Preface

Really, I suppose, this book arose through a collision of European and Asiatic interpretations of their observations of the real world. In Europe, when a man dies, we say he gives up the ghost. The body is taken to be real. In India, they say he gives up the body. The soul is taken to be real. To the European, the world is made of ninety-two chemical elements. To the Asiatic, it is made of only five. The Europeans take science seriously, but they take philosophy with a grain of salt. After all, weren’t the philosophers only guessing? But the Hindus take philosophy seriously, and they take science with some salt. After all, isn’t the world unreal? Yet, although these differences in interpretation are obvious to all, there cannot be two real worlds, one for the East and one for the West. Since there can be only one real world, it must be that our various descriptions and interpretations of it can be reconciled if we can understand the other fellow’s language and the observations on which his descriptions and interpretations are based. Fortunately for me, I was educated partly by Europeans and Americans, and partly by Asiatics, and my Sanskrit is better than my Greek. I mention these two ancient languages because the problem of misinterpretation goes back, before the development of modern Indo-European languages, to a time when Greek and Sanskrit were the spoken languages on the caravan route from India to Asia Minor, and on the water routes from India to Greece. It was along these routes that the old five-element theory most probably migrated from India to Greece through Thales of Miletus, about 600 BC. At that time, Thales was a Greek mercenary, fighting for Egypt in Babylonia, while Indian traders were in Babylon. My first important clue to the solution of the problem of the reconciliation of the Eastern and Western interpretations came when I was studying the Greek version of this old theory. Having been trained in physics and chemistry at the University of California, I had been taught to laugh the old five-element theory to scorn. After all, even the early atomic tables ran to ninety-two chemical elements. But by the time I got around to studying the early Greek version, I had already been exposed to the Sanskrit version which, of course, is much older. In the ancient Sanskrit, each of the five elements is associated with one of our five senses of perception, and it became at once obvious to me that the elements they spoke of were not substances, like the elements of chemistry, but five kinds of energy. My problem was simply to identify them. It was John Dalton who borrowed the term "element" from the older theory, because in his day the European theory had become so garbled that its adherents could no longer "show their wares." In Sanskrit, Akasha (gravity) is associated with the ear (the saccule), Vayu (kinetic energy) with the skin (temperature), Tejas (radiation) with the eye, and Ap and Prithivi (electricity and magnetism) with the tongue and the nose. (Protons taste sour.) The conflict was not between theories but only over the meanings of words. The history of human knowledge reads like a mystery story. It begins with many problems, and with a smattering of clues, some important, some obvious, some trivial and some misleading. Only at the end does the whole picture emerge, only after the plot has been very much thickened by overlooking the obvious and following clues which were either trivial or misleading. In what appears to us to have been the dark ages of human understanding, matter was thought to be inert. It is often taught that way in school. But this notion arises from a misleading clue. Matter moves by itself under the influence of gravity. It is self-impelled by its own gravitational field. But we are born on a planet where the action of what we call gravity is impeded by the solid rocky structure beneath our feet, giving rise to the impression that matter is inert. As a consequence of this early misunderstanding, all the motions of matter were attributed to the actions of gods and goddesses. Matter was thought to move, not by its own nature, but under the influence of forces from outside, forces initiated by living beings. There was a sun god, a moon god, a wind god, and a storm god. There was a god for gravity and a god for electricity. There was even a god for inertia, to keep moving objects in motion, because it was thought that matter, being inert, would come to a stop by itself. It was felt then, as it is felt now, that each of us, as a living organism, has his or her own "vital energy". It was not recognized that our so-called "vital energy" is not our own but comes from eating and breathing. It was not understood then that the universe is "ert," and that the reason we seem to have "vital energy" is because all living beings live in a cascade of increasing entropy by directing bits of the increase through their forms. In those days the discrimination was between the quick and the dead. We were the quick, and matter was the dead. We were the movers of matter; and if matter was found to move without intervention by us, then it must have been moved by gods and goddesses much like ourselves. Quaint. But at least their solution contained within it the recognition that their concept of matter could not explain its behavior. The problem of why matter moved remained unsolved. Rejecting the notion of gods and goddesses as the movers of matter, the European scientists sought the solution in the detailed investigation of how matter moves. This new attack proved very rewarding, and gradually the "why" questions slipped into the background. Although they were never laid to rest, it was hoped that the "why" questions would somehow be answered through the study of how matter moved. Sir Isaac Newton even felt that the "why" questions belonged in the domain of theology, and that only the "how" questions belonged in the domain of science. In a sense it was a step backwards, partly because it tended to compartmentalize our knowledge, and partly because the European theology of his day was still overrun by the quaint old notion that "vital energy" was the mover of matter, and, therefore, on a grand scale, the universe must be moved by the "vital energy" of a personal God. But at least, within this view, the origin of the universe lay outside of physics. The causation of our physics was restricted to the transformations of matter and energy, and it was recognized that matter and energy cannot arise through transformations within that matter and that energy. It was recognized that the origin of the universe cannot be found within the framework of transformational causation. The problem was hung, like a discarded coat, on the rack of "God, the creator and maintainer of the universe." But I, like the ancients, feel that the question of origins and the "why" questions do belong in the domain of science. If the "why" questions cannot be asked within the framework of our physics, then there must be something dreadfully wrong with that framework. Gradually, through the growth of scientific knowledge, and its triumph over theology in the domain of physical explanations, it was found that matter does move by itself without the interference of presiding deities. The behavior of matter, under the influence of gravity, shows none of the- whims of a god or goddess. It moves according to rigid laws in a way quite unlike the behavior of people or animals. The secret of the behavior of matter lay within matter itself. It was the age of scientific materialism. It was a solid gain, because the old notion of why matter moved was wrong. The remaining difficulty was that the notion of divine intervention had not been replaced by anything better. The problem of why things moved was still unsolved. We, the European physicists, knew how things fell, and it didn’t seem to have anything to do with "vital energy", but we still didn’t know why they fell. We didn’t know why matter showed gravity, electricity and inertia. The framework of our physics was still incomplete. It wasn’t until after the advent of relativity theory, in 1905 that we even had the essential clue which would lead to the unraveling of this problem and to the completion of the framework of our physics. This missing clue, which is only hinted at by relativity theory, had remained hidden in Europe, probably by the conflict between science and the church, but it had been known much earlier, and worked out in some detail, by some of our Asiatic compatriots, namely the Buddhists and the Vedantins. Europe knew how things moved, and Asia knew why, and this book is about the confluence of these two streams of human knowledge. The Buddhists and the Vedantins (especially the Shunyavada Buddhists and the Advaita Vedantins*, who hold that the reality underlying this universe is non-dual), by quarreling with each other, had worked out the details of why things move (what I call apparitional causation**), while the scientists of Europe quarreling with the church, had worked out the details of how things move (what I call transformational causation), and had gained a fair understanding of our genetic past. It was the confluence of these two streams of knowledge, the joining of these two "maps," that was needed for the clarification of our problem. What remained unclear at the edge of the map of science was why matter appeared as discrete electrical particles showing gravity and inertia. And what remained unclear at the edge of the map of Vedanta was how the nature of the underlying reality, seen through apparition, would show up in our physics. J.L.D. October 1, 1979 *The term Advaita Vedanta is Sanskrit. It means non-dualistic Vedanta. Vedanta, literally, means the culmination of knowledge. Veda means knowledge, and Anta means end or culmination. The Vedantins hold that all this that we see is Brahman, the one self-existent spirit, the absolute. beyond time, space and causation. Brahman is the real, the eternal truth. What we see within space and time is the transient. Basically there are two schools of thought among the Vedantins. The dualists hold that Brahman has become all this through what is called Parinama, transformation. And they hold that even in the final analysis the individual soul is different from Brahman. The Advaitins, the non-dualists (Dvaita means dual.), on the other hand, hold that Brahman only appears to have become this universe. They hold that the individual soul, through Maya (apparition), only appears to be different from Brahman, and that in reality there is no differentiation whatsoever. **Apparitional causation is causation by appearance only, as when a rope is mistaken for a snake, or when the stump of a tree is mistaken for a man. The rope is not actually transformed into a snake, as milk may be transformed into buttermilk, or as the gravitational energy of a falling object may be transformed into its kinetic energy during the fall. According to the Advaita Vedantins, the reality (Brahman) has been seen through apparition (Maya) as this visible universe.