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"It is the psychic being which will materialise"—the Mother

where we have been seeing the aspects of immortality and about materialisation of the psychic being if there has to appear the supramental being upon earth. While these present some occult-spiritual considerations in the context of the Body of the Yajna and the Yajna of the Body, let us also see in the following what physics  has to say in this regard in its own professional way, about materialsaition-dematerialisation, about bosons changing into fermions and fermions into bosons. The problem it is currently tackling deals with that which gives mass to matter, the Higgs boson. The article being posted here forms a chapter in my book Narad’s Arrival at Madra.]
 

About the nature of science Sri Aurobindo writes: “Scientific laws only give a schematic account of material process of Nature—as a valid scheme they can be used for reproducing or extending at will a material process, but obviously they cannot give an account of the thing itself. Water, for instance, is not merely so much oxygen and hydrogen put together—the combination is simply a process or device for enabling the materialisation of a new thing called water; what that new thing really is, is quite another matter. In fact, there are different planes of substance, gross, subtle and more subtle going back to what is called causal (Karana) substance.”  In another letter he reveals: “But it is a fact that Agni is the basis of forms as the Sankhya pointed out long ago, i.e. the fiery principle in the three powers radiant, electric and gaseous (the Vedic trinity of Agni) is the agent in producing liquid and solid forms of what is called Matter.” (Letters on Yoga, pp. 214-15) Science has no idea about it, nor can it have, although there might be some remote reflection of it on the way it perceives things. The question regarding the nature of Matter has been haunting the thinkers since ages long. Let us look into it briefly.
 

Is there a smallest piece of Matter? The question is short and simple but is of profound significance. But then why should such a question be posed at all, what could have prompted it to be put in that way? It already posits somewhere a distinct possibility which could have arisen from some deeper intuition about things that are not just aggregates or composites of their ingredients. No wonder we get different answers to it. Plato held that the elemental things are irreducible geometrical figures. Aristotle conceived all substances to be indefinitely breakable. Kant considers the phrasing of the question is such that it becomes unanswerable, which means that our way of thinking about these subjects is inadequate. It is unfortunate that young Heisenberg was unkind to Plato. A little more than eighty years ago he studied Plato’s Timæus, partly to keep up with the Greek for his examination and partly because he was fascinated by the atomic theory given in it. It baffled him. While it asserts that unless one understands the basic components of Matter, Matter can never be known. But then these components have the shapes of geometrical figures. Heisenberg rather hastily spoke that in this respect Plato’s ideas were “ridiculous”. He modified Plato by suggesting that not geometrical but mathematical forms alone can describe them. The present-day physicists do not pretend to answer the question but, true to their profession, following the manners of science, tell us to go out to do things and observe. Yet, if we are true to thought, there are certain fundamentals which cannot be ignored. It is a spirituo-metaphysical fact that atomicity is due to the action of the cosmic Mind. The character of Mind is to analyse and analyse, divide and divide by fracturing things to bits, breaking them to a vanishing point yet without making them disappear altogether. If this nature of Mind is recognised then we see that it at once makes Aristotle’s infinite divisibility an aspect of its working. Regarding the world of ideas seen by Plato, however, we will have to be first sure about its location. Could it not be that this world exists somewhere far beyond the range of the cosmic Mind itself, for mental understanding is not the last summit of knowledge? If true, then we need not dismiss atomicity which might be occurring not in his world of ideas but elsewhere about which Plato may not be speaking at all. Kant is talking of human mind trying to read the cosmic Mind, and beyond, and hence it is unable to opine either way. Conceptually, atomicity is a spray of consciousness, as the Veda would put. Extreme fragmentation till Matter will almost vanish is the Mind’s work.
 

Yet let us ask another specific question. What is it that gives mass to Matter? This is a question the ancients would have never arrived at, neither the philosophers nor the scientists, not even the scientists till recent times; it belongs entirely to the contemporary physics, a question which has to come up in its relentless pursuit of the material world, a world in its submicroscopic form. Such indeed is the strange quest of the particle physicists these days to understand its deeper mystery. With it are engaged the finest brains of the time; into it is poured an inconceivable amount of capital money; around it gather large teams of people drawn from all over the word. In the 1960s the Edinburgh theoretical physicist Peter Higgs came up with an idea that a particle has mass because it is present in a field, called the Higgs field; the entity associated with it, the Higgs boson, provides interaction with the particle. The stronger the coupling of the particle with this field the larger is its mass. Mass to the otherwise massless particle comes in the wake of this weighty yet swift coupling Higgs boson. It is as if whatever gets caught in its irresistible swell acquires momentum, which is saying that there is an increase in mass. A corresponding situation, though involving an altogether different mechanism, is that of an electron becoming heavier in the lattice field of a crystal in which it is moving; this is an observed effect enhancing its mass at least by forty times. The same could be conceived to happen in the present case. In the mathematics of quantum mechanics, thanks to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, spontaneous creation and annihilation of elementary particles keeps on happening all the while even in the so-called empty space which is actually a non-zero energy state, the Higgs field. Therefore the particles that enter into it interact through the Higgs process and acquire mass. Related to this field there is no force associated, as is in the classical physics; it cannot accelerate particles, it cannot transfer energy. However, it interacts universally. It is expected that the validity of this highly esoteric mechanism will soon get confirmed in the laboratory.
 

Higgs’s theoretical work is on established scientific lines and great hopes are pinned on the experimental observations. With the existing facilities at the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Geneva and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois attempts are being made to look into the predictions of the theory. In a recent article in the British journal Nature Peter Renton, a particle physicist from Oxford University, reports the sense of having observed the Higgs boson though there is a 9% probability of its presence being masked by the background noise. In the Geneva machine electrons and positrons are accelerated from opposite directions and made to collide. It is a 27 km diameter accelerator pushing the energies of the particles to correspond to speeds approaching the speed of light. By detecting heavier particles that would appear in the debris of this interaction, occurrence of the Higgs boson could be inferred. But a sober view suggests that neither the Geneva nor the Illinois machine can conclusively indicate this occurrence. There is now a plan to build with international collaboration a gigantic accelerator, called the International Linear Collider, at a cost of some $5 billion. It will be housed underground to isolate it from external disturbances, the tunnel running to 37 km length. The Collider is expected to go into operation in another two years. Beams of electrons and positrons will approach each other from opposite ends, producing conditions favourable to observe the mysterious boson. It will be simulation of the Big Bang moment which was rich with all its creative possibilities. Although the Higgs boson is thought to be highly unstable, once produced decaying instantly, its impact on our understanding the physics of Matter seems to be extremely crucial. Its estimated mass is 115 GeV, that is, 125 times the mass of the common proton, one of the basic constituents of the atomic nucleus. With this enormous mass, the Higgs boson could easily claim for itself the title of a God-particle, playing the role of mass-lending and disappearing from the scene quickly. But, understandably, Higgs is quite averse to the idea of it being called a God-particle.

The need for postulating Higgs boson arose from a peculiar situation. In our tumultuous journey of Matter’s long atomicity we have presently come to recognise two fundamental classes of particles: fermions and bosons. If the materiality of Matter rests in the fermions, then the interactions among them are mediated by the bosons. As an example, let us consider the simplest instance of the hydrogen atom. It consists of an electron and a proton, both of which are fermions. They are held together by an exchange particle or boson which in this case is the particle of light or the photon. At the base of this entire creation we have twelve fermions and four bosons. The fermions come in two groups: quarks and leptons. But the quarks themselves fall into two sets, each with three members. Ditto for the leptons. The four bosons corresponding to each of these triplets are: photon, Z boson, W boson, and gluon. So far so good, but there arises a dilemma: the dilemma is about the sums of these sixteen particles which will have no masses if they were left to themselves. These do not quite add up to what is observed. If only sixteen particles existed, they would have no mass which of course is not true; there would be a peculiar situation of particles without substance. The question is: wherefrom do their masses come? The answer is: via the Higgs mechanism.

But the particle theory has another story also: the rival string theory. In this description the basic constituents are just tiny quivering strings; according to it there, are really no point particles. It is said to be the “theory of everything”, a notion which is not altogether new to the savants of science as some of them have been talking in that glib or assertive manner for more than 150 years. The audacious theory of everything will attempt to unite all the four fundamental forces of Nature, as if from some absolute arose all the bosonic particles including the particle that will appear in the gravitational description. But the strings are so small that they need outlandish machines for confirmation; prohibitive energies, roughly 10¹⁹ GeV, are indicated by the calculations. It means, not grainy or particulate aspect is what one is dealing with, it is the geometrical aspect that gets prominence. The geometry that is needed to describe the strings has as many as ten dimensions. This all looks weird and one begins to wonder if one is on a right track. It is said that this theory is “a piece of 21st-century physics that had fallen by accident into the 20th century. And, so the joke goes around, would require 22nd-century mathematics to solve.” Yet the pursuit continues, and it must. Stephen Shenker, a pioneer string theorist at Stanford University, quotes Winston Churchill: “This is not the end, not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning.” Of course he holds that it would be great to find out that the string theory is right. But then there are sceptical voices also, doubtful of the entire affair: “Wouldn't it be great either way?” The Stanfordian remains undeterred and responds: “It would be great to have an answer. It would be even better if it’s the right one.” Who knows? However, it cannot be the business of metaphysics to thrust itself into the matter. Science has to carry on, struggle for itself to find answers to its own pursuits and problems. Nevertheless, a distinction has to be made. There is a high degree of professionalism in its engagements and there is no doubt that it is commendable; but perhaps it is too professional, too competitive. Indeed, one should not forget that there are perceptions about things, that there are faculties open to intuition which can bring about remarkable results, give rich and marvellous rewards to all our fumblings and our half-seen half-blind gropings. Unfortunately, however, we do not seem to be alert or responsive to them. We have Hawkings but miss Einsteins. One starts getting an impression that we are not really living in a world of thought but in some tenuous cyber-zone where animation is taken for the living breath of life. How can this be satisfying?

Let us go back to recent history, the beginning of quantum mechanics. About Planck’s discovery of the quantum of action Niels Bohr says: “Scarcely any other discovery in the history of science has produced such extraordinary results within the short span of our generation as those which have directly arisen from Max Planck’s discovery of the elementary quantum of action. This discovery has been prolific, to a constantly increasing degree of progression, in furnishing means for the interpretation and harmonising of results obtained from the study of atomic phenomena.” With it opened a world of discrete quanta of energy, breaking away from the notion of continuity of the Newtonian physics. This is symbolised by the alphabet “h” standing for Planck’s constant, the illustrious logo of the microscopic realm of material reality; this entire world comes under its full sway.

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born on 23 April 1858 in Kiel, Germany. His family had a rich academic tradition and was brought up in cherished scholarship. His school report dated 1872 says: “Justifiably favoured by both teachers and classmates… he has a very clear, logical mind. Shows great promise.” He entered the Munich University on 21 October 1874 and took up physics, though his teacher Jolly described physics as a complete science in which nothing further can be added. Planck later wrote: “The outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.” That “pure reasoning can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the world” was the source of his inspiration. From such a mind came to us the gift of the quantum.

Planck was fascinated with the absolutes of nature which finally led him to the discovery of the Law of Black Body Radiation. He announced his discovery at a meeting of the German Physical Society held in Berlin on 13 December 1900. It appeared later in the March 1901 issue of Annalen der Physik. That brought him the Nobel Prize for the year 1918. Planck’s acceptance speech of the award has the following: “…the whole development seems to me to provide a fresh illustration of the long-since proven saying of Goethe’s that man errs as long he strives. And the whole strenuous intellectual work of an industrious research worker would appear, after all, in vain and hopeless, if we were not occasionally through some striking facts to find that he had, at the end of criss-cross journey, at least accomplished one step which was conclusively near the truth.” Planck himself reluctantly accepted the implications of his discovery. But the success was enough to carry him, and the contemporaries, forward. It was a revolutionary idea, a remarkable leap of intuition. Einstein’s use of it in explaining the photoelectric effect, in 1905, put the seal of authenticity on it. Not only that; it made the packet of energy a particle. It was elevated to another high domain of thought. Planck wrote extensively on the philosophy of science and on religion. During the Hitler period he held the view that racial laws barring the Jews would endanger science in Germany. He fell out of favour.

Planck’s packet of energy becoming a particle in Einstein’s celebrated hand is significant, but perhaps of greater significance is the discovery of an identity between energy and mass: E equals mcsquare. This also was in 1905. Two decades later came out, from the head of man, Quantum Mechanics, Athena-like in a beautiful form full of wisdom expressing herself in the adult language of mathematics. Planck’s tiny quantum of action was its first begetter, setting in motion a whole sequence of events that eventually led to an astounding new world of dynamics. An organic synthesis of Planck’s “h” and Einstein’s “E equals mcsquare” in 1926 gave to the British mathematical physicist Dirac the reward of anti-matter. But what is anti-matter? It is absolutely the same matter except for the polarity of the charge being opposite, what is positive becoming negative in it. Our everyday electron with negative charge, for instance, sees its counterpart in positron with a positive charge, everything else remaining the same. It is this pair of electron and positron which is being used in search of the Higgs boson. The birth of new particles showed another facet of Matter, with dozens of new fermions taking birth in quick succession. The birth of the boson also has an interesting history, with the Indian theoretical physicist Satyendra Nath Bose proposing in 1924 the necessity of another statistics or method of counting for the particles of light. In the honour of its discoverer the particles involved in all interactions between the fermions are named bosons. In 1935 the Japanese theoretical physicist Yukawa postulated a boson, named meson, which acts as a force-carrier between the constituents of the atomic nucleus. Now we have four types of fundamental bosons. The fifth boson, the postulated Higgs’s, is however different in kind and its role is simply to give mass to the fermions: it does not represent any force. It is interesting to notice the transformation of Planck’s packet of energy becoming a particle with Einstein and presently turning, à la Yukawa, into a mediator agent, a force-carrier. Whether we are talking of a single entity as a sachet of energy or a grain of matter or a communicator amongst things we do not quite know.

Is not physics becoming queerer and queerer? Is not the inscrutability deepening more and more with every advance made in comprehending it, as if knowledge is eluding us all the while? is it that, whether we relish it or not, there is perplexity built into the very nature of things? or is it that our mind has imposed it on nature? or are we just witnessing a Churchillian riddle within an enigma wrapped in a mystery? To quote Savitri is it (Savitri, pp. 661-62)

Truth who hides here her head in mystery,

Her riddle deemed by reason impossible

In the stark structure of material form

“enigmaed” living in our midst? or is this the euphemistic evolution of physics from the time of Plato coming down to our own age, a progressive march which itself could be proudly considered a happy consequence of human effort and pursuit and understanding? Indisputably, it has delivered quite a few goods, and the world has undergone a sea-change. Human confidence in human capabilities has also increased, though it might have brought another set of problems and puzzles. We might have tampered greatly if not brutally with Nature; but then the comprehension of and mastery over the processes has also produced pleasing and gainful results. The universal appeal of science has brought communities of experts together to look into profounder questions on a collective level. Common people all over the world are reaping the ripened harvest of its effort and capacity and enthusiasm, enjoying its rich and plentiful yield.

Yet, in spite of all these astounding gains and all these advances, there is the uneasy sense of inadequacy and disappointment. We get a feeling that we are investigating the physical world and developing means to arrive at the knowledge of the things, but we fail to recognise or experience the depths of the truth that lies beneath it. The bluntness of our tools makes us pause to think and admit that “the telescope, the microscope, the scalpel, the retort and alembic cannot go beyond the physical, although they may arrive at subtler and subtler truths about the physical.” (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 301) Indeed, one begins to wonder if the gigantic machines that have been built, and also planned, will at all reveal the truer materiality of Matter. The “formulae of Science may be pragmatically correct and infallible, they may govern the practical how of Nature's processes, but they do not disclose the intrinsic how or why; rather they have the air of the formulae of a cosmic Magician, precise, irresistible, automatically successful each in its field, but their rationale is fundamentally unintelligible.” (The Life Divine, p. 299) “When Science discovers that Matter resolves itself into forms of Energy, it has hold of a universal and fundamental truth... But still the question remains why Energy should take the form of Matter...” (p. 304) Possibly, Substance is inherent in Energy. If one is the Presence and the other the Power then, fundamentally, they remain inseparable and one: in the cosmic play they show likewise the quantitative and the qualitative aspects.

When Einstein arrives at the equivalence of mass and energy he is simply stating the mechanical interconvertibilty of the two without being aware of the truth of existence and the truth of force behind them. The secure poise of the one in the fluent yet sure rhythm of the other, as much as the other way around, is unknown to physics. The simultaneous emergence of quantity, design, number and of quality, property, character does not get revealed in E equals mcsquare. After all, Mass or Substance comes from Truth-Existence and Energy from Consciousness-Force. At the source they are inseparable and one.

This should also take us back to Dirac’s great quantum mechanical formulation of anti-matter and its subsequent confirmation. The materialisation of a quantum of energy in the form of an electron-positron pair is indeed equivalent to the appearance of fermions through the agency of bosons, fermions having their remote link with truth-existence and bosons with consciousness-force. However, in the entire sequence the recent feature of Higgs boson giving mass to fermions has yet to get properly crystallised. We do not expect science to see things that way, as truth-existence and consciousness-force, but seeing things that way might bring to science another intuition to guide it to the closer intimacy that exists between the two. Until then the transmutation of one into the other will look puzzling. Perhaps someone seated deep within us and urging us to exceed ourselves, something from far beckoning us to a truer world of possibilities is prompting us to move forward in the spirit of a new and inspired discoverer and seeker.

In that respect Narad has a surer intuition of the truth-conscient will operating on truth-elements, of force acting on mass, making available a body for his specific use. And, of course, he has also a command over the process to carry that intuition through. When the will of the atom shall awaken, then the possibility of matter to express in luminous form the dynamism of the spirit might open out in richer creative modes and moods. That will bring not the dark and dense communion, but the bright and plastic oneness where the presence and the power find their identity. When that shall happen, Matter’s crypt (Savitri, p. 5) will get illumined and a pulsating wonder abide in it with all its breathing felicities.