A quantum view of natural disasters

Published in Sri Lanka’s Sunday newspaper, The Island, on 24.02.05 to explain

the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

This article has two objectives:

1. To dismiss the need to invoke God to account for natural disasters.

1. To suggest that calamities that confront us, whether individually or collectively, are mostly the outworking of unexpended reservoirs of negative energy, generated by ourselves, lying trapped deep down at the unmanifest level. These unmanifest energies are spiritual tectonic plates if you like, which though dormant for the time being, are always likely to erupt, causing havoc and mayhem at the manifest level.

In what follows I am suggesting that most problems have their provenance at the unmanifest level, and should therefore be addressed at that level as well.

This is not to say that we should not treat a toothache as we normally do or alleviate the suffering caused by the tsunami, but that unless we are also mindful of their deeper invisible origins, more and more problems, ranging from natural disasters to political, economic and societal catastrophes, will keep breaking the surface interminably, as they have done in the past.

The quantum world view

For at least 500 years science has been telling us that the only universe there is, is the one we can apprehend with our five senses. However, the contemporary scientific world-view is that the world manifest to our senses is only a thin membrane draped over an infinite but invisible universe, like an iceberg floating on the sea, except that while the iceberg is 14% visible above the water, the world manifest to our senses is only 00.001% of the real world. This view of the world, known as the quantum world-view is based entirely on its analysis of the atom.

According to quantum physicists, only 00.001% of an atom can be apprehended by our senses while 99.999% of it is seemingly empty space inaccessible to the senses. From this it follows that, since the whole universe is comprised of atoms, what we apprehend as the universe is only 00.001% of what actually constitutes it, which is another way of saying that with our five senses we can know only a mere 00.001% of reality.

However, beyond saying that, the quantum physicists are not willing to say much, except that, although seemingly empty, the 99.999% hidden world is vibrant with energy, and that their technologies and capacities are not adequate for exploring it. There, the scientific enterprise terminates, and mystics and men of religion take over. Let us therefore turn to what some of the latter have had to say.

The poverty of theology

In accounting for natural disasters no concept has been so grievously desecrated as the concept of God itself. Paradoxically the violation of God is not the work of atheists but of theologians themselves, highlighting again the poverty of theology, whether fundamentalist or mainline.

One hears from some theologians the horrendous view that the earthquake and tsunami of 2004 was the expression of God's “wrath” upon Moslem, Hindu and Buddhist societies. Although by some curious logic, they do not see the 2001 attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York also as an expression of the same God's wrath upon Christendom!

Theologies that ascribe to God, wrath, vengeance, jealousy or anger – qualities which even at the human level would be sinful and unacceptable – are a contradiction in terms, reflecting more the simplistic minds of those who propound them rather than any truths about God.

On the other hand, the Old Testament (OT) does make umpteen references to Jehovah God as being prone to these qualities. However, these references only testify to the simple understanding of the writers of those times who cast in anthropomorphic terms revelations that were beyond their finite minds to grasp. One has only to read the New Testament, a spiritually far more advanced document, to discover a perception of God that is vastly different from the one portrayed in the OT.

Even more pathetic is the view expressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, that natural disasters such as the tsunami undermine the veracity of God. It seems to me that instead of the tsunami eroding God's veracity as God, it is the Archbishop's concept of God that has eroded his own veracity as a theologian, rather than the other way round.

The Archbishop's perplexity actually highlights a problem that has dogged theology for 2004 years, which is its lack of a coherent doctrine that can account for pain and suffering in God's creation. While Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism explain pain and suffering in terms of manmade karma, Christian theology has had to source pain, suffering and death to God, which is an unspeakable contradiction, or has ascribed them to the devil, which bestows on the latter a power greater than God. Is it a wonder that theology is utterly impotent when it has to explain natural disasters?

The activation of the Law

However, one can look at the “why” of natural disasters from another standpoint which completely absolves God from responsibility for them.

Scientists concede that the physical universe is governed by law, i.e. by the laws of physics, chemistry and biology etc, and that if we violate them we incur certain consequences. For instance, if I were to step out of an upstairs window in my house, I will most certainly break my bones. However it would be quite silly of me to implicate God in the outcome because all that has happened is that, of my own free will, I have violated the law of gravity and incurred the consequences.

However, what scientists cannot comprehend is that the universe is governed by moral and spiritual laws as well, and that if we violate them, we will incur certain consequences, just as we would incur the consequences of violating the law of gravity. It is not God who imposes the penalties but moral laws enforce themselves as does the law of gravity.

The claim that the universe is governed by moral and spiritual laws as well, and that their violation will always incur penalties, is not just my opinion but a doctrine that is at the heart of all religions. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism account for pain and suffering in the world as an outcome of "maya" or "avijja" which triggers the law of karma while Christianity accounts for pain and suffering as the outcome of the "fall" or "original sin", which triggers the Law of Sin and Death.

Basically, what they all say is that every thought or action, whether positive or negative, good or evil, begets a proportionate reaction, or, that as people sow, so they shall reap, and that as we do unto others it will done unto us.

It is not God who prescribes the outcome, but the “Law” itself. It is the Law that ordains that the fruits of fallen man’s initiatives will be returned to him, even if it takes an illness, or an accident, or a 9/11 or a tsunami, or whatever, to do so. The Law is impersonal, inexorable and merciless, as is the law of gravity, disregarding even children, the old and the infirm, in its relentless course.

Quantum view and religious masters

We may invoke the quantum view of the universe to get a better understanding of how moral and spiritual laws operate.

While the quantum field is an infinite, invisible and intangible ocean of energy, it is also a repository and carrier of intelligence and information. Just as radio, TV, optic fibres and communication satellites use the electromagnetic spectrum at the lower end of the quantum field for storing and transmitting information, at a subtler level, our thoughts, words and actions are also stored and transmitted through the quantum field.

Consequently, even the slightest flicker of our subconscious minds sets off ripples across the entire field, generating responses according to whether those thoughts and actions are positive or negative, good or evil. One scientist, a meteorologist in fact, called this the butterfly effect, which was his way of saying that the energy field is so densely interconnected that a butterfly flapping its wings in one corner of the globe can set off a typhoon in another part of the globe. Conveying the same idea, another scientist claims that even as we pull up a blade of grass, the whole universe trembles.

The great spiritual masters had articulated this truth, although in different words, thousands of years ago. One of them said, “Mind is the forerunner of all conditions, and all things are mind-made. Therefore, if with an evil intention you think or act, evil will follow you like the cart follows the ox, etc". Another said, “As you think, so will it be unto you. As you sow you shall reap and as you do unto others it will be done unto you."

There is no way we can hide from the consequences of violating these moral or spiritual laws. We may lock ourselves up in temples and churches or we may make vows and pray to heaven, but none of it will avail, because the consequences of our thoughts and actions, accumulated over time, down the generations, will come knocking on our doors demanding payment, as surely as we would break our bones should we step out of a tenth floor window.

It is the Law itself that fashions the instruments that come knocking on our door, inexorably and relentlessly, and not God, although primitive minds anthropomorphise these instruments as the will of a malevolent God.

However, this is not a philosophy of fatalism at all, as some would characterise it, but it is the recognition of reality as it is and therefore a doorway towards deliverance from it.

Prescriptions for deliverance

However, the story does not end there, for there are ways in which humanity’s subjection to the Law can be broken or at least mitigated.

All the mainline religions have their own remedies for delivering the human race from captivity to Law, whether we call it the Law of karma or the Law of sin and death; and just as we may invoke the laws of aerodynamics to overcome gravity or harness the law of internal combustion to overcome inertia, we can tap into these prescriptions for deliverance, according to how we are called.

Hinduism, the oldest of the religions, prescribes a fourfold path of jnana, yoga, bhakti, and poojas as the way to attain moksha or deliverance.

Theravada Buddhism prescribes the Arya Ashtangika Marga (The Noble Eight-Fold Path) and vipassana bhavana, practised over numberless cycles of births and rebirths, as the way to deliverance.

Islam demands absolute submission to the will of God through the observance of Shariah law and the “Five pillars" of shahadah, salat, zakat, saum, and Hajj.

And Christianity prescribes faith in the absolute sufficiency of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which in turn triggers the Law of Grace, (and not merely the observance of the Ten Commandments, as is popularly believed) as the way to salvation.

Which of these prescriptions one adopts should be a matter of choice for each individual and it is not my purpose here to expound them or to commend one or the other, except to say that I have made my own conscious choice for my own journey.

Love and compassion override cause and effect

One word of caution, however. The view that unredeemed man is inexorably subject to Law and begets his own circumstances is not to suggest that the afflicted and the sorrowing should be abandoned to their fate. Rather, because at the quantum level we are all One and members of each other, alleviating the condition of those under Law is incumbent on us all.

When anyone suffers we all suffer, and when anyone dies, in some degree, we all die.

Therefore we are committed, always, to uplift each other, to strive after justice and righteousness, to promote peace and reconciliation, to bind up the wounds of the afflicted, to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, and to comfort the sorrowing, regardless of friend or foe, and wherever and whenever the need arises.

There is a spiritual law that overrides the law of cause and effect and against which the latter is powerless and that is the Law of love and compassion, of forgiveness and charity. Hence the commandment, to love one another and to love our neighbours as we love ourselves; the neighbours in question being not just our literal neighbours, but all forms of life throughout the universe, for at the quantum level we are all One.