Physics Shows The Way To Consciousness

Can Science and meditation, each dealing with different phenomena, have common ground? Physics deals with the external world of matter, space and time, from the giant galaxies in outer space down to the infinitesimally small particles, which make up the atom.

Meditation looks inward; its domain is that which is not physical. When we close our eyes in meditation, we are cutting off the senses, which connect us with the physical world. What we perceive at this time cannot be seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled. We are investigating the nature of the inner consciousness, which makes us alive, alert and aware of the world around us.

There was a time when physics and meditation did come together. In the 1920s quantum physics through its revelations was turning the world of science upside down – that light was both a particle and a wave, that there no longer was a strict relation between cause and effect and that it was impossible to measure both the position and the speed of a particle at the same time (Heisenberg’s principle). Moreover, quantum theory was unable to predict the outcome of an experiment. If there were, for example, two possible results of an experimental measurement – say A and B – quantum theory could do no more than state the probability that a given measurement would turn up as A or B; it could not predict what the actual result would be. If the experiment were performed, however, common sense would prevail and only one result, either A or B, would be found. The question arises: “What was it that chose the one outcome of the measurement which did result from all of the various possibilities?”

This problem was tackled by a mathematical physicist, John Von Neumann, who reasoned that whatever was responsible for choosing the outcome of a measurement had to be something which was not governed by the quantum theory, and therefore had to be non-physical. He reasoned that all of the components in an experiment – the system being measured, the probes doing the measurement and the recording devices – were physical. The only non-physical element in the experimental set-up was the consciousness of the human being performing the measurement. Von Neumann had thus discovered consciousness as a vital ingredient in a quantum experiment. As the Nobel prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner put it, “The very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality.”

It is here in consciousness that physics and meditation meet. Strange as it may seem, physics, by looking only the external physical world, had pointed to consciousness as an indispensable component of a quantum experiment. Meditation, by looking inward, explores the nature of this consciousness. Thus, physics points the way to consciousness and meditation allows us to investigate what consciousness is. In meditation we find that there is a conscious being, or Knower, which perceives the thoughts that rise and fall in our minds – the same consciousness which Von Neumann discovered as the perceiving element in an experiment.

During meditation we find that even when there are no thoughts in the mind, the Knower remains. Human beings experience three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and sleep. Meditation reveals that the Knower both transcends these states of mind and gives rise to them. Ultimately we realize that the Knower also exists before birth and after death. It is immortal, infinite and unchanging canvas upon which the world of matter, time and space is painted.