Physics and mystics, cycles of space and time

By Rahayu Ratnaningsih

JAKARTA (JP): My fixation with physics and mysticism has brought me this far in the series of musings on the absurdity of time.

What fascinates me even more is that the Eastern mystics share a strikingly similar dynamic view of the universe and time with modern physics. They see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static. Fritjof Capra writes in his Tao of Physics that throughout Eastern mysticism there seems to be a strong intuition for the space-time character of reality. The fact that space and time are inseparably linked, which is so characteristic of relativistic physics, is stressed again and again.

This intuitive notion of space and time has, perhaps, found its clearest expression and its most far-reaching elaboration in Buddhism.

Buddhism sees time as circular, with no beginning and no end, no genesis and no Armageddon. The cosmos is a never-ending process of appearance and disappearance, sandwiching a natural process of aeons of evolution. The cosmos evolves together with the living creatures it contains, one affecting the other.

This co-evolution is also poignantly asserted by the Taoist view of the cosmos as an organic, growing entity. The principal characteristic of the Tao is the cyclic nature of its ceaseless motion and change; that all developments in nature, those in the physical world as well as those of human situations, show cyclic patterns of coming and going, of expansion and contraction. Chuang Tzu says: "In the transformation and growth of all things, every bud and feature has its proper form. In this we have their gradual maturing and decay, the constant flow of transformation and change."

The metaphor of cosmic dance has found its most profound and beautiful expression in Hinduism in the dancing of god Shiva. In Hindu mythology, among his many incarnations, Shiva appears as the king of dancers, the god of creation and destruction who sustains through his dance the endless rhythm of the universe. According to Hindu belief, all life is part of a great rhythmic process of creation and destruction, of death and rebirth, and Shiva's dance symbolizes this eternal life-death rhythm which goes on in endless cycles.

Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dream, an exquisite blend between physics and poetry, is, again, best to sum up the awe:

"Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.

"For the most part, people do not know they will live their lives over. Traders do not know that they will make the same bargain again and again. Politicians do not know that they will shout from the same lectern an infinite number of times in the cycles of time. Parents treasure the first laugh from their child as if they will not hear it again. Lovers making love the first time undress shyly, show surprise at the supple thigh, the fragile nipple. How would they know that each secret glimpse, each touch, will be repeated again and again, exactly as before?

"On Marktgasse, it is the same. How could the shopkeepers know that each handmade sweater, each embroidered handkerchief, each chocolate candy, each intricate compass and watch will return to their stalls?

At dusk, the shopkeepers go home to their families or drink beer in the taverns, calling happily to friends down the vaulted alleys, caressing each moment as an emerald on temporary consignment. How could they know that nothing is temporary, that all will happen again? No more than an ant crawling round the rim of a crystal chandelier knows that it will return to where it began.

"... In the world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely. So too every moment that two friends stop becoming friends, every time that a family is broken because of money, every vicious remark in an argument between spouses, every opportunity denied because of a superior's jealousy, every promise not kept.

"And just as all things will be repeated in the future, all things now happening happened a million times before. Some few people in every town, in their dreams, are vaguely aware that all has occurred in the past. These are the people with unhappy lives, and they sense that their misjudgements and wrong deeds and bad luck have all taken place in the previous loop of time. In the dead of night these cursed citizens wrestle with their bedsheets, unable to rest, stricken with the knowledge that they cannot change a single action, a single gesture. Their mistakes will be repeated precisely in this life as in the life before. And it is these double unfortunates who give the only sign that time is a circle. For in each town, late at night, the vacant streets and balconies fill up with their moans."

Lightman's skillful penmanship is perhaps not a mere pastime. It is said that history repeats itself as if there is a pattern. Nothing could prove this better other than the uncanny account around the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

There are seven letters in each name. Both presidents had the legality of their election contested. Both were directly concerned with the issue of civil rights. Both were slain on Friday and in the presence of their wives.

Lincoln was elected in 1860. Kennedy was elected in 1960. Their successors were named Johnson and were Southern Democrats who previously served in the U.S. Senate.

Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908. Booth and Oswald were murdered before their trials could be arraigned. Booth and Oswald were Southerners favoring unpopular ideas. Lincoln's secretary, named Kennedy, advised him not to go to the theater.

Kennedy's secretary, named Lincoln, advised him not to go to Dallas. John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald each contain 15 letters.

Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson each contain 13 letters. Lincoln and Kennedy were carried on the same caisson. What is the hidden message of this? That time is circular, or is life merely a series of random incidents?

The author is director of the Satori Foundation, email: satori@cbn.net.id.