosmic dance. “Nothing” mattered from this point on. Space was no longer an inert stage on which matter did its thing. Nothing is an active participant in the cosmic dance, moving and being moved by matter.

 

“Plato who so vigorously avoided the void…. sounding a little bit like a chemist, seemed to view the background (void) something like a neutral solvent–something that allows other things to come to be without imposing too much of its personality. The background can’t have any personality of itself, otherwise it would be showing its own face as well.” Wrote K.C. Cole, The Hole in the Universe.

Philosophers such as Plato and scientists of today agree that the void of space, the nothingness, has no detectable features. So, what is this void? And, how do we find out what it is?

“…suffice it to say that very little in the universe is nothing. Almost all the seeming nothings are sums of opposing somethings” writes K.C. Cole. “What seems like a silent sea of nothing at all is an infinite number of positives and negatives, all joining together and splitting up in an endless jumble of uncertainty.”

Nothing is not no-thing, but, instead, is teeming with potential somethings. It is full of matter and antimatter in equal proportion cancelling each other, this the scientists refer to as conserved quantities or the law of conservation. The things that are conserved are energy, momentum and charge. The most fundamental things in nature are those that never change. These are changeless and timeless. As is the speed of light, it is a constant, no matter what. It is interesting to think that a photon which travels at the speed of light never ages. The photon that started at Big Bang is still the same photon. It is timeless.

Symmetry is a term used by physicists to describe the void or emptiness of space. It is what accounts for the void or nothingness but has no detectable features. Symmetry is the reason why the void appears as nothing, yet it is full of potential energy, and teeming with matter and antimatter. Symmetry is what cancels matter and its opposite, resulting in nothing or the void. Symmetry is an important concept in physics. All the conservation laws are the result of symmetries in nature. Conservation laws are the accountants of nature, they balance the books, that is they make sure that energy is never created or destroyed, all the energy that we started at Big Bang is conserved. In other words, when we reassemble all the fragmentation of nature that happened at Big Bang, we get back to nothing.

Symmetry is the equivalent of Yin and Yang in Zen Buddhism. Yin and Yang symbol represents opposites which exist in harmony, as one, until that harmony is broken and then they become opposites.

Another analogy for Symmetry is, if you were to walk into a glass door thinking that there was nothing there, and you shatter the glass into many pieces, you have just broken Symmetry, and created something out of nothing.

When a symmetry is broken something emerges. Out of nothing comes something. In the beginning there was nothing, just the void, which was teeming with potential something. By breaking this symmetry, emerged our universe at Big Bang. This is the creationism story in science. The creationism story in the Vedas is written in hymn form in the Rig Veda. It too speaks of how in the void the opposite existed until “symmetry” was broken and creation happened.

First there was the void:

Then there was neither death nor immortality

nor was there then the torch of night and day.

The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.

There was that One then, and there was no other.

 

In the void existed opposites:

The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom

know that

which is

kin to that which is not.

Rig Veda, Creation Hymn 1500 BCE —Translated by A. L. Basham

 

It seems that all of existence is the dance of opposites. When the opposites merge, as in Yin and Yang or as in the concept of Symmetry, there is the void. The void is seemingly nothing but in it is the potential for everything.

From the void emerged the “opposites”-matter and anti-matter, spaces and objects, darkness and light. Without opposites there is no existence. Without darkness there is no light, without evil there is no good. We know a thing by its opposite. Reality itself is non-dual[ii], that is, it is an undivided whole. It is because of the limitation of our sense organs that we do not see the oneness behind appearances.

Most of us accept, uncritically, what our senses tell us is reality. We are like fish in a pond, all they know is water, to them their reality is the pond, they have no reason to suspect that there is anything other than the pond. Most of us are like that, but the few, like the physicists and the ancient sages, who have gone beyond the limitations of their sensory perceptions have brought us tales of what lies beyond. It is up to us whether we accept what our senses tell us is reality or find out for ourselves what lies beyond the reach of our senses.

“If you look at zero you see nothing; but look through it and you will see the world.”[iii] Robert Kaplan.

There is a void in each of us. It is the hole we feel in our being, it is what makes us feel that there is something missing from our life. This void is the source of energy that animates us. As Rumi, perhaps the greatest poet of all time, wrote:

 

“Remember the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.

We watch a sunlight dust dance, and we try to be that lively,

but no one knows what music those particles hear.

Each of us has a secret companion musician to dance to.

Unique rhythmic play, a motion in the street we alone know and hear”[iv]

Perhaps the void is the absolute truth or Reality that we seek, all else is relative, impermanent and an illusion.

 

This I believe:

7. All of existence is a play of opposites. Reality is an unbroken whole. We have to reach beyond the limitations of our senses to have a personal experience of Reality. Psychedelic drugs, meditation, music, dancing, poetry, kaons, art and even prayer for some, are means of transcending the limitations of sensory perceptions, and experiencing the void, symmetry, soul or God (if you will).

 

 

[1] (https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/michelson-morley.cfm, n.d.)

[ii] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ0YFoUcY0s, n.d.)

[iii] (Kaplan, 1999)

[iv] (The Soul of Rumi, 2002)