Burst Thirty Eight (For Youth):
Physics and Metaphysics – Part III
Shri Ramana Maharshi perhaps is an excellent exponent of metaphysics. He is someone whose statements (born of personal experience) can hold physicists in awe. He says, for example, “Time and space have no validity but for the observer. The play of time and space can take place only if there is body-identification (that creates the observer). When the observer (an entity that arises in body identification) disappears, the truth of our existence has no limitation of either space or time. (Saddarshanam, verse 18)
Interestingly, Jiddu Krishnamurti often spoke of ‘observing without an observer’. He too pointed to the breaking down of divisions between the observer and the observed. This undivided Awareness could baffle the physicist, as the fundamental requirement for any experimental observation is that there be a division between ‘the measured’ and the ‘one who measures’.
Ramana does not spare us when we are all the time caught in the world of senses. He declares that our world is nothing but a creation of our own thoughts. Sound, touch, form, color, taste and smell (the sense objects) constitute this (observed) world. All these objects are validated by our sense organs (ears, skin, eyes, tongue and nose) and they in turn are dependent on the mind, as they would have no impact on us if our mind were to be away. Thus the mind, being made of thoughts, is the stage on which the play of this world is played. (Saddarshanam 8)
By remarking that thought is a response of memory, Krishnamurti has questioned the validity of our world of joys and sorrows. Thoughts, rooted in memory, take us into a fancy world and away from reality. He too appealed for humanity to rise above the domain of thoughts and stay in pure attention, which alone can help us stay in the present moment, the reality.
Causation, space and time are the bread and butter of physics. Metaphysics points to a reality that is not touched by these three. Ramana asks us to be rooted in the NOW, which is fundamental. Just as all counting has to begin with the number one, right understanding of life has to start with the NOW. The future and the past that our mind conceives are only projections of thought. What we meet is always the present. To be aware of the reality of the present moment is most important, without which thoughts can take us for a fancy ride indeed. (Saddarshanam 17)
Wise people and mystics like Ramana had a vision of the metaphysical reality in which alone all the puzzles of physics will ultimately find their resolution.
Swami Chidananda
June 20, 2005