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What is real?

Mankind is special. Wrong.

Living things made us what we are.

– Charles Darwin

Space and time are different. Wrong.

Space and time are a matter of perspective.

– Albert Einstein

The world is individual objects. Wrong.

The world is interconnected events.

– Alfred North Whitehead

Mistaken Reality

WE OFTEN SPEAK OF “TWO”.

WHEN IT IS NOT TWO.

I marvel when I see our different ways to approach reality. In the Western world we dissect it into alleged components and analyze them in the hope to understand. The Eastern world is uplifted by grasping reality as one big picture.

Looking back, analytical procedure—especially technical and medical—has made good strides for all of us, for example the development of high-resolution telescopes and microscopes. But holistic thoughts were always a step ahead of scientific quantum leaps. There were three remarkable minds from the Western world who thought holistically too: natural scientist Charles Darwin, physicist Albert Einstein and the relatively unknown philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (see figure 6).

Fig. 6: Darwin, Einstein, Whitehead

We will look at the revolutionary ideas of Darwin, Einstein and Whitehead in this chapter. Three excellent scientists have left behind a huge spiritual legacy for humanity that can help us stop self-delusion. Don’t worry—it won’t be difficult at all. I will describe everything with texts and pictures.

At first glance, Darwin, Einstein and Whitehead don’t seem to have anything at all in common. Darwin died when Einstein was only three years old. It’s true that Einstein and Whitehead met each other in 1921 at King’s College in London,15 but they couldn’t agree on a common interpretation of the theory of relativity. After that, they probably never had any further contact with each other again. Only after we take a more careful look at the work of all three of these scientists, we see that they were pursuing precisely the same secret of nature without being aware of it: Reality does not consist of parts, but it unfolds as one big picture! Each of them revealed this secret to his own scientific field by vigorously challenging traditional schools of thought. Eventually, all three scientists died without knowing that their secret would emerge in our time to be a fundamental cosmic concept.

Where does this cosmic concept pop up? And what is its meaning for us and for our one big question: Why are we here? Without giving too much away, I believe that the ideas of Darwin, Einstein and Whitehead will deeply transform our understanding of the world: Darwin with his theory of evolution, Einstein with his theory of relativity and Whitehead with his process philosophy—to interpret the world as events and not as objects.

All three theories challenge something that almost everyone assumes to be true: mankind as the crown of creation, time and space as absolute, and a world consisting of objects. In all three theories something immutable is replaced by something mutable. And all three theories overcome the separation of something which only seems to be different. Although the approaches couldn’t be more different (Darwin was working on finch beaks among other things, Einstein on space and time, Whitehead on mathematical logic), all three theories suggest that we often speak of “two” when in reality it is not two.

Two or Not Two?

That’s the question! Our senses and brain play tricks on us with reality. We perceive reality as “objects” that exist at a certain time and place—that’s why we split reality apart into space and time. But Albert Einstein will soon tell us that there is no space or time. Reality is beyond space and time. Here comes an example: How many do you see in figure 7?

Fig. 7: How many do you see here?

Figure 7 shows an apple and a pear, two pieces of fruit. Does the figure show two coins too? No, it does not. They are really the front and back of the same coin. Only because both sides are spatially separated in the figure, many people assume that they see two coins. What’s very apparent here may not be so clear in many illusions that we also assume to be reality.

We can see how distorted we perceive reality at times from experiments that verify the activity of entanglement. We physicists speak of “entangled particles” when they had once interacted somewhere and no longer act like individual objects—even when they have moved far apart from each other. Erwin Schroedinger had predicted the existence of these particles in 1935,16 but experimental proof didn’t succeed until 47 years later.17 Entangled particles can be produced with lasers and special optic crystals (see figure 8). Somehow these particles have the remarkable ability to “know” how their counterpart acts during an experiment: If the particles are simultaneously given the choice to turn left or to turn right, both particles make the same decision together. And it doesn’t matter at all how far apart they are from each other!

Fig. 8: Entangled light particles (marked red)

In order to understand the full extent of an entanglement, let’s assume for the sake of simplicity that we were not observing light particles, but cars. One car is driving to New York, the other to Washington, D.C. Entanglement means: Whenever the car in New York turns left, then the car in Washington, D.C., will simultaneously turn left as well (see figure 9). And simultaneously means: While doing this, there is no information exchanged between the two cars. What we’re really saying here is that the fastest that information can travel is at the speed of light,18 so any exchange of information comes with a time-delay. To transmit information from New York to Washington, D.C., in an approximate line-of-sight distance of 200 miles would require at least .001 seconds.19 Entangled particles “know” about each other without having to communicate at all. Albert Einstein spoke of a “spooky action at a distance”,20 because every particle is immediately aware about what is happening to its counterpart. The intriguing question is: Is it two or not two?

Fig. 9: Simultaneous decision made in two different cities

There’s only one conclusion: Entangled particles aren’t two individual objects, but one whole. This whole has the remarkable ability to be simultaneously present at different places at the same time, that is, it transcends space. But one car simultaneously travelling in different places (New York and Washington, D.C.) contradicts our concept of reality. So our idea of structuring the world according to objects is deceptive because we suppose that an object should always be at its “correct” place at a specific time. What we think we see as two individual objects are not always two.

Entangled particles don’t always stay entangled. Performing a measurement voids the entanglement—the whole becomes particles. But the whole never consists of particles, so it is misleading to speak of “entangled particles”. Even the term “entanglement” doesn’t get anywhere because it doesn’t lead us to any new insight. It’s only hiding what doesn’t fit into our usual conception of the world. What I really think is: Entanglement is a phenomenon that forces us to make a paradigm shift. When we interpret the world no longer as objects, then all of the confusion about “entanglement” goes away and the answer falls in our lap.

Alfred North Whitehead will soon invite us to interpret our world as events. We would no longer have to bring up our example of the remarkable car that is travelling in two places—New York and Washington, D.C.—at the same time, but only the event of turning left. We’re really not saying anything against such an event occurring simultaneously in New York and Washington, D.C. It can also rain or snow simultaneously in both places. The same event can happen everywhere at once in the cosmos without our having to bring up the idea of “entanglement” to understand it. But this world view has a price. As soon as we interpret reality according to events, something will be missing that many people absolutely can’t do without: individuality. It doesn’t matter who is doing what in a world of events. What matters is what’s happening—the events themselves.

You could now argue that entanglement is just a phenomenon of the quantum world. But there is increasing evidence that what we see in the macroscopic world can also be entangled. Entanglement among atoms is already a fact,21 and empathy among human beings is a phenomenon that comes very close to entanglement. There are people who are so closely in sync with each other that they know about each other without communicating at all. They have a “common consciousness”. Even trees in the forest seem to “know” how each other is doing.22

A possible explanation for these observations gives us today’s standard model of astrophysics: The cosmos started about 14 billion years ago from a big bang and from one point.23 At that time everything was very close to each other which means that there was a very strong interaction. It is precisely this situation that also triggers entanglement. It is our biggest mistake to consider material objects—that are no longer close to each other today—as individuals. They still are one whole, but we easily overlook this fact when focusing on the objects and disregarding the “stuff” in between these objects. All objects are embedded in something that Buddhists call “emptiness”. This applies to atoms, trees and also to us human beings. It’s the disregard of emptiness that causes the illusion of the self as an individual!

Shankara’s Rope

So everything in the cosmos can only be understood as one thing—not as a plurality, not two. Inseparable unity is also the fundamental thought of Advaita Vedanta, a far-eastern philosophy of life. It is based on the Vedas, the oldest writings of India. For centuries, they were handed down by the great masters to the next generation. The teachings reached their peak in the 9th century A.D. under Adi Shankara who is still known today as one of the greatest philosophers and religious teachers of India.

“Shankara” comes from Sanskrit which is the liturgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism. It consists of sham (English: good) and kara (English: to cause), so “Shankara” is someone who causes good. The concept advaita (pronounced: “a-dvaita”) is Sanskrit also. The root word dvaita (English: duality, “two-ness”) means that something can be dissected into parts. Adding the syllable “a” to the word dvaita means that it is not correct to speak of parts. Reality is one big picture—and that’s why it has no parts.

Shankara himself loved to speak of a parable24 that he valued very highly: Someone enters a dark little shack and can’t see clearly because of the darkness. He suddenly thinks he sees a snake in front of him. Could it be a deadly snake with poisonous venom? He is petrified with fear of losing his life. But the “snake” wasn’t moving. After some time he realizes his mistake. There was no snake in front of him, just a rope coiled around itself (see figure 10).

The rope symbolizes reality, the snake an illusion. Shankara uses this metaphor to show why we experience a “dual world” although there is only one whole. Because of our uncertainty we constantly whitewash reality with illusions. Whoever confuses the rope with a poisonous snake will suffer fear and torment. But whoever sees the coiled rope for what it really is, is enlightened. According to Adi Shankara, we can overcome our lack of knowledge through meditation and thereby reach unification with Brahman, the divine soul of the world: “May this one sentence proclaim the essence of a thousand books; only Brahman is real, the world is appearance, the self is nothing but Brahman.”25

Fig. 10: Shankara’s rope

Shankara’s rope parable reminds us of Plato’s cave parable which I have already presented. Cave or shack—it really doesn’t matter—these stories show how we don’t have a good grip on reality because our senses continually lead us astray. It is astounding that two great philosophers, Shankara and Plato, who were from opposing cultures and different times arrive at a conclusion that is very similar to today’s reasoning in quantum physics: Reality is one big picture which is precisely why subject and object—observer and observed—can never truly be separated.

It is important to know that “not two” and “one” are not the same. The idea “not two” is even deeper than “one”. “Not two” means that it is absolutely indivisible. If something is “one” we can still think of it as consisting of parts. According to Shankara, reality is not only one, but also not two: one and never-two. I must not strive for understanding the rest of the world because the rest really doesn’t exist. The world is not outside of me, nor am I a part of it. There is only “the world with me”.

Darwin’s Finches

Hardly any scientist questioned our role in the world more fundamentally than the British naturalist Charles Darwin. After aborting his medical studies, he first became a theologian. The works of the British natural philosopher William Paley deeply influenced Darwin’s scientific thought which was often demonstrated in his later publications.

It was a great stroke of fate for science when Darwin was invited to take part in a circumnavigation of the globe at the age of 22. In December 1831 the young theologian launched to sea aboard the HMS Beagle. At first Darwin firmly believed that God created every kind of living thing individually. But after travelling the oceans and continents, his detailed observations of nature gave him a completely different picture: He discovered sea fossils on 12,000-feet mountain tops in South America, found close biological relationships among remotely isolated turtles living on the Galapagos islands and catalogued over 1529 species,26 which included groups of finch-like song birds also discovered on the Galapagos islands.

After his return in October 1836, he sent his work to John Gould at the museum of the Zoological Society of London.27 Gould investigated the birds and confirmed that there was no clear separation among these living phenomena: They were uniformly joined in every way. Darwin himself didn’t give them any special notice during his return trip to England. The different shapes of their beaks (see figure 11) did not escape Darwin, but he suspected that these finches represented different species.

Fig. 11: Darwin’s finches

Only after intensive conversations with Gould, Darwin was compelled to make his revolutionary interpretation of the obvious differences of the finch beaks: The birds adjusted to the various food resources that were available to them in their environment on the islands. Only the bird that had the beak that works could eat grains or insects which were available in its environment: big beaks for grains, sharp beaks for insects! Darwin’s finches represent the classic example of adaptive radiation: An original species branches into more specialized species so that it can better adjust to changing environmental conditions. Grain-eating finches, insect-eating finches, woodpecker finches and other species branched from only a few original finches on the Galapagos islands28 (see figure 12). Woodpecker finches use tiny twigs as tools to remove larvae from tree bark. The great distances among these small islands favor the development of new species. In this way, nature is successful in making use of ecological niches.

Fig. 12: Adaptive radiation

But the beaks of finch-like songbirds were just a small part of the jig-saw puzzle of Darwin’s reasoning. Taken together, his findings yielded a picture that refuted all creation biology which was considered to be universally valid at that time: The many biological species are not changeless living things created individually by a God of creation, but they develop gradually through the process of natural selection— from out of their own!

Twenty years went by until Darwin finally published his life’s work in November 1859: On the Origin of Species. 29 He made five revolutionary claims in this book:

 – the changeability of all species,

 – creation of species in minute progressions,

 – propagation of species within populations,

 – the common origin of all forms of life,

 – natural selection as the pivotal mechanism of life.

To further support these claims, Darwin produced detailed scientific evidence that he had collected during and following the return of his worldwide investigation. In his Notebook B he sketched his idea of the genealogy of life for the first time.30 Beginning with the words “I think…” follows a tree that displays the biological species on the ends of its many branches (see figure 13). This marked the birth of the theory of evolution.

Fig. 13: Darwin’s first sketch of evolution

Darwin does not express any kind of special role that mankind might have in his theory of evolution. So it is immediately clear that even mankind evolved from animal life and can’t have any claim to be a special creation of a divine being. Animal and man are not two—we are one. This caused tremendous outrage with the church at that time. The church had fervently believed that mankind was the crown of creation and that God created man “to make the earth subservient to him”.31 But meanwhile molecular genetics had clearly proven that mankind and the great ape were of common ancestry: 99 percent of all hereditary factors of human beings and chimpanzees are identical.32 Moreover, the genes of humanity are encoded precisely the same as with most living things on this planet.33 Other genetic codes might best be explained by the fact that evolution always seeks new attempts and avenues into forming life.

Nonetheless, other groups of people surface all the time like the creationists who firmly believe that God created every species individually, one at a time. Supporters of the so-called Intelligent Design, a pseudo-scientific variant of creationism, think that living things are far too complex to be able to develop from natural selection. The dramatic increase of varieties of species about 540 million years ago can be explained only with the intervention from a divine source—an “intelligent designer”.34

The truth is, life on earth excels at producing very great varieties of species. How could this come about? Essentially, in addition to Evolution Theory and Intelligent Design, there is even a third answer. Let’s compare all of these and see how everything stacks up. 1) Evolution Theory states that life produces new species again and again by chance. These species must then prove themselves during a process of natural selection in order to survive. Evolution Theory doesn’t need any God who plans, nor does it need an intelligent designer. But this theory runs into trouble because the estimated age of four billion years of life on this planet isn’t really sufficient enough to produce its forms of life in sufficient complexity. 2) Intelligent Design maintains that some God or intelligent designer established well defined rules by which the variety of life would have to be created. So the process of creation would be pre-determined. But this line of thinking runs into trouble, too, because God could spare his creation anyway if all future is fixed in stone. 3) There’s still a third answer to go which will emerge more and more throughout this book: The variety of life is based on a creative mix of both chance and rules.

Let us take a close look at this third answer. There can be no doubt that life always happens spontaneously: Dead matter springs to life. There is no half-way point—matter is either alive or not alive.35 In the chapter Temporal Degrees of Freedom we will learn that spontaneity and chance are precisely the same thing. The rules in this third answer are the true and balanced laws of nature. These laws make sure that complex living things evolve gradually from matter which had suddenly come to life. I can’t think of anything that would interfere with this third answer. It even explains the existence of life on our planet. The conditions on earth that are well suited for life are only by chance: The earth’s distance to the sun, thereby favoring temperatures, and sufficient water for supporting life—are all by chance. And the earth also provides all the other chemical elements necessary for life—again by chance. Considering that precisely under such conditions life developed on earth, however, was not by chance, but the consequence of best thought-out laws of nature. Someone or something has been at work here and has established these life-giving natural laws.

Darwin’s theory of evolution plays a key role if we try to get closer to the truth. Chance and rules—we are familiar with this combination, but from where? From any game! Chance and rules turn life into a kind of “game”—not like monopoly which is about material values, but a game about spiritual values that we will talk about in more detail in the final chapter. Every good game consists of both chance and rules. Just think about your favorite game: Without chance it would be boring; without rules it would just be random chaos. Chance in the game of life is temporal freedom; its rules are the laws of nature. Chance and rules—both taken together—make life worth living (see figure 14).

Fig. 14: Life is interplay of chance and rules

Darwin’s theory of evolution is accepted today by most scientists. So it really is a great mystery to me that—being familiar with Darwin’s revelations—we haven’t been questioning the individuality of every human being. Let me be more specific: Why should a God—if he/she/it does exist— choose not to create individual species on the one hand, but create a human being as an individual on the other? Darwin teaches us that life is one big picture. Shutting yourself off is unsexy. It retards the mixing of genotypes and counteracts evolution. Life prospers through mating! And yet, people seek individuality and they do that for religious reasons— they hope to play an individual role in life and try to preserve it even beyond the course of their lives. But nature is pursuing a different goal: Whoever reads her clues will be deeply compelled to abandon the desire for individuality and take the path of a far greater adventure—the adventure of a cosmic consciousness. Well, this is Brahman whom Adi Shankara had spoken about.

New insights don’t just fall from the sky every day. They need time—a lot of time. After Darwin’s sensational revelation that animals and mankind are related to each other, nearly half of a century went by before another falsehood was dispelled: the absoluteness of space and time.

Einstein’s Spacetime

The theory of relativity, a mathematical work of formulas, was published by Albert Einstein in 1905 and 1915. But the cornerstone of this theory can also be expressed completely without formulas—with pictures instead. This is what I am inviting you to: Welcome to Einstein’s spacetime!

Einstein assumed only two things:36 The speed of light is a natural constant—a number that never changes—and the laws of nature have the same mathematical form for all non-accelerating37 observers. From these assumptions alone, he concluded that neither time nor space are absolute which means that they can’t be the same for all observers in the universe. Temporal (time like) and spatial (space like) distances also depend on how fast an object or an activity is moving relative to me. For example, when a watch moves relative to me, it is going from my perspective slower than a watch that I am wearing on my arm—even if both watches are identical!