What Came Before the Big Bang? A Surprise Answer

By Deepak Chopra, MD and  Menas Kafatos, PhD

The most widely accepted notions about the universe are central to how we view reality. One striking example links birth and death. In the age of faith, religion existed to reassure believers about a higher plane of reality. On this plane, the everyday experience of birth and death was negated. Souls were immortal aspects of being human. Depending on your particular religion, the soul either went to Heaven, if one were good, after death or existed perpetually in a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.untitled-design67

Ironically, science has stuck to these possible scenarios with the universe, even though what science is supposedly famous for is its defeat of religion, or to be more specific, its defeat of metaphysics and the whole notion of a higher plane. If you look closely, the way the universe was born in the big bang and will one day, presumably die, is pure metaphysics. In fact, the big bang and expansion of the universe was first proposed by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, who was an astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. In fact, many have pointed out to the agreement of the big bang view with Biblical accounts in the book of Genesis. Unwittingly, the general public that accepts a casual idea about the universe being born and dying is actually adopting a metaphysical position about human birth and death, not simple, unvarnished, provable facts.

 

In our book, You Are the Universe, we cover this topic in great detail, but here’s a thumbnail sketch of our argument. If you ask a simple question like “What came before the big bang?” you are posing a paradox. “Before” and “after” have a meaning only in time, and linear time at that. There is no evidence of any kind that time existed before the big bang. Moreover, what we typically think of as time–the tick tock on a clock face–depends on having a human nervous system. Einstein broke free of this model, where we think we intuitively know what time is, when he introduced the concepts in his theories of relativity. In those theories, the speeding up or slowing down of time depends on the frames of references of observers. Time is not universal. For example, a moving observer’s time slows down as seen by a stationary observer. Slowing down of time also occurs when an observer is falling towards a black hole, as seen by a distant observer. The effect is still there, but tiny, in all gravitational fields, including the Earth’s gravity.

 

The relativity of time depended upon a new theory, and if we stand back, we discover that all views of time are human constructs. If time seems linear, that’s because we humans have modeled it that way in accord with our nervous system. It is just as viable to construct other models of time. For example, your body obeys natural rhythms in accord with the planetary, lunar, and solar cycles. The very notion of “time passing” fits with the firing of neurons in the brain, which have a beginning, middle, and end.

 

If you drop every model, something surprising happens. They are not needed. For example, you can view your daily life as occurring entirely in the present moment. The present moment is not a clock phenomenon. Clocks measure intervals–seconds, minutes, hours–while the present moment has no interval. It’s always here, endlessly renewing itself, unmeasurable, and fleeting. Because the instant you try to capture it, it’s gone. This implies that the “now” is actually outside time. It can be defined either as instantaneous or eternal. Both are valid as verbal descriptions but in the end invalid, since the vocabulary of time doesn’t apply to the timeless.

 

The same is true of the big bang or the potential end of the universe. Time doesn’t begin or end in an absolute way. It is a convenient way of using words. Time is simply a concept that fits various physical models. But its origin is as much in metaphysics as in physics. When someone believes he will die and go to Heaven for eternity, the typical, casual definition of “eternity” is a long, long time. But that’s not true, because whatever is eternal must be outside time. Ultimately, the only participation we can have in time, outside time, or with a dimension of inconceivable time, occurs in our consciousness. Whatever we can experience determines the nature of time. It is just as true to say that the big bang is occurring right now as to date it back to 13.8 billion years, because only when we think about the event do we draw the big bang into the world of human experience, and thinking happens in the now.

 

None of these conclusions are speculative–quantum physics and cosmology deal with them–and cosmologists and quantum physicists argue over them–every day. Without settling the vexing questions of “What came before the big bang?” “Where did time originate?” and “What is the timeless like?” we only want to point out that time has no meaning outside a specific frame of reference. There is no “real” time, only models of time constructed in human awareness. Once we realize this simple fact, the capacity to move beyond all models, to truly lose our fear of death, come alive. The spiritual concept that we were never born and will never die then becomes viable, too.

 

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, Clinical Professor UCSD Medical School, researcher, Neurology and Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are You Are the Universe co-authored with Menas Kafatos, PhD, and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. discoveringyourcosmicself.com

 

Menas C. Kafatos is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics, at Chapman University. He is a quantum physicist, cosmologist, and climate impacts researcher and works extensively on consciousness. He holds seminars and workshops for individuals,health and mental professionals, practitioners of contemplative traditions, and corporations on the natural laws that apply everywhere and are the foundations of the universe, for well-being and success. His doctoral thesis advisor was the renowned M.I.T. professor Philip Morrison who studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer. He has authored 315+ articles, is author or editor of 15 books, including The Conscious Universe (Springer), Looking In, Seeing Out (Theosophical Publishing House), and is co-author with Deepak Chopra of the forthcoming book, You Are the Universe (Harmony). He maintains a Huffington Post blog. You can learn more at http://www.menaskafatos.com

How to Be Timeless Right This Moment

By Deepak Chopra, MD

For most people, the two words “timeless” and “eternal” seem roughly the same. They spell the end of clock time, and for many religious believers, Heaven is eternal, a place where time goes on forever. Whatever you think about it, time coming to an end isn’t a pleasant prospect, because the clock stops, so to speak, when we die. But there are problems with all of these concepts, and if we really go deeply into the subject, time is very different from what we casually accept.

Physics has had a lot to say about time thanks to Einstein’s revolutionary concept that time isn’t constant but varies according to the situation at hand. Traveling near the speed of light or drawing near the massive gravitational pull of a black hole will have a drastic impact on how time passes. But untitled-design38let’s set relativity aside for a moment to consider how time works in human terms, here and now. Each of us normally experiences three states of time: time ticking off the clock when we are awake, time as part of the illusion of having a dream, and the absence of time when we’re asleep but not dreaming. This tells us that time is tied to our state of consciousness.

We take it for granted that one species of time–the one measured by clocks–is real time, but that’s not true. All three relationships with time–waking, dreaming, and sleeping–are knowable only as personal experiences. Time in fact doesn’t exist outside human awareness. There is no absolute clock time “out there” in the universe. Many cosmologists would argue that time, as we know it in waking state, entered the universe only at the big bang. What came before the big bang is probably inconceivable, because “before the big bang” has no meaning if time was born at the instant the cosmos was born. If you go to the finest level of Nature, to the vacuum state from which the quantum field emerged, the qualities of everyday existence, such as sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell, no longer exist, and there is also a vanishing point where three-dimensionality vanishes, along with time itself.

What lies beyond the quantum horizon is purely a matter of mathematical conjecture, yet one thing is certain. The origin of everything real is beyond the reach of time and space. The realm that is the pre-created state of the universe can be modeled mathematically as being multi-dimensional, infinitely dimensional, or non-dimensional. Once the everyday four dimensions vanish, any kind of mathematical explanation is open. So it must be accepted that time came out of the timeless and not just at the big bang. Everything in the physical universe winks in and out of existence at a rapid rate of excitation here and now. The timeless is with us at every second of our lives.

Yet something looks fishy in that sentence, because the timeless can’t be measured using a clock, so it makes no sense to say that the timeless is with us “at every second.” Instead, the timeless is with us, period. This world is timeless. There is no need to wait for death or Heaven to prove that eternity is real.

Once you grant that the timeless is with us, a question naturally arises: How is the timeless related to clock time? The answer is that the two aren’t related. The timeless is an absolute, and since it can’t be measured by clocks, it has no relative existence. How strange. The timeless is with us, yet we can’t relate to it. Then of what good is the timeless?

To answer this question, we have to back up a bit. Clock time has no privileged position in reality. There is no reason why it should be elevated above dream time or the absence of time in dreamless sleep. Clock time is just a quality of being awake, like other qualities we know as colors, tastes, smells, etc. Without human beings to experience these qualities, they don’t exist. Photons, the particles of light, have no brightness without our perception of brightness; photons are invisible and colorless. Likewise, time is an artifact of human experience. Outside our perception, we cannot know anything about time. This seems to contradict the cornerstone of science, which holds that “of course” there was a physical universe before human life evolved on Earth, which means that “of course” there was time also, billions of years of time.

Here we come to a fork in the road, because either you accept that time, as registered by the human brain, is real on its own or you argue that, being dependent on the human brain, time is created in consciousness. The second position is by far the stronger one, even though fewer people believe it. In our awareness we constantly convert the timeless into the experience of time–there is no getting around this. Since such a transformation cannot happen “in” time, something else must be going on. To get a handle on this “something else,” let’s look at the present moment, the now, the immediate present.

All experience happens in the now. Even to remember the past or anticipate the future is a present-moment event. Brain cells, which physically process the conversion of the timeless into time, only function in the present. They have no other choice, since the electrical signals and chemical reactions that run brain cells only occur here and now. If the present moment is the only real time we can know in waking state, why is it so elusive? You can use a clock as fine-tuned as an atomic clock to predict when the next second, millisecond, or trillionth of a second will arrive, but that’s not the same as predicting the now. The present moment, as an experience, is totally unpredictable. If it could be predicted, you’d know your next thought in advance, which is impossible.

Moreover, the present moment is elusive, because the instant you register it as either a sensation, image, feeling, or thought, it’s gone. So let’s boil these insights down. The now, the place where we all live, can be described as:

  • — the junction point where the timeless is converted into time
  • — the only “real” time we know in waking state
  • — a totally unpredictable phenomenon
  • — a totally elusive phenomenon.

Now, if all these characteristics are being correctly described, it turns out that we have been fooling ourselves to believe that time is a simple matter of tick-tock on the clock. In some mysterious way, each of us occupies a timeless domain, and to produce a four-dimensional world for the purpose of living in it, we dream it forth. That is, we create the world in consciousness first and foremost. There is no given world “out there.”

This seemingly bizarre conclusion lies at the heart of all non-dual philosophies like Platonism, Buddhism, and Vedanta. None of them had access to neuroscience, so they didn’t fall into the trap of claiming that the brain is responsible for creating time, space, and the messages received by the five senses. The brain, after all, is just another object inside the dream, like a table and chairs, a rock, or a distant galaxy. Nor did these non-dual philosophies fall into the trap of saying that the mind creates reality. The mind is a vehicle of experience, and like time and space, it had to have a source beyond mental experience. If we trusted our minds, we’d equate going to sleep with death. In sleep the conscious mind gives up the world of solid physical objects and clock time. Yet when we wake up in the morning, there is a return of solid objects and clock time. They were held in waiting, so to speak, by consciousness even during the eight hours a day that the thinking mind is out of commission.

In the end, non-dual philosophies, as the name implies, aim to get us free of the dreamscape we mistake as the real world in order to return us to our source. At our source, in pure awareness, we recognize ourselves not as puppets of time, space, matter, and energy but as creators of reality. The merest second of time originated in us. We fill the now with experience. That’s what it means to take the timeless seriously; it changes our very identity. The categories that we lock into separate compartments are in fact part of one unified phenomenon, the unfoldment of awareness within itself.

I realize what a mouthful those words are, but we must wake up to the fact that reality is simply one thing. Body, mind, and spirit belong to this one thing. The come into being all together, and only our belief system turns them into three different things. There is a huge amount to say once you realize that you exist as the timeless source of creation. But the first step is to know that the timeless is with us, beyond any belief in birth and death, time and decay. Things get born and die in our dreams when we’re sleeping, and yet we don’t mourn them because we know that dreams are an illusion. Discovering that the same is true about our waking dream brings the experience known as enlightenment.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. www.deepakchopra.com

Why the Physical Universe Needs Mental Glue

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Jennifer Nielsen, PhD candidate

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Robber barons in the 19th century were so rich that they didn’t have to do things the way ordinary people do. If they wanted to live in a French chateau or an Italian palazzo, for example, they didn’t have to build one from scratch. Instead a chateau or palazzo could be dismantled in Europe, its parts carefully numbered and packed into crates, and then shipped to America to be reassembled on the spot.

If you wanted to ship the universe somewhere else, you could try to do something similar. You’d need four crates labeled time, space, matter, and energy—the basics for taking apart the universe. To save shipping costs, you could try to cut these down to their bare constituents at the quantum level. But when the Fed Ex man shows up, he would scratch his head. “I can’t ship this,” he’d says. “You squeezed everything down, too far. There’s no stuff in these crates.” This is a fanciful summary of the basic quandary created by the quantum revolution of a century ago. When space, time, matter and energy are studied at the very smallest level, they cease to behave as the familiar parts of reality that we think we know. (more…)

The Gap Between Thoughts: Sages and Scientists – Menas Kafatos – Part 3

 

Description: Eminent physicist and author Menas Kafatos concludes his brilliant discussion of “The Riddle of Consciousness.” How do we know that what we see and experience is reality?* How do we explain consciousness in the current scientific paradigm? Kafatos is joined by Deepak Chopra to explore these fascinating questions.

Space, Time, and Reality: Sages and Scientists: Menas Kafatos – Part 2

Description: Eminent physicist and author Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, continues his discussion on “The Riddle of Consciousness.” How do we know that what we see and experience is reality?* How do we explain consciousness in the current scientific paradigm? Kafatos is joined by Deepak Chopra to explore these fascinating questions.