THE TOPOLOGY OF TRUTH  

Topology: The mathematical study of the properties that are preserved through deformations, twistings, and stretchings of objects.   

The Sacrosanct Little is known about how and when our species developed from primitive animal into spiritual being, although we can hazard some quite remarkable guesses. Over several eons, in conjunction with a changing ecology and an ever-burgeoning need to adapt, our brains gradually made a quantum leap into the realms of formal language constructs, imagination and visionary thinking. Mystical modes of consciousness were therefore a natural progression from a purely survival-based dimension of existence, incorporating dream-like states and numinous experience into heightened perceptions of reality. But what triggered this new direction in our evolution? Some contemporary luminaries have put forward a highly plausible mechanism. Proposed by Terence McKenna, the ‘Stoned Ape’ theory categorically links our first real intimations of a higher intelligence to the early hominid consumption of naturally occurring psychoactive plants. These realizations of a ‘greater spirit’ can be construed to have served as the platform for the creation of religion – the worship of deities, the anthropomorphism of the environment and the juxtaposition of meaning onto inanimate objects. 

The architecture of religious traditions, prior to mass organization, had much to do with mystical/occult symbolism, transmitted through individuals who seemingly possessed a connection with spirit worlds. Over millennia, these symbolisms began to share common threads across all continents and peoples. Thus, it became evident that the aspects of life that deal with the instructions for a functional and ethical society imbibe their ideals from ancient shamanistic wisdom. 

So how has our modern society diverged from these ways of living, having been transmuted along the way into isolationism, the absence of life meaning, the dismemberment of sacred tradition and the sterilization of mysticism into a setup that deifies only commodity, ownership and celebrity? The scientific revolution of materialism, a culmination of centuries of religious oppression, bore all the hallmarks of a true revelation, heralding the biggest spurt in technological aspiration since the ascent of man. Science supposedly had all the answers, laying claim to the truths explaining the origin of life, the creation of our universe and everything in between. And yet, the very notion of scientific progress is now synonymous with the disconsolate view of being separate, segregated from the world at large, of each individual dwelling within a lonely shell for the entire duration of one’s life. As we grow more technologically advanced, we appear to be screaming ever louder for the need to be heard amongst all the noise – for the need to truly connect. 

Is it therefore very surprising that we are now approaching an epoch defined by humans coming full circle, as the western fortifications of rationalism, empiricism and materialistic inquiry begin to validate our most fundamentally human beliefs?   

Reality is Perception As quantum physics and studies of sub-atomic realms began to eviscerate our most cherished scientific dogmas right through the 20th century, a number of weird and baffling phenomena arose from our quest for absolute truth. It appears that the universe, being fundamentally quantum in nature, employs the sharing of information and energy in ways that we haven't even begun to fathom. In fact, the universe is a countless multitude of information pathways and systems, all of which give rise to this wondrous fabric of experience. Fritjof Capra, a pre-eminent spokesperson for the merger of science and mysticism, writes in the Tao of Physics: “The quantum field is seen as the fundamental physical entity; a continuous medium which is present everywhere in space. Particles are merely local condensations of the field; concentrations of energy which come and go; thereby losing their individual character and dissolving into the underlying field.” By extension, every object, every system within our universe, is a manifestation of an ultimate reality that underpins the Whole. Capra then likens “the conception of physical things and phenomena as transient manifestations of an underlying fundamental entity” to the non-dualistic worldview of the mystic, and the notion of all things being one. Ultimately, it would seem, separation is only a construct, a vestige of the human mind, programmed to compartmentalise and label. There is no real distinction between objects or systems within our reality. 

What incomprehensible machinery lies beneath our worldly co-habitation? Nested between the layers of our fractured and fragmented worldview is an energetic and unified reality, a sheet of wholeness stretching out indefinitely. The minutiae of detail embroidered within this fabric is astounding; and yet we are part of the same continuum, an ocean within which we ripple. Quantum field theory demonstrates that we aren't really separate at all, but merely differentiated, much like the fingers on one’s hand. 

Tripping the Light Fantastic In order to flesh this idea out further, an experiment performed in May ‘97 by a University of Geneva group showed that a measurement carried out on one photon particle had an instantaneous and identical effect on another photon, seven miles away. This particular phenomenon arises when two or more particles are ‘entangled’, having properties that are dependent on one another. Pertinently, this measurement effect has been proved to be independent of the distance between the two particles; theoretically, it would work even if the particles were to be held at opposite ends of the universe. Physicist Nicolas Gisin was quoted as saying it was the equivalent of having two persons flipping coins; every time one person would grab their coin out of the air, his colleague's coin would simultaneously stop spinning and land identically. Gisin surmises that some "influence" may be affecting both measurements from "outside space and time." 

Any connecting force or information transfer linking these particles would need to travel faster than light, which would break one of the most immutable laws of our times (Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity). At a fundamental level, this result indicates an inter-connectedness or "whole" aspect inherent within matter itself. Einstein himself valiantly fought against this very idea of ‘spooky action at a distance’ ("spukhafte Fernwirkung”), countering that faster-than-light speeds would invalidate everything we know about our world. Nevertheless, quantum entanglement describes a state of instantaneous transmission of 'information' across the Universe, independent of space-time. 

This particular type of instantaneous transmission has been shown to define a new class of events, the presence of ‘non-local’ systems, not subject to the constraints of classical physics (John Bell’s investigation on EPR paradox). The most significant extension to non-locality is the knowledge that all particles were once entangled at the genesis of the cosmos, and must therefore still in some sense be unified across space-time. These transmissions don’t follow causal principles, travel superluminally and are perfectly compatible with the mystical concepts of Unity and non-dualism. It’s a match made in heaven: the Brahman of the Hindus, the Dharmakaya of the Buddhists and Tao of the Taoists is the ultimate unified field that seeds our phenomenological existence. 

The Implicate Order In the New Causality, cause and effect are seen as two sides of the same coin. Alan Watts makes a quaint analogy to clarify the position: a strolling cat seen across a narrow fence by an observer would immediately raise the issue of the head seeming to ‘cause’ the tail, in the absence of the knowledge that they are parts of the same entity. It is an inviting conjecture, and even more exquisitely reinforced by scientific tests. Particle investigations show that effect can precede cause, demonstrated by virtual particles that pop into existence like flitting butterflies, before vanishing altogether into the ether. In the Standard Model of particles, these are equivalent to real particles travelling backwards in time. Quantum mechanics furthermore drives the notion of us having retroactively created the Big Bang, merely by looking deeper into space. Wheeler’s ‘Delayed Choice’ experiment, a clever modification on the infamous double-slit result, wonderfully demonstrated that knowledge of a particle state in the present affects its state in the past, so that any observation at a given moment can literally conjure up a history that has never happened until that point. 

David Bohm, a renegade theoretician of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, produced an entirely self-consistent formulation in which everything affects everything else, every way in time. There appears no distinction between apparently separate events & identities, owing to the fact that the Whole is ‘enfolded’ within each constituent part. Bohm extended his idea of this ‘Implicate’ order to suggest our universe as being a multidimensional holographic projection, with each region containing a total structure within it. So far-reaching was the theory, it resonated with evidence in the field of neurology (by Karl Pribram), that memories may be enfolded within every region of the brain, rather than being localized in cells or atoms. 

Almost simultaneously, UC Berkeley physicist Geoff Chew pioneered the bootstrap approach, countering that there are no fundamental particles or forces; and that one can achieve a complete description of reality by seeing it as a web of interrelated connections. As a natural consequence of this work, consciousness is seen as forming an essential ingredient in the soup, so that matter and consciousness form parts of an undivided whole. This is the final frontier for intellectual conquest, the holy grail, the realm where mysticism, materialism and magic collide. 

Mind At Large In light of the brain-boggling results in quantum mechanics, consciousness is seen to be central to any worthwhile understanding of our reality. In subtle terms, consciousness ‘creates’ all the phenomena we know; for if we were to do away with the act of observation altogether, reality would be in an indeterminate state of flux, like unmaterialised waves of potential existence in an intangible state. It is no fluke then that consciousness is often called “the ground of being”, a fundamental ‘field’ that is the source of all meaning. At the absolute core of existence are life, awareness, and conscious pattern. 

Jung realised and recorded meaningful connections between psychic and physical events, which seemed to exist outside of time, space, and causality. In his diaries, Jung wrote about this synchronicity as "acts of creation in time", and pondered on the idea that the subconscious was somehow producing physical manifestation in our shared external reality. Not surprisingly, this psychology-based gestalt ties in neatly with the Holographic Universe theory, with the brain playing the dual roles of the projectionist and the screen. In fact, much as a hologram materialises from the interference pattern of two coherent light rays, all of our physical reality can be thought to be a ‘simulacrum’, materialising as an interference pattern between a field of consciousness and a field of unmanifest potential. 

Of course, alternate descriptions of reality flourish and stake equal claims to validity. There are some esteemed figures in academia who have interpreted the weirdness of quantum mechanics to justify what is now called ‘Many Worlds’. Simply put, this theory suggests that since the indeterminate probabilities mentioned above exist as a superposition of all possible states, these states indubitably exist in an infinite set of parallel realities (multiverses). David Deutsch, an eccentric theoretical physicist at Oxford, has argued that one can speak of multiple universes being an interpretation of quantum mechanics only as much as one can speak of dinosaurs being an interpretation of the fossil record. This framework for explaining how a wavefunction ‘collapses’, and what happens to the other wavefunctions not being observed to collapse, is a testament to the broad-minded nature of scientific query in the 21st century. What was formerly a concept rooted exclusively in science fiction, has now become a popular and consolidated position in academic exchange. 

 Nirvana and Nothingness Within the myriad traditions of mysticism, the primacy of non-intentional consciousness is an unquestionable fact. Dating back to the early Hindu and Buddhist treatises, the human mind is regarded as the ultimate trans-dimensional conduit; a self-sustaining wormhole looping in on itself recursively, strangely, looking at itself look at itself till infinity. This is essentially what we would nowadays call a system or cybernetic model of consciousness: the universe being infinitely systematised in all directions, we are entirely contained within all the systems there are. Paradoxically, the conscious Whole flows through our very essence. It is a beautiful concept: the convergence of Eastern mysticism, Western philosophy and scientific rationalism.

In the meantime, however, science by itself will continue to provide an incomplete description of reality unless it accounts for and explains consciousness. Although we can now empirically describe the universe in terms of self-organisation and order (in what are essentially non-conscious processes), we can hardly even begin to quantify the idea that self-awareness is really just the same as the Whole being aware of itself. If we can accept the notion of life manifesting as ‘intelligent’ and ‘sentient’ ripples in an oceanic unified field, then surely it is a logical progression that the oceanic field itself is ‘intelligent’, ‘sentient’ and ‘alive’. These terms, in a sense, are merely arbitrary qualifiers that we use within our language constructs to distinguish states of being – one cannot presume to explicate on the difference between ‘dead’ and ‘alive’ without resorting to the aid of thought constructs (which may or may not be an accurate representation of reality). 

In light of this ambiguity, it is imperative that we adopt a framework that encompasses the overlap between the apparently divergent worlds of spiritual tradition and hard empiricism. In many ways, Buddha enlightenment has been scientifically validated: namely that in our elemental state, we are everywhere and nowhere at once (quantum superposition); we are the universe and the universe is completely contained within us (enfoldment and the Holographic Universe); that there is a realm beyond our physical world that echoes a cosmic-level consciousness (how the intelligent and sentient mind-within experiences itself subjectively). Strictly speaking, we are defining the pure meditative state; a reflection of the Omega point source, that immense, impossible nothingness from which the material universe sprang forth. All matter was once connected, and still is. That awakening is an intimation of the wonder of universal oneness, of bypassing our dualistic definitions to achieve a state of unity. 

The Conquest of Space, Time & Mind It may seem short sighted to assign legitimacy to transcendental states of consciousness, and to wholly relocate these experiences from the realm of hallucination to a place altogether more familiar. However, fMRI brain scans now indicate that the states accessed by psychoactive drug users (including feelings of timelessness, contact with beings & intelligences beyond our own, spirits and visions, feelings of oneness and ecstatic bliss, and seeing reality from the perspective of the 'Whole') are now wholly objective experiences. The same brain areas are awakened as those when we see what we would classify as 'real' objects. Scientists have even set about demonstrating that brain patterns can now be used to switch on and off hierarchical states of consciousness, some of which involve a very real world 'objective' experience of mystical and spiritual realities. For the first time in our history, we can actually peer into the brain as it shifts and morphs, as it weaves an immense tapestry that one can never quite fully behold. Additionally, it gives us an indication that perhaps we don't need to employ physical phenomena like teleportation, tunnelling wormholes or matter/anti-matter collisions to access other dimensions: we have all the tools within us, prepared by nature herself. Just as psychedelic transformation gives us a glimpse into these alternate realms of experience, ancient techniques like yoga, tai chi, tantra and pranayamic breathwork have been tapped into the source for countless centuries. These diverse mechanisms have served as pathways to explore higher dimensional realities, for anyone with enough inclination to persist in their quest for truth. 

To fortify the notion that everything we can imagine is possible, there is now strong statistical evidence suggesting a strong positive bias towards the existence of some ESP and ‘paranormal’ phenomena; a thorough meta-analysis of studies conducted since World War II by Dean Radin points to a better-than-odds chance of occurrences of telekinesis and remote viewing within the populace. If true, this wouldn’t be the only instance wherein the individual of a species can communicate with the collective almost instantaneously. Bees have been shown to use waggle-dancing techniques in 6-dimensional quantum manifolds to describe the location of food sources to the hive. Photosynthesising plants maximise their energy efficiency by using quantum coherence to calculate the fastest and most efficient paths for solar energy transfer. The collective behaviour of birds, called ‘murmuration’ in starlings, can only be explained through instantaneous communication, as though each bird is ‘entangled’ with the flock. Even Carl Gustav Jung used analysis from dog behaviour to describe what he called the 'collective human unconscious'. It suggests that many organisms employ modes of non-local communication (akin to quantum entanglement, or information sent in superpositioned states which can then collapse) to form coherent and synchronous behaviour. 

Thus, the architectural and organizing patterns within nature – most pertinently the brain, perhaps the most complex hologram that we know of – are recursively present at all levels of perception. This is what we know as objective truth. And even though particles come into being and vanish in an endless dance of energetic motion, Truth possesses a universal quality, one of omnipresence in an inherently transient world. As best encapsulated by Capra, “Like the subatomic world of the physicist, the phenomenal world of the Eastern mystic is a world of samsara – of continuous birth and death.” Truth, Love and Beauty, however, are eternal and beyond the grasp of change.