The Unity Principle
We need to
start a revolution. Not a revolution
against any national figure or political state, but a revolution against a philosophical
viewpoint, the viewpoint of modern scientific materialism and reductionism. This world view,
born back in the ancient depths of Greek philosophy with the Atomists and carried forward by Bacon, Newton, and Einstein, has been advanced by
modern science as far as it can go in our understanding of the universe and it
now holds us back. Further progress
requires throwing away the very idea that the Universe can be understood by
reducing it to its ultimate constituents and understanding those parts
separately. Even science itself is
slowly reaching this conclusion with recent advances in quantum mechanics such
as Bell’s Theorem and string theory and our understanding of the concepts of non-locality and quantum entanglement.
What new conceptual framework or idea should replace this outdated reductionist
understanding of the way the world works?
I would propose that it be The Unity Principle.
In his book
“The Unity Principle: The Link Between
Science and Spirituality”, Steven Richheimer boils this idea down to the simple
statement that “The undivided wholeness of the created universe is essentially
what we call the Unity Principle…Unlike the philosophy of dualism, which teaches that the universe consists of, or is explicable as two or
more fundamental entities, such as matter and mind, living and nonliving, God
and creation, etc., monism purports that the universe is a Singularity
(One). Everything is connected, and all
things originate from Supreme Consciousness.”
Also known as monism, holism, and monotheistic panentheism, the Unity Principle provides an
explanation of how the Universe is created from Consciousness. The exciting part is that these types of
ideas, heretofore completely of a religious, mystical, or spiritual nature and
thus not amenable to precise definition or analysis, can now at least partially
be based on cold, hard science, namely quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string
theory.
Quantum mechanics is the most tested and best verified
scientific theory in human history. What
most physicists now accept, I think, is that quantum mechanics shows us that
the quantum world is nonlocal, both in space and in time. Spatial nonlocality means that the properties
of elementary particles cannot be specified solely with reference to properties
or measurements existing in an entirely local, limited framework, cut off from
the rest of the Universe. Einstein
referred to it as “spooky action at a distance.” Temporal nonlocality means that time does not
flow linearly from the past, through the present, inexorably on to the
future. This implies that effect can
sometimes precede cause, or more precisely, that our normal localized
conception of the cause-effect relationship is only a limited subset or part of
the entire concept, just what we can piece together from our local and very
limited observations. The most exciting
future developments in physics over the next century will be those that illuminate
how this property of nonlocality manifests itself in our ordinary, everyday
macroscopic world.
Richheimer
elucidates these ideas in the following passage:
“Our current understanding of the origin
of the universe suggests that it began as a single point or singularity
containing all the mass-energy of the universe and has been evolving since the
Big Bang. But since all quanta interact
with one another or are entangled, they can be thought of as being merely parts
of a quantum singularity, parts of a Whole.
Nonlocality in the quantum realm implies that by nature the universe is
nonlocal or best understood as an indivisible whole. Hence, modern physics proclaims that the
constituents of matter-energy and all phenomena involving them are intimately
connected and interdependent and can best be understood as parts of a Whole,
which includes the consciousness or mind of the observer. Accordingly the discreetness or individuality
we observe in the objective universe can be considered a macroscopic illusion—all
things are actual inseparable parts of the One.”
When we
throw out the prevailing ideas of scientific reductionism and materialism and
replace them with the Unity Principle, all kinds of things begin to fall into
place. If we look at the Universe as a single
entity and all of the separateness we think we see around us as a macroscopic
illusion, all kinds of parapsychological phenomena become at least potentially
understandable. If we take seriously that
part of string theory that says that what we think of as four dimensional space-time really has at least six additional dimensions (and perhaps
many more), those extra and for now unknown dimensions could provide an
explanation and physical mechanism for quantum entanglement, faster-than-light communication, and provide the physical underpinnings
for the Unity Principle. If Unity is
your starting point, that Unity can be expressed in physics by quantum
mechanics and bosonic communications, expressed in biology
by the purposeful direction of evolutionary systems towards ever greater
complexity, expressed in psychology by what is sometimes called the "collective unconsciousness", and is expressed on a higher
level by what are called spiritual phenomena, which are really just instances
of the experience of Unity without having a scientific explanation for the
experience.
In the realm
of spirituality, the Unity Principle could explain a lot of so-called spiritual
phenomena because almost all of them, I think, could be understood as a
person’s direct experience of the Unity of the Universe, that Undivided Whole,
and then trying to make sense of it based on their own conceptual framework. Note that I said experience and not knowledge,
for it is at bottom just that. The great
mystics of the world have always had a problem with putting their experiences
into words because the very act of doing so particularizes them and robs them
of the immediacy and universality that made it a mystical experience in the
first place. Some things cannot be
known, they can only be experienced.
My own
personal belief is that we all came from the Original Oneness and to it we all
will return. Our spiritual nature
participates in that Oneness, but experiences it from the limited viewpoint of
Individuality. Our spiritual
advancement, I think, is the road from Oneness to Separateness and back to the
original Oneness. This is a journey that probably takes many lifetimes as there
are many lessons to be learned. It is at bottom a theosophical viewpoint.
So if we
want to start that revolution, what should the first step be? I would posit that it just be the realization
that the current tired and worn out reductionist conceptual framework will not
work in the New Age of nonlocal quantum mechanics and string theory, and then
joining a full and honest exploration of what new frameworks and ideas may be
obtained by starting with the principle that the Universe is a single entity
and that in order to understand it, we have to start with that one simple fundamental
proposition.
