EWS #84 Towards an Integral Approach to Science - jointly with La Grace

Sept 20, 2021

Radhe (0:00:00):
So welcome, welcome all to New Perspectives. This is an integral yoga platform that is being sponsored by Auro University in Surat India, as well as sister organisations Sri Aurobindo Integral Life Center in Surat and here in Fountain in South Carolina. H.P.Rama who is with us today is the founder of Auro University and the visionary behind Integral Life Center. I'm Radhe and I'm joined by Vladimir, moderator for today's webinar. So before beginning our session, let us observe a few moments of concentration, please. So again, welcome. Today we continue our journey on bridging science and spirituality with the union of matter and Spirit. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother firmly attest to the fact that Spirit and matter are in their essence one, and can in manifestation be united, and will be united, through the process of evolution aided by the Supramental consciousness. So it seems the question is not so much if such a bridge or union is possible, but rather the need for a more integral or holistic approach to science, what Sri Aurobindo refers to as a greater science. Today we are honoured to have with us Sraddhalu, who will share his insights on this greater science or an integral approach to science. We welcome you, Shraddhalu, it's always great to have you here with us. And I just want to remind everyone before handing it over to Vladimir, who will more formally open the webinar, that we will be taking questions towards the end. And so there is a Q&A box there at the bottom. And at any time during the webinar, feel free to type your questions. And with that, Vladimir, I'll just hand it over to you.

Vladimir (0:01:56):
Allow me briefly to introduce Sraddhalu Ranade, who is a scientist, educator and scholar residing at Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He has influenced over 5000 teachers throughout India through his immersive workshops on integral education. He has travelled all over the world in over 30 countries, delivering lectures and conducting workshops on integral education, management by consciousness, esoteric sciences, self-development, the integral yoga and spiritual practices. Today's topic is on the modern science that has restricted itself to matter and material processes alone, considering all else to be derived phenomena or outside the scope of its exploration. Sri Aurobindo refers to a greater science, which includes matter but extends beyond to embrace higher grades of consciousness. The Mother even speaks about the Divine materialism. This discussion offers a first entry into this integral approach to science and explores its technological implications. We get a glimpse of the extraordinary potential such a science holds for the future of humanity. So without further ado, I invite Sraddhalu to address the audience. Please, Sraddhalu.

Sraddhalu (0:03:40):
Namaste. When we use the word science, automatically the mind goes to a body of knowledge which is primarily focused on matter physics, chemistry, a little bit of biology. Already entering the domain of psychology it becomes a little bit blurred whether it is science or a different field altogether. To the extent that psychological problems can be rooted in biological processes it is still considered scientific but the moment it goes into other areas, science is not interesting outside my scope. When people demonstrate in the laboratory phenomena under hypnosis or under direct volition which involve what I call psychic powers or abilities. It's very interesting to see: a scientist will look at it and either say impossible and walk away or says hmm very interesting and then walk away and never think about it. There's an automatic filtration which prevents the mainstream scientists from engaging with anything outside the material domain because they will lose their job, they will lose their reputation, they won't get published and so on. But some scientists have dared and explored those domains. The problem is not there, the problem is when you do enter this space, how do you reconcile, how do you reconcile a material process with these phenomena. Is there something which interfaces? For example it's possible to demonstrate in the laboratory that by a certain concentration of thought you increase the temperature of a resistor and this has been done by psychics like Ingo Swann. How do you explain this link point between mind and matter? There is no framework in which this can be done at least at present, at least in the present science, at least in the Western psychological, biological, physiological framework, there's nothing existent. There is such a framework in the Vedic body of knowledge and Sri Aurobindo himself not only refers to this, draws on it extensively and even elaborates on it in his own writings.

So it's in this direction that I want to enter with the first exploration. You have all heard of very interesting things in the explorations in quantum physics where they speak of non-locality, non-duality or the particle wave, wave particle duality and so on. All these are descriptions, they are not explanations. When you say a particle has non-locality it means it spread out everywhere in the universe but at the moment where you observe it suddenly collapses as a wave function and becomes a particle here or there or not. It explains nothing. It describes something which is almost like a magical phenomena. If you had told this as a fairy tale to a child, you know there is this particle which is everywhere and then when you look it bounces out or it changes position, they would have said, yeah that's fairy tale. That's not physics and yet it's presented to you in the framework called physics. When physics takes a position, for example that it speaks of space and time dilation or compression when it says that space and time bend when a heavy body like a black hole is rotating it drags space-time with it, it's a piece of friction which is so sophisticated that the common man says, wow this must be true or it must be something, but to the physicist it makes no sense at all. Yes there are equations which describe something, but to say time is dragged does it make sense to you? No. If you go back about 500 years ago there were questions in science which would be, which was something like this: why is water wet and the correct answer is because it is a liquid. No explanation. Today the question will be: what is water made of? Its made of H20 and thats it. thats the correct answer, liquid, transparent. No explanation. Sri Aurobindo raises this question in the Life Divine. He says hydrogen is a gas, oxygen is a gas. How is it the combination of these two makes suddenly for a liquid? No explanation.

Sraddhalu (0:08:20):

In fact the bulk of physics as it is taught today is just a body of descriptions which go into greater and greater detail and then we say we have explained it we have explained nothing we have only described. Is it even possible to explain and that's where we get into the real science. I'm going to cut to the chase with the point here that there is in fact an underlying basis on which explanations can be found. This basis was thrown out of physics a hundred years ago. This basis Sri Aurobindo asserts is real, is existent and so I'm going to now use the word which is so dangerous which no scientists dare use in any paper, because if you use that word in a paper then you will not get published. Sri Aurobindo writes this in the Life Divine in 1916 at a time when science has rejected this word. Sri Aurobindo writes, ‘Ether may and does exist as an intangible almost spiritual support of matter but as a phenomenon it does not seem to our present knowledge at least to be materially detectable’. Now to our present knowledge at least, he says, it is does not seem to be materially detectable. Actually it was detected and ether is that secret component, let's say which will give us the key to entering what may be called an integral science and I'm going to elaborate on this a little bit. So what happened is in the history of science going back 200 years when electricity, magnetism, electromagnetism and so on were being discovered and explored. There was continuously an attempt to describe on first principles how these things happen.

Electromagnetism for example is very well known through what are called Maxwell's three laws of electromagnetism. These are taught in textbooks today. How did he come to those laws? He assumed there was an underlying fluid ether filling all space and this ether being fluid it's moving, flowing based on this flow you have phenomena of electromagnetism, electricity etc. Deriving from this model of a physical flowing ether he derived the three great laws of electromagnetism which are still used today. Everybody believed as scientists that ether existed. It was called a luminiferous ether because it was supposed to be the substance in which the light waves travel. So sound waves you know travel because of air and they cause a wave of compression in the air. If you take out the air there's no sound that goes through or it may pass through physical object again with compression waves. What does light pass through? Because it travels through empty space without air. So they assumed there was this underlying ether. They tried to detect the ether. So the famous experiment which is called the Michelson-Morley experiment, these were two scientists who did it and they set up an underground facility surrounded by heavy stones in a bath of mercury to reduce vibrations. They made light going to different directions. The assumption was, if the earth is turning in an ether then the light in one direction will get swayed by the ether wind and the duration of the light signals would be different. Very simple experiment. If we are in a moving ether, problem was when they did the experiment they claimed that it was a null experiment. They couldn't find a change and so came the big paradox. There's supposed to be an ether but we can't detect it. What do you do?

Einstein in 1905 stated, let's assume an ether does not exist and then he derived what is the special relativity theory in which space distorts as you approach speed of light, time dilates as you approach speed of light. It's very interesting this whole this point is very important. I'll dwell a little bit on it. Ether was removed, space and time began to distort. Bring back the ether, space and time become normal again. But why was it removed? Because they said there was a null result. Actually Michelson-Morley did detect a change in light speed but the detected change was 30% of what was expected so they said it's null it's within the range of experimental error, we ignore it. Subsequently Michelson himself was not satisfied he went on attempting the experiments in a more and more refined way until eventually he did the most refined experiment at the top of a mountain and there comes the great thing. He discovers enormous shifts in light speed up to 12 kilometres per second, way beyond any experimental error. What happened? and this is the key to the whole understanding. They assumed that ether was fixed in the air in space and earth moving through it would be pushing against an ether wind of 18 kilometres per second it was expected. What they did not take into account is that ether as a fluid, is not sitting static, earth is not moving against it, earth is dragging the ether or even ether is turning the earth.

Sraddhalu (0:14:00):

So if ether is an underlying substratum which is the basis for matter, it is in constant interaction with matter, then with matter it should be moving. It should be pulled and pushed by matter and it should pull and push matter. So the fundamental assumption was wrong. It was of a static ether when in fact there's a dynamic flowing ether and the earth turning drags the ether and if you went below the earth in this underground chamber with heavy stones you would have the greatest drag of ether. That's the reason why the experiment showed low result. He went on top of a mountain it showed high results. So independent of him, there was an experiment which was conducted by Dayton Miller, who did a test every single day several times every hour for more than a year on top of a mountain and these were the most sophisticated, the most detailed experiments. There were done in 1920. He detected three different drifts of ether flow: one which was related to the Earth's rotation, one which was related to the Sun's position and a third which is related to the direction in which the entire solar system is moving. Now by any standard of science these should have overridden all previous results but this is when the politics comes. Einstein had already established a new idea. One of his very close friends did an experiment around an eclipse which tried to support this and the result was Dayton Miller's experiments were completely sidelined. Einstein in fact said if those experiments are true then we have to review all our theories but one of his friends did a selective measure of data from the experiments and said, ah this is too vague, too random we ignore it.

This became the biggest flaw in modern physics as a result of which we have completely lost the very basis of the unification and I'm going to discuss this a little bit. When light is treated as a wave without a medium it becomes the only thing in the entire universe which is absolute. Everything else is dependent on everything else relatively or is part of a medium. Changes with the medium but light was given a position as a wave without a medium. Again it makes no sense but it was taken in that way the result was space has to bend, time has to bend in order to meet the expectation of a fixed light speed except that light speed is never fixed, you can measure it changing as it passes through a glass of water. In fact when it passes when light passes through a lens it bends because it slows down inside the lens. Nowhere in the universe do you get an absolute light speed because there is no place which is completely free of any electric field or magnetic field and light bends and slows down in any field. So here was a complete contradiction in terms which was accepted by physics against all evidence which ended up in physics losing the most fundamental principle which would have united everything. Now I'm coming to why it will unite everything and I will elaborate on this a little bit. When you look at so-called empty space in modern physics we find space has a value and a property and it is described in electrical and electromagnetic terms it has something called impedance which is exactly 377 ohms. Now impedance is resistance to electric and magnetic influence. It has something called permittivity and permeability with exact numbers which I could read out doesn't matter. Empty space shorn of everything has a quality which is springy. If you take a coil, pass electricity we say we get an electromagnet, right? Where is the magnetic field? It's not in the coil, it's outside the coil in the empty space around it. When you stop when you cut off the electricity, the magnetic field collapses in the coil and generates a burst of electricity, throwing out a sharp spark. The field was held outside the electromagnet, collapsed into the electromagnet and pushed back.  Now if you pulse the field, it bounces back and forth and continues to resonate. This is the basis of a radio oscillator or resonator. The capacitor and an electromagnet together form this what is called a resonant circuit. Where is the resonance taking place? In the space around, in so-called empty space which holds the electromagnetic field. Which space and its ability to hold magnetic field is elastic? It pushes back when you collapse, when you switch off the electricity it pushes back.

Sraddhalu (0:18:52):

So what in space is springy is fluid has a value and a resonant value it's supposed to be empty space right? In fact this is what we would call the luminiferous ether which is the basis of the light vibration, which light vibration is a combination of electric and magnetic fields at which are orthogonal to each other. I'm just talking pure physics as it is known and whose resonant frequency changes with the concentration or density of the ether. Why is this important? Because without the ether we cannot explain magnetism, we cannot explain electricity, we cannot explain gravity, we cannot explain the atoms, we cannot explain the electrons, we cannot explain any of the subatomic phenomena. For example, you are told and this is textbook physics that an electron is in an orbit around the atomic core and there are many orbits which are fixed that's why it's quantum physics, there is nothing in between. The electron drops from one orbit a higher orbit to a lower orbit and releases a light wave. Standard physics textbook.

Except what they don't tell you, the light wave has a wavelength which is bigger than the whole atom. How does an object moving in a minuscule movement create a wavelength which is bigger than the entire atom by more than a thousand times? Or the reverse, the electron absorbs a light wave and jumps orbit by taking a new energy. How does it absorb a wave which is far bigger than the atom itself? No explanation. It makes no sense logically and yet we are supposed to believe it. Now the problem is, I won't go too much into detail because once you go into detail there are literally hundreds of such beliefs which are utterly irrational which make no sense at all but they are the basis of what we call the whole body of physics and the more you go into quantum details the more it becomes like this. Why? Because something is fundamentally flawed, something is fundamentally missing. There's an entire article by Sri Aurobindo which is titled Heraclitus where he discusses how the Greeks did an analysis of reality and discovered the four elements earth, water, fire, air but they couldn't go further, whereas in India the Rishis went earth, water, fire, air and ether and it was the etheric principle which was the unifying principle and the Greeks couldn't get to the unifying principle and there's a whole discussion around this. And Sri Aurobindo's quotation in the Life Divine I gave earlier is pointing to this.

Now if as long as we live in this physics shorn of that fundamental unifying factor you will end up with the problems we have today. Effectively since 1950 about let's say, modern physics has made no progress. It has only entered into speculative mathematical play. You observe certain particles try to create a mathematical framework which describes the behaviour of what you observe but it explains nothing for this reason that this fundamental basis was removed. Einstein himself as he developed the General Relativity came up with this concept of heavy masses as they rotate dragging what was called space-time continuum from his previous Special Theory of Relativity. Sri Aurobindo makes a very clear comment about it, he said time is not a dimension of space. So the so-called space-time continuum is just a mathematical trick. It's a trick in which you can combine any item. It could have been time in the fourth dimension or it could have been density of the ether. So I'm saying the equations are valid but their interpretation is wrong. The density of ether is the fourth dimension which makes for or this fourth value which makes for the curvature of light passing through space. But in his general relativity he takes this space-time continuum now which is like a body, a substance and around a heavy mass, space-time is dragged, like a fluid. Interesting.

Sraddhalu (0:23:18):

We come back to the original experiment of Michelson-Morley. Now with a new idea that you're dragging an ether. Einstein ends his last few papers with this observation. He says, so now we come back to a new concept of an ether and he discusses with that word the ether but a new concept of ether. None of this is part of public discourse today, because for various reasons which I would call the politics of science, the word ether itself is proscribed. If you write a paper with that word it won't get published. But there are other scientists who didn't bother so much with the mainstream framework who followed their own line of development, notable among them was Nikola Tesla. He was a student of Vedanta, student of Swami Vivekananda and he writes something quite fascinating in one of his books and I would like to read from it. He says he's describing the search of humanity to find ultimate answers. Long ago he recognized mankind he recognized that ‘all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance or tenuity beyond conception filling all space, the akasha or luminiferous ether which is acted upon by the life-giving prana or creative force calling into existence in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena. The primary substance thrown into infinitesimal worlds of prodigious velocity becomes gross matter. The force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears reverting to the primary substance’. He uses the word Akasha and Prana not by chance. Remember, he was a student of Vedanta and what he has described is the very basis of Vedic physics, the Vayu or Prana operating on Akasha creating worlds. Tesla uses exactly the same vocabulary to explain the appearance of matter.

Now one of the implications of this, the moment you recognize this, one of the implications is that matter can be brought out of the ether like foam created in water. Equally the force withdrawn, matter can subside. Straight away here you have the basis for a whole mass of phenomena including the phenomenon of materialisation and dematerialization. An explanation exists which is rooted in physics for this if you bring back the ether. Okay, I'll go a little bit into this whole description: how does this appearance of matter take place or any form take place and what is the nature of the ether and I'm going to skip many logical steps. We don't have much time I want to get the broad idea in place, so it will not be as rigorous maybe someday we'll do something more rigorous, but I want to get to this idea first. The ether itself, what is it made of, what is it essentially, because it doesn't help to say it's made of something else which is made of something else unendingly. Ether itself is something which can modify itself and take on appearances of form. But what? We go back to the root question and I'm going to place it in these terms. The original Divine creative consciousness is one indivisible by definition, infinite potential but indivisible. If it is made up of two pieces well it can be divided so it's not the original. The original is indivisible, not made up of pieces cannot be divided, if it has to represent itself it has to represent itself wholly always isn't it? But it can enter in relation with itself. The Sat-Chit-Ananda becomes aware of itself and can know itself in many ways and here comes the multiplicity each of the ways that it knows itself it can dwell upon and intensify and deepen and grow in variations of it and there comes the multiplicity from the oneness. Yet how does it play represent itself in fixed rigid form so now we'll come back to Sri Aurobindo.

Sraddhalu (0:28:06):

I don't know if I will read, I won't read in detail but you will find the passages in the Life Divine page 40 in the book that I had where he says that he described these five things and I'll summarise now. When the one pure consciousness represents itself to itself the first relationship it has with itself is a kind of a variation of fluctuation and he says, and I will read from Sri Aurobindo here:  ‘the elementary state of material force is in the view of old Indian physicists he uses the word physicists a condition of pure material extension in space of which the peculiar by property property is vibration. Typified to us by the phenomenon of sound but vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create form. There must be some obstruction in the flow of force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations and so on’ and he develops the five principles which I will summarise now.

So that pure consciousness knows itself and in knowing itself variously it's a movement of vibration, expansion, contraction and this is the Ethereal state[Ether]. Subsequently this is the first modification. So in something which is fundamentally essentially one you have vibration, expansion, contraction as a phenomenal appearance. Now two different kinds of vibration or expansion and contraction can enter in contact to create ripples or interference patterns. This becomes the basis for the second self modification which is called the aerial property or aerial element, Air. It is the basis of all contact and communication. It is the basis of all forces including electric, magnetic, electromagnetic and gravitational forces. Now when you have interference patterns as you will see often in water, ripples blending into ripples to form complex patterns, they are still unstable. There's no form. When interference patterns combine with each other to create repeating interference patterns, so the repeating pattern creates the appearance of stable form, not stable internally but in overall appearance this becomes the principle of the Fire. It's the formative principle which sustains the appearance of form and we have three kinds of fires in the Veda, the triple fire as you will find repeatedly mentioned by Sri Aurobindo which in the terms of physics becomes or in the vocabulary of the Veda is the solar fire, the electric fire and the material fire - Sauriya, Vaidhyuth and Jada. And these can be understood as operations taking place in the subatomic domain, electric in the peripheral forms of the atoms where electrons are modified and in the Jada the material would be the domain of chemical fires where molecular structures are modified. But always the principle there is this stable form appearing from combinations of interference patterns. This then gives appearance of form but not yet rigidity in the form. So two fire formed objects could for example pass through each other. So a fourth modification is needed which Sri Aurobindo describes as the principle of diffusion, permanent attraction and repulsion. Now the forms can enter in permanent attraction or repulsion and this is the Water principle. Finally rigidity comes with the fifth modification which is of cohesion and rigidity which leads to the appearance of rigid stable material forms, [Earth]. So the originally creative consciousness becoming aware of itself going through five degrees of self-modification layering phenomena upon each other at the fifth stage of self-modification reaches this rigidity of appearance of form. This is the Vedic description of how form appears out of that which is formless.

Sraddhalu (0:32:23):

But this is pure physics, if you recognise that the original expanding consciousness is ether. We have in the description Sri Aurobindo also gives it in this way: there are two ethers, there is the dense ether which is the physical ether of which the physical world is formed, there is the subtle ether which is the basis for the subtle worlds. But in both the process of formation is exactly the same. So here is a science which spans the physical domain and the subtle worlds and beyond is a third which spans all these domains producing all forms by exactly the same process of the five elements or elementary self modifications. In other words you could take any physical object, describe it in terms of its proportional content of the five formative qualities. If you modify those five formative qualities the material itself would undergo change. For example you could take a rock, withdraw from it the earth principle and then once you understand how it works it's easy to understand how it could be done. You withdraw from it the earth principle the entire rock will become just puff, a pile of powder the finest powder you can imagine. Or if you look at a thing which burns easily because it's the fire principle there which is operational something like petrol it's liquid and fire principle combined primarily. Modify one of these and you'll modify the properties of matter. If you recognize that all five principles are primarily modifications of grades of consciousness, you can understand how your mind can actually intervene and modify those grades, those properties. This is again the basis straightaway for an explanation of so many paranormal phenomena, not only materialisation and dematerialization which are now obvious once you understand this, but also that you can transmute an object.

We all know examples of people such as Ganapati Muni, who held a coin in his hand he was sitting with a poor family which was giving him food and shelter he would tell stories to the children while holding a coin in his hand at the end of the story narration he gave back the coin and it had turned to gold. How do you do that? If you look at it from current physics, the transmutation of any metal into gold would involve humongous amounts of energy, far more than even in your particle accelerators. How does he do that? Now again they could be biological and chemical processes which could do such modifications but here is an occult process where directly intervening through the modification of the five elements you could transmute a substance. Sri Aurobindo in fact speaks of this in the Life Divine where he says that the the mistake of current science is to compare object to look for differences. He says if you start observing properties of objects from what is common among them, it would give a whole new dimension to science because you would look at the underlying similarity and then he says the mastery of matter will be when you are able to transmute one object into another, one substance into another. This transmutation is possible by recognizing the underlying common basis of the ether principle and how it is modified to become these various substances and forms of matter. So this gives you a base now to understand how ether can form the basis of a whole new science, a physical science and yet a physical science that includes the subtler domains and possibilities because the ether itself is conscious substance. Your own mind can identify with it and modify it by identification.

Sraddhalu (0:36:28):

Cosmic mind is the one who does it, who makes these forms of matter and perceives it through our embodied mind. But our mind participating in this exercise of cosmic creative mind can also modify in our own little local space and thus act upon it. So straight away you have a clear basis for psychology and matter and even the Spiritual unified in a framework because of this one principle. I want to then take it to further explorations of what it implies for science. There's another interesting conversation Sri Aurobindo had with Pavitra which is recorded to be in 1929 where he says that to the mind of an occultist, he says there is a fundamental difference between the mind of a scientist and an occultist and to the mind of an occultist, the recognition that electrons have circular orbits in an atom or the atomic structure is similar to a solar system structure, would open to the occult mind many possibilities. And then he says that currently science has only discovered starting from the earth principle and water principle it has entered the fire principle has only discovered the first two types of fire, the third discovery is imminent he says. It was subsequent to this that the subatomic decay was discovered and then he says after this science will follow the air principle which is the basis of radio waves and gravitation, implied of course is that after that will be the true ether technology. What is interesting is, yes radio waves and gravitation and other forces all belong to the air principle and that's still not fully mastered by science.

In fact this is one of the big problems of current science that we cannot unify all the forces. You have electromagnetism, you have the strong force, weak force and gravity but there's nothing common. Bring back the ether and they all merge and I'll give you a quick glimpse of how this happens. So if you ask a scientist today, what is magnetism? No answer. What is electricity? No answer. We just know the phenomena. We describe the phenomena. We don't know what it is. In fact, look at a textbook. What is a magnet made of? It's made up of smaller magnets, they say. That is, every atom is a magnet. And when they all orient in the same direction, you have a big magnet. But what is magnetism? No answer. When you look at electricity, you take a small battery put a wire in between, the moment you connect instantly there's a flow, instantly the flow goes at the speed of at least the speed of about the speed of light let's say, however that whatever the great distance of the cable it could be across the Atlantic, it'll go at the speed of light. But the electrons in the wire are drifting it's called electron gas, they are drifting from atom to atom at the pace of five centimetres per second. Electricity is not the flow of electrons, there's something which is flowing which is dragging the electrons with it. Sri Aurobindo says it is the nearest experience of pure force in the material domain and it is prana in its essential pure force, that's again the flow of ether. It is the etheric flow which is dragging the electrons with it and so on.

So electricity is understood in terms of ether flows but electromagnetism also and magnetism itself is understood in terms of ether processes which was the basis remember of Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism. But what about gravity? Go back again to what science tells you. Newton discovered gravity, no he did not. He just said an apple falls because the earth pulls it. Why should earth pull it? We are never allowed to question these fundamental statements of science where all matter pulls everything else. How does it pull, how does it know that matter is there? So Einstein of course made the whole problem simpler with his General Relativity, saying that matter does not know where the other matter is, matter bends the space around it and space interacts with space from the other side, both bent pull each other and pull matter in the process. Problem: when there's a piece of matter space bends around it, when matter is removed space bounces back. So what in space is elastic takes the strain of a material object and then pushes back when the material object is removed or holds the tension of two different bent parts of the space to join the tensions to merge one tension to bring the two matter pieces together. He has only postponed the problem by describing a tension in an underlying space-time which is the actual gravity. It still doesn't explain anything.

Sraddhalu (0:41:42):

When you look at the whole thing from Ether based theory, of course there are several ways to view it but I'll just describe the simplest way. Ether all around is in an enormous humongous pressure. The quantum of Ether and I'll explain this from again pure physics when you go into something called quantum electrodynamics, you measure the quantity of energy in empty space and it turns out to be infinite. Infinite means you cannot do anything with equations. So what they do, there's a mathematical jugglery where they chop off the highest frequencies of energy and the result is a finite number but the finite number is so humongous that a tiny cubic centimetre of empty space, that's let's say the fingertip of empty space has enough energy to evaporate all the oceans of the earth instantly. That's the quantity of energy here. Do you feel it? No. How? So I'll give you an example here. Take a sheet of paper and swinging it gently and you might say there's no such thing as air. You see how smoothly the air flows that the paper flow there cannot be air around it right? Science tells you the pressure of the air above you creates a pressure on every square centimetre here of about one kilogram 2.5 pounds every square centimetre pressing on the paper, except that so the entire thing here might be something like 50 or 80 kilograms, on this side equally the same pressure of air of 80 kilograms and the two kind of neutralise each other. The result is a slight blow is enough to make the paper move as if there was no other pressure. Ether creates a similar pressure all around us of the humongous quantity enough to evaporate all the oceans of the earth in every cubic centimetre. That's the kind of pressure of the underlying ether energy which is pressing on everything intensely and because it is evenly everywhere it feels like you can move around.

In fact the inertia itself can be described in terms of an interaction of matter with ether. If you can modify that relationship you can neutralise inertia. If you have ever seen videos of flying saucers, extraterrestrial vehicles travelling through earth, if you have ever seen them go zigzag zigzag, okay for a long time people said that's all fantasy because it was the reflection of some star, but recently the US Navy has released videos of some of these things and claimed that they are not ours they are actual physical objects. So now you cannot say that there's no such thing and you can see them flying zigzag so rapidly breaking the sound barrier just like that they stop on an instant, going at a high speed of Mach 6, Mach 20 sometimes they will make a right angle turn. If there was any object inside any person inside it would just be crushed by the momentum by the inertia unless you have neutralised inertia. If you have neutralised inertia you can make those exact movements, no problem. Then coming to gravity now which is also related to because this is part of the ether technology. So I come to gravity. If you have an object let's say the earth, we imagine a sphere, ether pressing with that tremendous humongous pressure all around equally but earth can move freely like your paper moving in the air but the pressure of the energy waves passing through here coming on the other side will be slightly less than the pressure coming from this side. Effectively any object near the surface of the earth here will feel more pressure from above, from the ether pressure pushing it towards the earth. That's the basis of gravity. It's a bit like what you see on the ocean's edge, the waves keep coming towards the edge of the ocean and anything which you throw in the water eventually gets pushed something in that direction.

Sraddhalu (0:46:13):

Now once you have this as an explanation for gravity and you have no other explanation in physics for gravity it's just one of those things which is supposed to happen magically, no explanation. Once you have an explanation like this based on an ether, the immediate line of thinking will be how can you modify the ether pressure and flow around you. And you can because every time you have an electromagnet or a capacitor you're putting electricity, you're modifying the ether pressure around it. That's the basis for electromagnetism. So the technology exists to modify and play with ether. Can you modify in such a way that the pressure from one side is reduced and which would make it possible for an object to actually float up against gravity because gravity would be neutralised in that space. Yes, interestingly it's possible. There's in fact an experiment done by a Russian scientist called Podkletnov. He took a rotating magnetic disc, spun it at very high frequency and found above it gravity was less going through multiple floors of the laboratory. So he was smoking a cigarette the smoke came on top and immediately rose up. The experiment has been replicated around the world no explanation given and then the whole thing has been kind of suppressed. Why? In fact this should be the beginning of a whole new science and there's a reason for that and maybe I'll just touch upon it.

You remember Sri Aurobindo spoke of the air principle which would be the next discovery 1929 in fact those things did happen at the end of the Second Great War, Second World War there was a whole discussion about can we overcome gravity. We have statements by the head of the big companies which built the planes. I don't remember all their names now but Northrop and Boeing and all of these big ones, don't remember if they were the parent companies or the same one. I have the articles elsewhere. The heads, CEOs, managing directors of these companies are giving interviews in public saying that we are approaching the end of aeronautics. What is aeronautics? A plane that flies because of lift from the air. So the shape of the plane is critical because it needs to be lifted. They say we're approaching the end of the age of aeronautics because now we can overcome gravity and with overcoming gravity the shape will not matter and you have all these interviews coming out in Jane's Defense Weekly and all of these big different journals of the defence and then suddenly around 1952-53 they all go silent and after that you only [see] articles ridiculing the concept of anti-gravity or ignoring it. The reason I suppose is because the breakthrough was made at that time, they found that once you have this technology out, it will be very difficult to control people. It will be very difficult to control the technology itself because with electromagnetic manipulations you can counter gravity. What happens then? You can build in your garage something that modifies gravity, take off and go anywhere on earth. How will you be controlled?

Another implication of this whole technology is free energy and I'll come to that briefly If looking at the air, looking at the paper flowing easily in the air you said there is no such thing as air and you could say that if you were only a visual person with no breathing. You could say no air, I don't see any evidence for it, right? because it moves so easily if as you claim there was so much air pressing this should not move easily, that would be the logic. Then a windmill is your free energy if there is an ether and the ether flows and as a flow it has a humongous pressure and it's related to the Sun or various other sources for the ether flow and you make a windmill equivalent for to catch an ether flow you will have your free energy. The technology which involves anti-gravity or gravity modification and the technology for a free energy are very closely allied because they both involve manipulating the ether. So it was a decision taken I believe at that point that this technology was too risky or too premature to release to the public and they all went silent but until then all the statements are based saying it is imminent and some of them even claiming within the next two years it will be discovered. All these are part of public documentation. Whatever I've said is part of public documentation.

Sraddhalu (0:51:01):

So it comes back to this: There is a deeper basis for physics, which will allow science now to bridge matter higher gradations and subtle worlds and the Spirit in a single continuum and the knowledge for this already existed it's not something new. Based on this many new technologies are possible have actually been experimented with, sometimes suppressed but this is the direction inevitably for the future. This is ultimately going back to the same knowledge that was given by the Vedic Rishis with a different vocabulary that we are rediscovering. Sri Aurobindo himself describes the five elements and the whole technology of formation of matter out of formless consciousness. He describes it in the Life Divine, in his Essays on the Gita, in the Letters on Yoga, in his letters also and one more text at least in the Upanishadic writings and of course in the Vedic. So there's an interesting article which is very cryptic. He describes the first Rik of the Rig Veda, analysing the root sounds and so on. There he discusses the whole physics of the Veda from the perspective of Agni, describing seven kinds of light, seven kinds of fire and then he explains around the Sun something unusual, that the Sun or the blaze around the Sun he describes in terms of Agni and Indra and then he writes, right or wrong this is the physics of the Veda. Very interesting statement because one of the things he says there is Chaya that is shadow is an aspect of light, it goes into a whole new dimension of what is possible to do, to be done with light. In fact the technology for that is also described in some of the ancient texts in Sanskrit but it just opens a whole new dimension which is too fantastic for people to imagine.

I've seen the text from the Vimana Shastra which is a text that describes how to construct aeroplanes. It describes 32 kinds of machinery. One of the machines is for example spreading smoke of forgetfulness which is very simple, another machine which allows you to see underground and then there is one machine which is called Tamogarbhayantra. It is literally translated as the darkness womb machine and when it is switched on, it is described, it creates darkness in the middle of daytime. To current physics there is no mechanism for this possible because darkness is seen only as absence of light but in the Vedic physics darkness is a power in itself complementary to physical light and can be activated, cold is a power in itself and not just absence of heat and can be activated and so there are whole phenomena which are part of current physics which are not explainable. There's a particular tube called I think it's, forgot the name of the tube. If you blow air in it there is a whirling process and one side hot air comes out the other side cold air comes out. How does whirling air create a change in temperature with two different streams? No explanation. There are a whole host of such phenomena which are unexplained. The Sun for example on the surface is 6000 degrees you go into the corona of the Sun it is some millions of degrees. No explanation and the explanation closest today is there are magnetic lines of force, two arcs of magnetic lines of force and then they reconnect, they break from each other and reconnect releasing huge amounts of energy. Hang on! You are describing a line of magnetic force as if it's a chord of energy and yet your physics textbooks which describe lines of force, say it is just a mathematical representation. What does it mean that there is a physical line of force of magnetism holding together in an arc which breaks and rejoins. This cannot be explained unless you describe an underlying ether in which the line of force is just a process, a whirling, a whirl let’s say. So bring back the Ether and all of physics falls into place, quantum physics becomes reasonable. Special Relativity becomes a very simple effect. General Relativity is seen now to be what it is, no dilation of space and time. In fact you can travel faster than light, there's no limit to speed. You can materialise objects, dematerialize them, transmute them and draw infinitely from the pressure of the ambient ether around you. Nikola Tesla was a proponent of this knowledge. He referred to the ether as the medium. I've read his many of his patents including a patent where he quotes from as I said about the Prana and the Vayu and so on, but he did not accept quantum physics and Special Relativity in the form in which they were articulated without the Ether. Bringing back the Ether solves all their problems. So this, in brief, summary of a broad framework in which we can understand how a science could exist integrating all these domains with something that is comprehensible but which also opens up the whole new range of phenomena which are all explainable and accessible to us. I'll pause here and I think I don't know if it's too much but we'll see from your questions how to proceed.

Vladimir (0:57:11):
Thank you Sraddhalu, it was a wonderful, wonderful exposition to science and Spirituality and relation of Ether. Actually in the Vedas and Upanishads it is described in that way as you said that Ether, Akasha appeared from Atman, from the Self which is behind. It is the first kind of projection of Atman.

Sraddhalu (0:57:38):
Here is a physics that starts with Atman, amazing isn't it? Right. And yet it is physics, it describes matter and the appearance of matter.

Vladimir (0:57:50):
And yes there are several questions here. You can see them most probably and choose the order of answering them.

Sraddhalu (0:58:00):

Okay. Yes, so there's an incident someone asked to share about the Mother experimenting with the computers. When I had heard about this incident, it was from the person who was heading the computer section and she said that, yes we had created this display for the kind of an exhibition of circuits and the Mother came and saw and then she said, ‘oh it didn't work there were some problems’. But then we heard from Udarda that the Mother said that she was experimenting to see how the circuits would respond to the Spiritual force. You know she was experimenting in every field in every way possible to try to connect the higher possibilities to the physical and the new technologies. I believe it was to her great-grandson Kalia when he completed his studies in the ashram school, he wanted to become an engineer because that was the in thing, that was the edge of technology in those days because it was still very material. And the mother concentrated for a while and then told him to go and study computers because that was the future in which she saw things going. Similarly there was another person who is now in the ashram. He was a professor in the United States and had written to the Mother of a project he was working on which was called Star computer and he sent a photo and Mother looked at that and she said, she wrote back to him, ‘come to Auroville’, because Auroville had just started, ‘come to Auroville, bring the star computer with you. This is exactly what is needed for the future’. And of course at that time the computers were gigantic and he couldn't bring the star computer but what was interesting was her great-grandson Kaliya coming back from his studies started Aurelec which was one of the first significant companies in Auroville that developed computers from the ground up with basic technologies innovating as they went along which made it one of the premier computer companies in the world at that time and of course in India and set completely new standards they developed certain technologies which were so new that they even sold those technologies finally to some multinationals and things like that but that was just to tell you that Mother foresaw the direction of the technologies and wanted Auroville and the ashram to be always on the cutting edge of these.

So someone asked how does one neutralize the ether and when would schools teach this science? I don't know what happens is when something is too advanced for current knowledge, the existing status quo of knowledge resists. Gradually more and more people turn to the new knowledge and so to say the old schools just fade away. Something similar is likely to happen eventually but right now we have what are called gatekeepers whose job it is to ensure that these things are not allowed to come into the public domain and I explained why because it could completely destabilise the existing economic order. Let me give an example just so you understand how serious this is. If you could in your garage build a small device that could tap energy from the ether, you would create a box that would run your entire house electricity for free. Now this is not speculation, this is exactly what would be the outcome of the technology as we described it but it is what the Mother also foresaw. So let me share another incident. So when I was a child I had certain let's say images or speculations or visions of these things and I was interested in pursuing that line of exploration. I once asked I've asked many people in the ashram, did Mother speak about this, and then I discovered somebody asked Pranab that ‘did Mother tell you anything about future sources’, ‘she said yes yes’, he told, she told me once and he explained, ‘she said in the future there won't be any more these wires of distribution of electricity. Every house will have its own little box’, and he made a gesture about this size, ‘and it would give off a bluish glow and it would be enough to supply all the electricity you need for the house’. Perfect description of those devices which draw electricity from the ether.

Sraddhalu (1:02:35):

Now if you had, everybody had this, and now let's say you build a variation which allows you to modify or neutralise the ether gravitation. Take your car, throw away the engine, throw away the transmission box, throw away the wheels, what is left is just the casing and the seats and the battery. Your battery is enough with electricity that the battery supplies to make an electromagnet that can lift the full weight of the car and hold it up for a few hours. That's all the electricity you need. Now if you can modify this and the force is enough to lift the car, modify this to reshape the gravitational field locally, your car takes off, can travel for a couple of hours, how far? As far as you like, anywhere on earth, you have free electricity, you can stay up as long as you want, it would radically destabilise the existing order and of course there's potential of misuse, anything that can fly can be turned into a missile. So imagine the Taliban creating a missile that goes at high speed, you can imagine the dangers as well as the benefits. So perhaps at that time in the 50s they felt it was premature, they held it back and then it became a question of control and power. But how do you modify the fields? I don't want to get into the technology because it gets a bit risky to speak of these things in public. I'll just remind you when you charge a coil you are modifying the ether field. When you charge a capacitor you're modifying the ether field. If you can play with these two you can modify and shape the ether field as you want. Shaping it correctly would modify the gravitational field because it's formed by the ether. Very simple. The rest is a question of working out of the technology.

So impact of Ether science on information technology, computers and AI? Well, I would say existing electronics is based on the flow of electrons. Before that you had the valve tubes that was the old technology in the 40s and 50s which was based on the flow of ions. So ions to electrons has made such a significant difference that a room full of valve tubes is reduced to a single computer chip smaller than your nail. Ions to electrons and the next step is electrons to photons. So from electronics we move to photonics where light waves combine to create let's say logic gates and the computers. Such a computer would use dramatically less power because light you can see uses very little current. The heating of your computers, the heating of your mobile phones, all of these would completely go away. The power it would use would be like a hundredth of what it uses currently and the speed would be higher because electrons still have a resistance to in travelling, light would have no resistance. So it's a whole new dimension photonics would be a whole new dimension and we are not yet near etherics. I don't know what form etherics would take but certainly one of the implications of Etherics would be the ability to communicate faster than light as well as travel faster than light so I don't know directly if it will make a difference to AI, but certainly AI would be far more powerful just with photonics as the next step in electronics.

Sraddhalu (1:06:20):

And Spirit and physics relationship someone has asked. Uniting science as it is right now with Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's teachings… So what I have described here is one way by which the whole Vedic science and physics which is the framework also of Sri Aurobindo's science and physics can bridge with the current physics and take it to a completely different plane but that's not what the common man would be interested in that's a physics exploration. What would be the direct relationship for us as sadhakas with science and physics? Sri Aurobindo explains that the yogin's approach to understanding the physical sciences is to begin to see how nature works out her processes. So when you look at science you say, oh this phenomena, this behaviour, we don't explain it, we describe it. But what in is the power by which it is done in this way. I'll give one beautiful example of this. Every object when it is frozen shrinks, because the molecules become more compact it shrinks and when it's fully frozen it becomes the smallest heaviest, except water. Water when you make it cold shrinks at about 4 degrees, it becomes the heaviest densest, continues to cool it and it expands again when it becomes ice. Why? we still don't know but because of this one single property life on earth becomes possible. I'll explain why. So if water on the surface of a lake froze because the air became too cold normally if it shrank it would sink to the bottom and the bottom of the lake would freeze and the freezing would go bottom up eventually killing all life in the water. What happens instead is as soon as the top layer forms, it freezes it starts floating because now it has expanded. Ice floats and the other interesting property: water is a conductor of heat but when it becomes ice it becomes an insulator of heat. So now the ice floats, protects the heat below from the cold above and life in the lake can continue to live. Such an amazing behaviour.

Now if you map this out of the shrinking of the water with temperature, you have in the physics textbook you will see a line which describes all matter in a straight line and water is out there. For some reason water does not follow conventional physical laws but because it breaks out of that line life on earth becomes possible. Think about it such a beautiful idea that the Divine creative energy, mother Nature, Prakriti the one who creates, Kriti the creator of forms. The energy with the Divine intelligence hidden behind forms water with these properties in preparation for life on earth. So the yogin's perception should be more and more towards recognizing the wonder of the Divine creative energy. How she creates, how she builds, the way she forms all these relationships and in each thing we see the action of the Divine wisdom and the Divine creative power that would be the approach of the sadhaka to appreciate sciences in this way and if you ever take to physics or the more material sciences with these eyes not only you will appreciate the amazing beauty of and the wonders of the Divine creation. But you can also ask her for guidance, ask her for insights and she would give you the insight so why is this, what is important here, how do you do this and Nature, mother Nature, her Divine nature or the Divine inspiration will reveal to you the secrets and allow you to discover them and even explore them further. This should be our approach generally.

Vladimir (1:10:24):
Thank you, Sraddhalu, for these beautiful explanations and insights into the future of science and Spirituality. And Spirituality becomes more and more materialistic and materialistic science becomes more and more Spiritual in a way because the Ether is missing and truly speaking if you look into nowadays attempts to explain things, Singularity, this idea, you know concept of, there is a new theory of there is one electron for all the protons, that is the attempt to maybe exactly cover that gap of absence of ether because there is no other way to arrive at that.

Sraddhalu (1:11:18):
I will touch upon two examples of how this absence of ether has really messed up science. So when you look at the theory of gravity you have certain equations which say given so much mass there should be so much gravity but when you look at the distant galaxies or including our own galaxy, the entire galaxy is rotating held together supposedly by the gravitational field but there is not enough mass to make up for such a strong field. So what happens next? the scientist says, ah yes, but there must be something by which we should be able to explain it. And what do they say? They create, they invent the ghost of what they call dark matter. Dark matter is nothing but an attempt to fill this lack of mass by saying we are going to cling to our wrong idea of gravity, but in order to keep it in place we have to invent 94% of the mass being this dark matter which by definition cannot be seen. Rather than saying we need to repair the theory of gravity. Now bring it back to ether, you find something extraordinary. The galaxy is a whirlpool of the ether. At the centre of the whirlpool is the creative power where new stars are being created and then they whirl out into the arms of the galaxies. All the galaxies you see are whirling disks and when you have two galaxies, a small one and a big one rotating next to each other the speed on their edge is exactly the same. That's again an observation which scientists cannot explain unless you accept is the ether flow which is dragging the two and rotating them. And now you do not need these stupendous gravitational fields, you do not need a dark matter or even dark energy or black holes. Everything is explained in very simple terms by the ether flows. So certainly it will make reality much simpler and all these attempts to compensate artificially would be removed.

Vladimir (1:13:17):
Thank you very much, that was wonderful.

Radhe (1:13:23):

Thank you and I don't know HP, if you would like to say a few words or if we should wrap up?

[HP Rama] Yeah, you can wrap it up. Thank you.

Okay well. Just before everybody leaves I just I too wanted to thank you so much sir Dalu I for one will be listening to this two or three times over to make sure that I caught all the links, but it was absolutely fabulous. I did want to mention that next Saturday, September 25th, we have Letitia Walker that is going to be joining New Perspectives. She will be showing us three or four different methods of concentration and meditation and reading or sharing the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as guides. And then on Sunday, the next day, September 26, Dr. Soumitra Basu will be back with us and he will discuss the Aurobindonian perspective on the chakras, explaining both the chakras in terms of the planes of being in consciousness as well as their role in integral yoga. Lastly, I've gotten several emails and chat questions on where you all can find the recording of Sraddhalu's talk and I did put in the chat box there both our Facebook, which is on now, you can access, as well as our La Grace Center website, which will be posted later today or tomorrow morning. So with that, we thank everyone for bearing with us.

Sraddhalu (1:14:47):
I suggest that we close with a concentration on the theme of the talk, recognizing ether as the conscious presence of the Divine energy and the Divine Lord himself as a substance filling the whole universe, forming everything and sustaining us. We are formed of that Divine conscious ether.

Thank you. Namaste.

Radhe (1:15:07):
Okay. Thank you. Namaste.