The Physics Of Karma: A Requiem To Time

Introduction

When I listened attentively to a discourse on Vedantic philosophy for the first time in my life, I was aged thirty-five, a committed and ambitious entrepreneur, willing to fight a clean battle for my share of what could be legitimately acquired in a fiercely competitive world. But ever so recently I had to stand by as a mute witness to the sudden death of a beloved brother, felled in his prime by an invisible unprovoked assailant, while we were robbed all our defences. Dazed and benumbed, sinking in a sea of helplessness, I knew what I was supposed to comfort myself with: It is Fate, was the refrain heard before, What has to happen will happen. Time is the great healer. Life must go on. Have faith in God

But there was a revolt against my total helplessness, against the sense of being summarily dealt with on unequal terms, denied explanation or a glimpse of understanding. My problem had exploded beyond the confines of that gloomy room, beyond the personal tragedy of one bereavement, beyond the answers of medical science whose speculations could only be chemistry – I was now intensely concerned with all the energies and capabilities and purposes of Life that succumbed to the higher might of Death. Can man arrive at an understanding of life which shall enable him not merely to ACCEPT Death (or, for that matter, all happenings) but to APPROVE its methodology and operation? My brother has died; where is the question of my not accepting it? I want to know whether there is a meaning and a rightness to the occurrence, such meaning and rightness as are the truths of the laws of energy. Gravity, electricity, magnetism are energies; they are forces whose workings science understands and concerning which postulates laws that are consistently valid. If I cannot see law and order in the manipulations of life, what meaning can there be in platitudes of Fate and Faith and God? Are they not all palliatives?

Who indeed is this GOD?

So I went and listened. And was stunned by what I heard. I had expected that the new knowledge would reveal HIM to me, but amazingly the method for exactly that purpose was one of showing the truth of ME to me! Sound common-sense was already telling me that this was the heart of the matter, the clue to the riddle, the secret of the mystery. I felt that, in some mixed-up way that I could and would duly unravel, I held within myself, in my mind and actions and reactions, all the answers to all the questions about Life, Death, and God. In some innate and intimate sense God and I had always shared an identity. Twenty-five years have passed during which I have retained my concern movement and direction. The need for Time as a dominating presence in the scheme of phenomena seemed to me a vital clued to the true perception of my existence. I read a little, thought a little, and wondered a lot. I held on to my questions as long as the answers I got seemed inadequate.

Swami Chinmayananda was the great teacher whose exposition started me on my voyage of discovery. He defined for me the frame that should absorb my attention and planted my feet upon the path. The teachings and lives of several Masters since then have also helped my understanding and enthused me. The words of Ramana Maharshi became my anchor. The proximity to Him in chronological time and geographical space lent an intimacy to palpable Perfection. His benediction has reached me in other forms too. The recorded conversations of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj with seekers, compiled in the book, I AM THAT (published by Chetana, Bombay) has for long been my choicest reading and Maharaj’s explanations and expressions have, I know, influenced and at times shaped my writing.

The depth of perception and the mastery of language as Sri Aurobindo draws the enchanted seeker into the core-content of Bhagavath Geeta and Isavasya Upanishad, have illumined for me these texts of Revelation and brought into sharp focus subtleties of transcendental thought. His commentaries on Isavasya Upanishad made me catch a glimpse of the cosmic mathematics of the invocatory verse (POORNAMADAH POORNAMIDAM, on which verse however Sri Aurobindo has not expounded directly), which could superficially be faulted by the fixed arithmetic of our elementary minds; and I felt that I must share my perception with others who may care, but I could venture to do it only after I had first shared all the meanings that seem right to me in the mind’s acceptance of fate, free-will, action, doership, creation and the Creator. Therefore a short essay on Isavasya has been included in the volume as an appendix, without intrusion upon the flow of the main discussion. Another luminary whose own intensity compels a response in the alert listener is Sri J. Krishnamurti. Hearing him a few times and contemplating upon his words often, has also helped to clear many cobwebs in the unfrequented lanes in the labyrinth of my memory.

And who can turn his gaze Godward, yet miss the loving persuasions of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa to surrender in devotion as the sweetest, surest, simplest way to Salvation?

There is, there has to be, a consistent law in all the workings of the universe. All of matter must come under the jurisdiction of gravity. Does all of mind too come similarly under one law? And if so, how would that law operate in relation to the law of gravity? Can environment (world) and experience (mind) operate under connected laws, yet preserving orderliness and preventing chaos?

To formulate the answer as I glimpsed if I had to know how the material scientist saw the laws of matter and the behavior of matter. Lacking the technical preparation for detailed study of the subject, I was delighted with the excellent briefing I could obtain from The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and Mysticism And The New Physics of Michael Talbot. The perceptibility of these esteemed scientists held out a friendly and supportive hand as I reached out for understanding. From opposite sides across an ancient frontier, it seemed the outstretched fingers could unite.

The tantalizing touch of spiritual suggestions in the newly revealed structuring and behaviour of matter made me see the present-day physics of the scientist as a cone with its broad base grounded in objectivity and its apex touching the fringes of subjectivity. And, it occurred to me that the seers had long ago erected for our illumination the reversed cone of which the base was conscious subjectivity and which tapered down to its apex below, touching and holding in that point all of manifested matter. Though I do not claim comparable competence in expounding the base of my cone, such as these scientists have in dealing with theirs, I strongly feel the utility to the seeker, secular or scientific, or reinforcing the one with the other. Therein lies my motivation for this work.

When this mind feels the urge to seek and understand and express, by its habituated compulsions it strays along varied paths in a myriad fields outside, till one day it senses deeply the power of its own quiet abidance. Then it knows that it must fix its eyes upon the face of Truth and remain still. For me, all this that I have known, and all I seek to know, is contained in the manifestation of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. So, I have come to reside where His bodily presence stayed almost a life-time. His silent gaze dwells on me. Here is the focus that I must merge with.

Sri Ramanasramam

Tiruvannamalai

Tamil Nadu

India

February, 1992

TIME AND I

WHAT IS IT THAT ENDURES?

The mere asking of the question has placed Time on a plane apart. It is through the eyes of time that the search must be made. That which is endowed by Time with longer duration will through some untested logic bear the seal of greater authenticity, and posses in our minds a reality that is forfeited by that which could not last as long.

The question has arisen because I see with certainty my own finitude. Fear or hope, and a desperate need for consolation, prompt me to speculate upon the nature of Infinity and its relevance to me. Knowing the answer might reveal to me the utmost possibilities of my circumscribed existence so that I may live and strive and aspire for not a whit less than that which lies within my grasp and, when this short and swift life faces extinction, I may depart with the courageous conviction that, though I was denied more than I was granted, I did not deny myself.

The question is vaster than asking which species of life will endure or which moral values will be upheld. These are all components of change whereas the question is posted in ultimate terms, raising its voice to heaven and demanding to be told whether change is unending or will yield to changelessness. And in a torrent of arrogance and urgency, the question expands itself – nay, explains itself – asking: Which of them endures: Sound or silence? Light or darkness? Indeed, life or death?

Then the mind, recoiling from its own audacity, settles down to examine its experiences after the echoes of its anguished cry have faded away, fetching no answer from the beyond. The answer has to be found within, in terms of the empirical truths it has lived by.

Sounds arise and subside while silence precedes and again prevails. Can there be sound unto eternity? The mind can conceive sound only with a beginning and therefore an end, while silence must ultimately reign supreme.

Our lights are lit to glow awhile and fade. Ah, but what of the sun? Tell me, O Mind, if the sun had an origin, was not darkness the first possessor of space? And when the sun has burnt itself up in its long exuberance, shall not darkness close in over its ashes, without a sigh, almost as though the sun had never been? Can light challenge forever the power and persistence of darkness?

Thus then must heat yield to cold, motion to stillness, and—why labour the fact too long?—life to death. And when silent, dark, cold and still space is the face of death, Time remains the sole spectator, the only historical witness of the usurper who laid claim awhile to a throne that was not his, and was finally vanquished.

But Time itself has remained disdainfully unconcerned amidst the upheavals of these conflicts, circumscribing all happenings and existences, and exceeding their eternity. Time is the monarch whose domain is silence and stillness. The very same qualities that the mind had perceived as negative now assert their supremacy at the behest of Time and finally negate the positive. Death is the power of Time, the enforcer of submission. All my life I have been; through sound and silence I have been and through light and darkness I have been, but now it seems that my journey will end in the vortex of a void. But if darkness did not rob me of sight, and silence did not destroy my hearing, how can it be that death will deprive me of life?

Instead of finding an answer to its question, the mind has only succeeded in landing itself in a paradox, unless yes, unless life and death do not stand in the same opposition to one another as do light and darkness, or sound and silence, unless the accustomed usage of words has deceived my mind into a grievous error And it is living that stands opposed to death, not Life.

Then, Life is no less eternal than Time. And the question has changed. Time which, assuming an imperial posture, seemed to be beyond the pale of my enquiry, has become suspect.

The question now is: Am I in Time?

Or, I dare to ask, is Time in me?

TIME AND MIND

Einstein, a Vyasa amongst scientists: a mind as incisive as mind can be, an eye that could see the limits of limitation. And therefore able to discern that mind has its frontiers and could never encompass the Absolute in its relative determinations any more than the eye could see itself. What else could his ultimate assertions unravel but the Theory of Relativity! Glory to this rishi who proclaimed to his tribe: As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

For, Reality is the name of God and Mind is the name of man.

I have no knowledge, no perception, no opinion that is not relative in its nature. The mind functions amidst and through pairs of opposites. Like light and darkness or sound and silence, there are countless qualities and quantities, each stretched linearly between concepts or a beginning and an opposite extremity. So my life is a succession of experiences in terms of joy or sorrow, delight or despair, strength or weakness, conquest or failure, love or hatred, virtue or sin, honour or dishonour, riches or poverty, health or sickness, generosity or selfishness, movement or stillness, growth or decay, heat or cold, knowledge or ignorance, beginning or end—and thus, where is the beginning or the end? All our words, the vehicles of