The past
configuration
is not here.
Like-Water-or-Clouds-The-Tang-Dynasty
The e?
touchedi?
chair is not the e?
seeni?
chair.
We assemble and link these views of the chair in our mind.
Every e?
causei?
is itself a nexus of causes and effects, a whirlpool.
We select the boundaries of causes and effects to map onto our boundaries of objects and processes.
The expressed thought itself is an encapsulation in some language, even a physical or artistic e?
languagei?
, pulled out of the thought continuum.
Its unexpressed tentacles stretch out into surrounding thoughts and language.
The word echoes amongst other words.
The verbal reaches into the non-verbal.
When we defocus for a moment from our delineated worlds of known boundaries, clear causes, and agreed language, we can easily find ourselves at a loss. In the physical world we are disturbed by discontinuities, e? noisei? , the non- repeating patterns of water and clouds, dust and smoke, fire and light. The vortices of the world are also the e? weatheri? of the Universe. The
145
? boundaries of the world are fractal boundaries: as in Zenoi? s paradox they are finite in space but immeasurable. Complex movement is fluid, elusive, evasive, subtle. It creates forms out of nothing and collapses them again. The tiniest effect, the smallest perturbation, may cause massive change. Nature repeats, but not exactly, traces endless paths but within bounds.
The quantum model implies not merely that the future of the world is unpredictable because we cannot compute its changes fast enough, but that it is ? 397? 38? . ,? ? ? unpredictable. Within the e? wholei? of Nature are domains where uncertainty and randomness are inherent, where repetition is bounded but non-repeating, where levels of detail regress infinitely. The random, the uncertain, the infinite, and the vastly complex, conspire to make our universe personally ungraspable, despite those domains of our intelligence where we have created theories, demonstrated regularities, inferred e? lawsi? , and built ourselves a world we can grasp. What we
146
? can predict at the statistical level escapes us at the level of e? realityi? . The e? thing-in-itselfi? is beyond us. In that sense, since it is ungraspable, there is no e? thing-in-itselfi? .
In our relativistic universe, moving objects, and objects in gravitational fields have their own e? locali? time, dimensions, and energy. Our e? locali? perception of them depends on information, such as light signals. When we perceive them their clocks run slower than ours, as ours do to them. Dimensions contract. Mass, which is Energy, increases. The results of what we measure will depend on relative velocities, on gravitational fields, on inertial effects. The e? observeri? , the point from which we observe, becomes crucial. Not because the key e? lawsi? of physics run differently in different domains but because each observer, each different set of observers, each domain, sees a different universe. Subtly, or in some situations radically different. We can navigate e? ouri? universe, but we cannot see and touch e? the Universei? directly, or see it whole.
147
? We can imagine and visualise it relativistically. We can construct diagrams and model it mathematically. But we cannot, ever, e? grasp iti? entire. That there is a universal e? Nowi? how can we doubt? But it is intrinsically not observable as a single e? state of everythingi? . There is no absolute framework from which to observe it. The stone dropped from the railway carriage window appears to drop vertically to the passenger in the moving train, but describes a parabola to the watcher on the embankment. Which path does it e? reallyi? follow. That is a Zen ? 4,3. Meditation on it brings illumination.
Events that happen simultaneously for one observer, can happen sequentially for another distant observer, because of the difference in the length of the paths the information travelled to reach that distant observer. There is no universal simultaneity of observations, no universal e? Nowi? . That is a second Zen koan. Meditation on a koan creates first confusion and frustration, then enlightenment. e? At firsti? said Chi? ing-y ? an
148
? e? I thought that mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers. Later, on considering these things, I realised that mountains were not mountains and rivers were not rivers. Eventually I achieved enlightenment. I came to understand that mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers. i?
In our quantum universe the sub-atomic world is strange. There is no satisfactory visual model of the entities or continua that make up the microcosm. They appear and vanish. They carry with them a cloud of other entities. They seethe in a sea of reality that appears only in observation. The statistically predictable pattern is made up of intrinsically unpredictable events. The uncertainty principle prevents knowledge of the precise e? statei? of the universe. In measuring one attribute we destroy information about another. No sub-atomic entity can be observed twice. What is observed is always a different entity. All events are unique. Randomness is at the core of the microcosm. Only statistical
149
? prediction is valid. The observer changes the observation and is a crucial part of the observation. The e? particlei? that e? musti? go through one hole in the two-slit experiment appears at the screen having e? travelledi? as a probability e? wavei? through both holes. The pattern of the interference fringes dictates where the particle can appear on the screen. Its precise location is probabilistic and unpredictable. Is it e? reallyi? a particle or is it e? reallyi? a probability wave? This experiment is also a Zen koan. Enlightenment e? realisesi? what is strange. It e? finds the sun inside the rain, draws water from the roots of firei? .
The world of our mental processes is also inpenetrable to self-reflection. The conscious mind cannot e? seei? its own subconscious processes. The sources of our feelings, motivations and affinities are therefore not totally knowable. We absolutely have no language for feelings other than the language of how they affect others and the world. What does
150
? a e? feeling-in-itselfi? feel like? I know but cannot tell. I only hope you also know. We try to evoke the feeling through art, through action, through the spaces between words. Emotion and sensibility create image and situation so that image and situation may in turn re-create sensibility and emotion. We conjure in order to communicate, between the islands of our selves. The mind is a hand that cannot grasp itself, a mirror that cannot reflect itself, a process in time that can never be an object in space. e? You will not grasp it by thinking about it. You cannot realise it without thinking about it. i? says Zen, of enlightenment. And again e? What is the meaning of Reality? Wait until there is no one around and I can tell you. i?
Even Time is elusive and ungraspable. Our local time is created locally by the movement from one configuration to another configuration, from one set of events to another set of events, of the energies that make up our local universe. How can there not be a local e? Nowi? where
151
? events occur? We measure time through regularity, through recurring e? identicali? oscillations. We agree to meet at a local time, at a distance from e? Nowi? just as we agree to meet at a local place, at a distance from e? Herei? and amazingly we do meet. For us time e? flowsi? in a direction because events succeed one another. Configurations and events including our eye- movements and thoughts appear in a specific order. Yet there is still only the e? Nowi? . Neither past nor future exist.
The past configuration is not here. The future configuration is not here either. Yet past events e? must have happenedi? . We infer them from cause and effect. We remember them in the mind. They have left their traces e? bound ini? as information and configuration in the present. Future events e? will happeni? because their macrocosmic causes are visible in the present.
Relativity theory says that since time intervals can differ at different speeds for different observers then one observer can age
152
? more slowly than another does. There is no universal e? Nowi? only local ones. In this sense there could be time travel into anotheri? s future. We could leave and then revisit our societyi? s e? Nowi? when less of our years and more of its would have gone by. We would have re-entered the e? Nowi? of our society without having experienced its intervening moments, like the sleeper waking. Though it would be profoundly strange it would not be travel into our own personal future. Our own personal future is always not here, not yet. It is always ungraspable.
Could we travel into the past, and so get back to a previous configuration? By that would we mean that all processes would continuously backtrack, undo and reverse themselves to a previous e? Nowi? and e? Herei? ? Then we would still perceive that reversal appearing in order in forward time. The film that is run backward still runs in our forward flow of time, even if what it shows is a reversing process. Each reversed
153
? moment of the physical past, would be a new e? Nowi? from which a forward future would insist on unfolding. So our perceived time would still run in the one direction. The future is not of the same kind as the past. The future is always possible. The past is always consumed. Every new configuration is the next moment. Every past configuration is no longer a moment.
How could the processes be reversed? The universe has no intention, no will to initiate such a reversal, and no universal information about the totality of its past configurations. We perceive processes that achieve disorder from order, irretrievably dissipating energy in the process. We perceive other processes that achieve order from disorder requiring energy in the process. Disorder stays disordered unless energy is added to create order. One type of process is reversed by the other type of process. Even if the mathematical model looks the same e? with a reverse of signi? , losing energy is not the same as adding energy. We can feel that deep in
154
? ourselves. Order is not merely disorder reversing. Order e? decaysi? into disorder but is e? createdi? from disorder.
And if the e? Nowi? did in some sense reverse to a previous state there would be no way of knowing it had done so completely since complete description of the e? Nowi? is denied us by quantum uncertainty and e? infinitei? complexity. If the universe must contain microcosmic events that are random and unique then reverse processes must also contain events that are random and unique. Each process is ultimately unknowable in precise, deterministic terms. If we attempted to reverse the process we could not achieve an exact reversal. The process of reversal would itself introduce new and unique random events into the unknowable local universe.
By travel into the past could we mean that a previous configuration of the universe or the total information about it might exist e? somewherei? unchanging in a e? parallel (that is
155
? orthogonal) universei? so allowing us to enter it and participate in it? But that past would then not be past but a e? parallel Nowi? , frozen e? alongsidei? this Universe. There would be an infinite number of parallel e? Nowsi? . What could it mean to say that a frozen universe exists in another e? Nowi? alongside this Universe? Nothing is frozen, everything unfolds. If the Universe has infinite dimensions then all e? Nowsi? are within it. And for the observer there can only be one local e? Herei? and e? Nowi? .
There is no e? memoryi? , in the energies outside us, of the past configurations of even this Universe. The Universe is without mind. We are the minds. There is no universal Will that might control. The Universe is neutral. The Tao of Energy is e? without possession, without demands, without authority. i? e? The moon does not intend to create its reflection in the water, the water does not intend to reveal the reflection of the moon. i? And neither of them has any mind to be observed by us.
156
? The Universe and the Tao are ultimately unknowable, in the West as in the East. Who observes is crucial. Partial and local e? observationsi? of events are available to us, and available more or less precisely, but absolute and universal observation of e? alli? events with deterministic precision is ? 397? 38? . ,? ? ? impossible. The position of e? the observeri? and the observed is crucial in the relativistic universe because the measured e? realityi? depends on relative location and velocity, and the presence of gravitational fields. The intervention of the e? observeri? is crucial in the quantum universe because measurement e? disturbsi? and in a sense e? createsi? the e? realityi? that is measured, while the uncertainty principle denies complete knowledge. The perspective of the e? observeri? is crucial in the chaotic universe because different levels of the fractal infinities within finite e? realityi? are visible dependent on scale. And the e? observeri? si? unconscious processes are crucial in events within the mind because they are the
157
? invisible substratum that is part of e? thinkingi? . Without the observer there is no reality. And each reality is local, uncertain, partial, and scaleable. The spacetime of modern science is not smooth but coarse. The surface is e? reallyi? a sea of waves and ripples, swirls and vortices, foam and spume. Instead of a continuum there is a labyrinthine network of cavities and folds, surfaces and holes. The deepest insight is to e? seei? that in the quantum universe every part is connected to every other part in a vast, indivisible Vortex, that is a Void without reality until we separate observations from it, creating e? names and formsi? . Science makes theoretical models of great empirical power that are still models and not the reality. Heisenberg said that the mathematics describes what we know of the universei? s behaviour not the behaviour itself. Bohr said that science concerns what we can say about Nature not what it is. Sub-atomic entities have no meaningful existence or properties except as we perceive them in observation.
158
? The e? reali? mirror is empty. The universe that exists beneath, beside, beyond our observations and our names is visible to us as, at best, a shadow, or a brilliance. Within it there are no names and no forms. e? At root there are no things. i? That is why the universal Tao is nameless, and the eternal Way cannot be told. The Tao is the unknowable matrix of energies. It creates the Vortex of the visible and named. It is the Void of the invisible and unnamed. The reality is that we cannot escape the e? observeri? , cannot escape ourselves. In order to live with the e? observeri? , live with ourselves, we can only attempt to know the unknowable, be in harmony with the non-existent. That means that we must embrace the non-analytic, non-verbal emptiness, and vanish into the Vortex. What cannot be understood, what cannot be measured, what cannot be analysed, what cannot be grasped, can still be lived. The Universe does not understand the mathematical equations of its own existence. e? Entering the wildi? says a Master about the
159
? enlightened ones e? the grass does not move.
When we defocus for a moment from our delineated worlds of known boundaries, clear causes, and agreed language, we can easily find ourselves at a loss. In the physical world we are disturbed by discontinuities, e? noisei? , the non- repeating patterns of water and clouds, dust and smoke, fire and light. The vortices of the world are also the e? weatheri? of the Universe. The
145
? boundaries of the world are fractal boundaries: as in Zenoi? s paradox they are finite in space but immeasurable. Complex movement is fluid, elusive, evasive, subtle. It creates forms out of nothing and collapses them again. The tiniest effect, the smallest perturbation, may cause massive change. Nature repeats, but not exactly, traces endless paths but within bounds.
The quantum model implies not merely that the future of the world is unpredictable because we cannot compute its changes fast enough, but that it is ? 397? 38? . ,? ? ? unpredictable. Within the e? wholei? of Nature are domains where uncertainty and randomness are inherent, where repetition is bounded but non-repeating, where levels of detail regress infinitely. The random, the uncertain, the infinite, and the vastly complex, conspire to make our universe personally ungraspable, despite those domains of our intelligence where we have created theories, demonstrated regularities, inferred e? lawsi? , and built ourselves a world we can grasp. What we
146
? can predict at the statistical level escapes us at the level of e? realityi? . The e? thing-in-itselfi? is beyond us. In that sense, since it is ungraspable, there is no e? thing-in-itselfi? .
In our relativistic universe, moving objects, and objects in gravitational fields have their own e? locali? time, dimensions, and energy. Our e? locali? perception of them depends on information, such as light signals. When we perceive them their clocks run slower than ours, as ours do to them. Dimensions contract. Mass, which is Energy, increases. The results of what we measure will depend on relative velocities, on gravitational fields, on inertial effects. The e? observeri? , the point from which we observe, becomes crucial. Not because the key e? lawsi? of physics run differently in different domains but because each observer, each different set of observers, each domain, sees a different universe. Subtly, or in some situations radically different. We can navigate e? ouri? universe, but we cannot see and touch e? the Universei? directly, or see it whole.
147
? We can imagine and visualise it relativistically. We can construct diagrams and model it mathematically. But we cannot, ever, e? grasp iti? entire. That there is a universal e? Nowi? how can we doubt? But it is intrinsically not observable as a single e? state of everythingi? . There is no absolute framework from which to observe it. The stone dropped from the railway carriage window appears to drop vertically to the passenger in the moving train, but describes a parabola to the watcher on the embankment. Which path does it e? reallyi? follow. That is a Zen ? 4,3. Meditation on it brings illumination.
Events that happen simultaneously for one observer, can happen sequentially for another distant observer, because of the difference in the length of the paths the information travelled to reach that distant observer. There is no universal simultaneity of observations, no universal e? Nowi? . That is a second Zen koan. Meditation on a koan creates first confusion and frustration, then enlightenment. e? At firsti? said Chi? ing-y ? an
148
? e? I thought that mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers. Later, on considering these things, I realised that mountains were not mountains and rivers were not rivers. Eventually I achieved enlightenment. I came to understand that mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers. i?
In our quantum universe the sub-atomic world is strange. There is no satisfactory visual model of the entities or continua that make up the microcosm. They appear and vanish. They carry with them a cloud of other entities. They seethe in a sea of reality that appears only in observation. The statistically predictable pattern is made up of intrinsically unpredictable events. The uncertainty principle prevents knowledge of the precise e? statei? of the universe. In measuring one attribute we destroy information about another. No sub-atomic entity can be observed twice. What is observed is always a different entity. All events are unique. Randomness is at the core of the microcosm. Only statistical
149
? prediction is valid. The observer changes the observation and is a crucial part of the observation. The e? particlei? that e? musti? go through one hole in the two-slit experiment appears at the screen having e? travelledi? as a probability e? wavei? through both holes. The pattern of the interference fringes dictates where the particle can appear on the screen. Its precise location is probabilistic and unpredictable. Is it e? reallyi? a particle or is it e? reallyi? a probability wave? This experiment is also a Zen koan. Enlightenment e? realisesi? what is strange. It e? finds the sun inside the rain, draws water from the roots of firei? .
The world of our mental processes is also inpenetrable to self-reflection. The conscious mind cannot e? seei? its own subconscious processes. The sources of our feelings, motivations and affinities are therefore not totally knowable. We absolutely have no language for feelings other than the language of how they affect others and the world. What does
150
? a e? feeling-in-itselfi? feel like? I know but cannot tell. I only hope you also know. We try to evoke the feeling through art, through action, through the spaces between words. Emotion and sensibility create image and situation so that image and situation may in turn re-create sensibility and emotion. We conjure in order to communicate, between the islands of our selves. The mind is a hand that cannot grasp itself, a mirror that cannot reflect itself, a process in time that can never be an object in space. e? You will not grasp it by thinking about it. You cannot realise it without thinking about it. i? says Zen, of enlightenment. And again e? What is the meaning of Reality? Wait until there is no one around and I can tell you. i?
Even Time is elusive and ungraspable. Our local time is created locally by the movement from one configuration to another configuration, from one set of events to another set of events, of the energies that make up our local universe. How can there not be a local e? Nowi? where
151
? events occur? We measure time through regularity, through recurring e? identicali? oscillations. We agree to meet at a local time, at a distance from e? Nowi? just as we agree to meet at a local place, at a distance from e? Herei? and amazingly we do meet. For us time e? flowsi? in a direction because events succeed one another. Configurations and events including our eye- movements and thoughts appear in a specific order. Yet there is still only the e? Nowi? . Neither past nor future exist.
The past configuration is not here. The future configuration is not here either. Yet past events e? must have happenedi? . We infer them from cause and effect. We remember them in the mind. They have left their traces e? bound ini? as information and configuration in the present. Future events e? will happeni? because their macrocosmic causes are visible in the present.
Relativity theory says that since time intervals can differ at different speeds for different observers then one observer can age
152
? more slowly than another does. There is no universal e? Nowi? only local ones. In this sense there could be time travel into anotheri? s future. We could leave and then revisit our societyi? s e? Nowi? when less of our years and more of its would have gone by. We would have re-entered the e? Nowi? of our society without having experienced its intervening moments, like the sleeper waking. Though it would be profoundly strange it would not be travel into our own personal future. Our own personal future is always not here, not yet. It is always ungraspable.
Could we travel into the past, and so get back to a previous configuration? By that would we mean that all processes would continuously backtrack, undo and reverse themselves to a previous e? Nowi? and e? Herei? ? Then we would still perceive that reversal appearing in order in forward time. The film that is run backward still runs in our forward flow of time, even if what it shows is a reversing process. Each reversed
153
? moment of the physical past, would be a new e? Nowi? from which a forward future would insist on unfolding. So our perceived time would still run in the one direction. The future is not of the same kind as the past. The future is always possible. The past is always consumed. Every new configuration is the next moment. Every past configuration is no longer a moment.
How could the processes be reversed? The universe has no intention, no will to initiate such a reversal, and no universal information about the totality of its past configurations. We perceive processes that achieve disorder from order, irretrievably dissipating energy in the process. We perceive other processes that achieve order from disorder requiring energy in the process. Disorder stays disordered unless energy is added to create order. One type of process is reversed by the other type of process. Even if the mathematical model looks the same e? with a reverse of signi? , losing energy is not the same as adding energy. We can feel that deep in
154
? ourselves. Order is not merely disorder reversing. Order e? decaysi? into disorder but is e? createdi? from disorder.
And if the e? Nowi? did in some sense reverse to a previous state there would be no way of knowing it had done so completely since complete description of the e? Nowi? is denied us by quantum uncertainty and e? infinitei? complexity. If the universe must contain microcosmic events that are random and unique then reverse processes must also contain events that are random and unique. Each process is ultimately unknowable in precise, deterministic terms. If we attempted to reverse the process we could not achieve an exact reversal. The process of reversal would itself introduce new and unique random events into the unknowable local universe.
By travel into the past could we mean that a previous configuration of the universe or the total information about it might exist e? somewherei? unchanging in a e? parallel (that is
155
? orthogonal) universei? so allowing us to enter it and participate in it? But that past would then not be past but a e? parallel Nowi? , frozen e? alongsidei? this Universe. There would be an infinite number of parallel e? Nowsi? . What could it mean to say that a frozen universe exists in another e? Nowi? alongside this Universe? Nothing is frozen, everything unfolds. If the Universe has infinite dimensions then all e? Nowsi? are within it. And for the observer there can only be one local e? Herei? and e? Nowi? .
There is no e? memoryi? , in the energies outside us, of the past configurations of even this Universe. The Universe is without mind. We are the minds. There is no universal Will that might control. The Universe is neutral. The Tao of Energy is e? without possession, without demands, without authority. i? e? The moon does not intend to create its reflection in the water, the water does not intend to reveal the reflection of the moon. i? And neither of them has any mind to be observed by us.
156
? The Universe and the Tao are ultimately unknowable, in the West as in the East. Who observes is crucial. Partial and local e? observationsi? of events are available to us, and available more or less precisely, but absolute and universal observation of e? alli? events with deterministic precision is ? 397? 38? . ,? ? ? impossible. The position of e? the observeri? and the observed is crucial in the relativistic universe because the measured e? realityi? depends on relative location and velocity, and the presence of gravitational fields. The intervention of the e? observeri? is crucial in the quantum universe because measurement e? disturbsi? and in a sense e? createsi? the e? realityi? that is measured, while the uncertainty principle denies complete knowledge. The perspective of the e? observeri? is crucial in the chaotic universe because different levels of the fractal infinities within finite e? realityi? are visible dependent on scale. And the e? observeri? si? unconscious processes are crucial in events within the mind because they are the
157
? invisible substratum that is part of e? thinkingi? . Without the observer there is no reality. And each reality is local, uncertain, partial, and scaleable. The spacetime of modern science is not smooth but coarse. The surface is e? reallyi? a sea of waves and ripples, swirls and vortices, foam and spume. Instead of a continuum there is a labyrinthine network of cavities and folds, surfaces and holes. The deepest insight is to e? seei? that in the quantum universe every part is connected to every other part in a vast, indivisible Vortex, that is a Void without reality until we separate observations from it, creating e? names and formsi? . Science makes theoretical models of great empirical power that are still models and not the reality. Heisenberg said that the mathematics describes what we know of the universei? s behaviour not the behaviour itself. Bohr said that science concerns what we can say about Nature not what it is. Sub-atomic entities have no meaningful existence or properties except as we perceive them in observation.
158
? The e? reali? mirror is empty. The universe that exists beneath, beside, beyond our observations and our names is visible to us as, at best, a shadow, or a brilliance. Within it there are no names and no forms. e? At root there are no things. i? That is why the universal Tao is nameless, and the eternal Way cannot be told. The Tao is the unknowable matrix of energies. It creates the Vortex of the visible and named. It is the Void of the invisible and unnamed. The reality is that we cannot escape the e? observeri? , cannot escape ourselves. In order to live with the e? observeri? , live with ourselves, we can only attempt to know the unknowable, be in harmony with the non-existent. That means that we must embrace the non-analytic, non-verbal emptiness, and vanish into the Vortex. What cannot be understood, what cannot be measured, what cannot be analysed, what cannot be grasped, can still be lived. The Universe does not understand the mathematical equations of its own existence. e? Entering the wildi? says a Master about the
159
? enlightened ones e? the grass does not move.
