Scientists, Spacetime and illusions

Check out this recent video of Professor Donald Hoffman, where he points out schisms in modern physics. Here are some notes from the discussion:

• "I am almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated..." - Nathan Seiberg, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton.
• "Space and time may be doomed." - Edward Witten, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. For people who know Edward Witten, he is one of the most brilliant physicists and mathematicians of all time.
• "The notion of space-time is clearly something we are going to have to give up." - Andrew Strominger, Harvard.
• "The very notion of spacetime is not a fundamental one. Spacetime is doomed. There is no such thing as spacetime fundamentally in the actual underlying description of the laws of physics." - Nima Arkani Hamed, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton.

I propose that the strangeness of all these comments is simple. Once you remove the observer from the equation, our current ideas of physics talk about an objective world where there is no connection between the subject and the object. Is that anyway true? From a materialistic paradigm, all the atoms inside us are also from the universe. We are the universe, and there is no difference between the subject and the object. What science ends up doing is not that of a subject studying an object; it is of the subject studying the subject. We are studying ourselves. On the other hand, if scientists advocate for separation between a subject and an object, they stop being materialists and enter the space of spiritual duality. It is strange that all the results of science do not reflect a materialistic perspective (unity of subject and object), which scientists profess to be. It instead reflects a spiritual perspective (no connection between the observer and observed), which scientists are dead against. I hope scientists can see the obvious paradoxical trap they have put themselves in.

So, what will we ultimately find? The answer is straightforward, as per Hindu or Buddhist thought. We will ultimately need to find an answer to how the mind creates the universe as a simulation. The answers to space-time lie deep inside our mental simulations. Since subjectivity is not something any scientist understands or appreciates, I do not see any answers emerging anytime soon.

When the ideas of non-duality were described 1400 years ago, the philosophers of the time held the chief proponent, Adi Sankaracharya, in contempt. Since then, his ideas have been ridiculed and slammed over the ages. It is a monument to the brilliance of his ideas that most of his opponents have disappeared into the mists of time, but his ideas continue to linger and shape thought. His thoughts guide billions of people in the Indian and Asian subcontinent to this day.

It is easy to criticise his thoughts. One can always grab an object and ask, "Is this object not real?" or point at others to ask, "Are you not real?" These were puerile objections that Advaitins have answered for centuries with robust logic and proof. It is difficult to say that the obvious is wrong and the non-obvious is correct. It requires extraordinary courage and knowledge to advance such a worldview that most people are mistaken about their worldview.

To be clear, Advaita is not a completely new philosophy. It is derived from the Vedas, Upanishads and the nethi-nethi philosophy of Buddhism. It offers solutions to the deepest problems of the modern day, where even scientists are at their wit's end.

Mathematician and cognitive scientist Donald Hoffmann from the University of California Riverside is one of the new-age philosophers who has used mathematical simulations to study consciousness. He says he is the only person to do a mathematical analysis of consciousness. Hoffmann proposes the following ideas, which are very close to Hindu and Buddhist thought.

1) In his words, "perceptual experiences do not match or approximate properties of the objective world, but instead provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to that world." What this means is that individual perception has no connection to the reality of the outside world; it is just a made-up story. He adds that "conscious beings have not evolved to perceive the world as it actually is..." meaning what you or I perceive is not reality.

2) He also states that "What exists in the objective world, independent of my perceptions, is a world of conscious agents, not a world of unconscious particles and fields. Those particles and fields are icons in the multimodal user interfaces of conscious agents but are not themselves fundamental denizens of the objective world. Consciousness is fundamental." In short, there is no matter or energy in the outside world, just pure consciousness. He adds that perceptions of non-sentient matter are mere byproducts of consciousness and don't necessarily reflect reality. This means the causal notion of non-sentient matter developing into sentient beings is open to question.

I have watched a couple of his videos on YouTube, and they are wildly popular. However, his ideas not only reflect those of the Vedas and Upanishads but also echo those of the Yogachara branch of Mahayana Buddhism, which is practised in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan today. It is easy to forget the founders of Yogachara, who were two famous philosopher brothers from central India - Vasubandhu and Asanga. It is not just Buddha or Gaudapada (Shankara's spiritual Guru) or Adi Shankara; there are numerous luminaries of Indian philosophy whom most Indians have forgotten, but survive in the beliefs and traditions of other Asian countries.

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