The Measure of the World

One of the oldest activities of human beings was to look up to the sky and ask questions about what they saw. Such an activity persists to this day. What is space? What is time? These questions have always been, and still are today, more than ever, at the centre of scientific and philosophical research.

The Universe is a vast house. Our imagination struggles to conceive the immense distances that separate us from the objects we see in the night sky, even with the naked eye. Light for Physics is the “entity” that travels faster than anything else in the Universe. Nothing can travel faster than light and, most importantly, its speed is constant, regardless of the position and speed of the observer. Our Universe has laws and these laws impose a constant and very high speed for light (about 300,000,000 metres per second). Since physical light always goes at the same speed and nothing can exceed it, to get an idea of cosmic distances we use its speed to realise the immensity of which we are a part. Let’s give a few examples. The closest celestial body to us is the Moon, which is “only” 384,400 km away. It takes about a second and a half for light to travel from the Earth to the Moon. So we say that we are 1.5 light-seconds away from the Moon. The Sun is 150 million kilometres away from us and its light takes about 8.5 minutes to reach us (so the Earth-Sun distance is 8.5 light-minutes). Here we can already make an interesting point. Right now, if we look at the Sun, we do not see it in its present time, but we see it as it was 8.5 minutes ago. We are looking at the Sun’s physical past and not its physical present, but let’s go further.

After the Sun, the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri. Its light (the possibility of seeing its astronomical physicality by man) takes about 4 years and 2 months to reach us. If we now take a telescope and point it at Proxima Centauri, we see it where it was 4 years and 2 months ago. Last example. The light from Sirius takes 8 years and 9 months to reach the Earth. When we look up and see the bright star of the constellation of Canis Major, we see Sirius where it was 8 years and 9 months ago. These distances, when we think about it, make our heads spin and all the stars we see with the naked eye are part of a very small region of our galaxy. It takes 52,850 years for light to travel from one end of the Milky Way (our galaxy) to the other. The Milky Way contains about (by default) one hundred billion stars and it is estimated that the known Universe contains one hundred billion galaxies like the one we live in. The speed of light is therefore the tool we have for measuring and realising these immense distances and, as we have already mentioned before, our telescopes are also time machines (such are the cognitive means of the intellect, or concrete mind for occultism, which induces its thought-forms on the basis of the perceptions of the physical senses and their “extensions”, the ever more refined scientific instruments in space-time). The farthest objects in space that we can see are also the furthest in our time. We see today objects at the edge of the known Universe as they were 14 billion years ago. Stars that today seem very bright to us are perhaps now physically dead, transformed into other entities or “presences” billions of years ago.

All this happens because we live in a manifest Universe in which the concepts of spacetime are essential in our perceptive experience. We cannot conceive an embodied existence detached from the concepts of space and time. Yet, as aforementioned, this is only one aspect of “reality”. Indeed, there are well-studied and experimentally proven physical phenomena that transcend the principle of locality. Phenomena that are transmitted instantaneously over enormous distances. For example, one of these is the phenomenon of quantum Entanglement. How is all this possible?

We know that Quantum Mechanics works, but we don’t know “how” it works. It works because practically all the technology we use today is based on it, from computers and smartphones to diagnostic equipment such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. The wonderful and highly efficient process of chlorophyll photosynthesis works by quantum effects and our aerobic breathing mechanism is based on microcellular processes that originate thanks to Quantum Mechanics. It works because decades and decades of experiments have only confirmed its validity. It works, but Quantum Mechanics challenges our rational thinking. What it wants to tell us still eludes our full understanding. How is it possible for a physical system to be in multiple states at the same time? How is it possible that the states of two particles that have interacted with each other can change simultaneously even though the particles are separated by billions of light years? How is it possible for a particle to disappear from one region of spacetime and reappear in another point? Nature tells us that this happens, but still doesn’t tell us “how” it happens.

What has been written up to this point is what Physics teaches us today. These are all concepts that have been demonstrated and proven in the reality in which we live. From here on, however, we enter a new world in which everything is still under construction. Physics moves forward by hypothesis and experimental verification. The new world that seeks to explain the bizarre phenomena described above relies on hypotheses, but experimental verification is still lacking. So what follows are the hypotheses on which the new, young and fast-growing Physics is based. Hypotheses that are consistent according to Mathematics, but lack experimental validation. Why? Because we do not yet have the knowledge and technological capabilities to put these hypotheses to the test. A bit like when Maxwell described electromagnetic waves in a mathematically consistent manner, but it was only several years later that Hertz proved experimentally that Maxwell’s hypotheses were correct and that electromagnetic waves really existed. What follows are new theories that are for the moment extremely complicated, even for physicists exploring this frontier, which we must learn to imagine creatively, that is to say, we will have to unravel them with the concrete mind at the service of the abstract mind. It is inevitable, therefore, to proceed here by means of examples and metaphors.

Let us suppose space is made of cloth. This space, therefore, seen from a certain distance, appears to be a single piece, something that can be crumpled, folded, moved, etc. Now let us suppose we take a very powerful magnifying glass and look closely at our fabric. What do we see? We see a series of threads that intertwine in more or less complicated ways. A set, therefore, of nodes (points where the threads touch each other) and fibers that unite these nodes. We all have this image in mind. We all know how a fabric is made. Well, we are simplifying a lot, but the frontier of space research assumes a scenario of this kind: space would “be born” from an intertwining network of “fibers and nodes” [1]. We distinguish a level (“subspace”) formed by a network of interlacements, of knots and fibers (which recalls the etheric levels of the esoteric Tradition) and another “emerged”, manifest level, which is the physical space as we experience it and know it. It should be noted that here we are talking about space and not spacetime. We will analyze the concept of time later on, but here it is enough for us to know that in this physical theory we are considering, time is not a fundamental concept of the Universe. Let’s give an example. Here on Earth we have the concept of high and low, but if we move into deep space this concept, which is so well defined on Earth, no longer makes any sense. We can say then that the concept of high and low is not a fundamental concept of the Universe. So is time: it has meaning in some contexts, but loses its meaning in others. We acknowledge that from an esoteric point of view the concept of Cycle best expresses the essence of Time (see From linear to cyclical time). We have used the example of the fabric to bring us closer to understanding the concept of space in the new Physics now emerging, but it is still not enough. We must resort to another analogy to better clarify what we mean by space. Again: we all know that if we take a container full of water and start lowering the temperature, we will reach a point where the water in the container goes from liquid to solid, it becomes ice. In Physics we say that a “phase transition” has occurred. What does this have to do with our fabric? There’s an analogy because the transition from subspace (nodes, fibres, weaves) to manifest space is thought to be a phase transition. Just as for water and ice the phase transition is given by a temperature threshold, it is assumed that the transition into manifest space is due to a phase transition consisting of a destabilisation of quantum coherence due to gravitational effects. Well, this last sentence is obviously cryptic for those who are not Physics insiders, but what we are interested in understanding here is that, as with ice, physical space also arises (enters into manifestation on the physical plane) from a phase transition. And these transitions occur continuously and keep the Universe as we know it stable. What does this imply? It implies that we must also review the concept of distance described at the beginning of this article. Depending on how the nodes and fibres are arranged in subspace, all forms and substance are created in the manifested space, analogously to what occult science affirms, for which the true form of all things is etheric, that vital and substantial substratum composed of living elementals that “in-form” the elements and the “concrete” matter of human science. The interesting thing is that there is no precise correlation in terms of location between the entanglements in subspace and what these entanglements correspond to in the space in manifestation. In subspace, the concept of distance makes no sense. Two points, two very close or overlapping nodes in subspace, can correspond to two points light years away from one another in the manifested Universe. This, therefore, explains the phenomenon of quantum entanglement very well: the states of two particles that have interacted with each other and are now light years apart change simultaneously because at the level of subspace the entanglements and nodes that give rise to these particles coincide. The influences of Sirius on us, which in the manifested Universe would take almost 9 years to reach us, in subspace are immediate.

The structure of subspace is not crystallised. The configurations of nodes and fibres change and modify continuously. Nodes merge and separate into other nodes. The transition from one configuration to another in subspace corresponds to what in the manifest Universe? It corresponds to the concept of time! … Yes, it makes one’s head spin. Linear and continuous time, as we perceive it, is the result, in manifestation, of subspace quantum transitions, and the interesting thing is that the same applies to space: events that in this Universe in manifestation are perhaps hundreds of years apart, in subspace correspond to a tiny transition between one state and another in the configuration of the nodes of the network, nodes that are perhaps very close or, better, directly connected.

Fascinating, but as we said before these are only hypotheses supported by very refined (and very complicated) mathematics, and they do not have experimental evidence yet. Although still in the limbo of hypotheses, these ideas open up pathways that bring Physics closer to other kinds of languages. What is the consistency of space? And that of time? Is ours the only plane of reality? Are there energies that transcend the concepts of distance and linear time? These are the questions that the ancients and the masters of various schools of thought have always tried to answer; questions that the occult Philosophy and mysteric Science have addressed by providing the system of analogical perspectives to approach universal truths and laws, a system of abstract thought in incessant phase transition, in response to the development of human consciousness, our instrument of measurement and subspace. Now, gradually, with the slowness that science imposes, also Physics is coming along and joining in, trying to answer these questions. Physics and Metaphysics are crossing paths and each of these disciplines must be enriched from the encounter with the other. We are describing the Universe, our home, with a babel of different languages, but the Universe is one and it is obvious that everything must eventually converge into an all-encompassing thought. The task of the scientist is, before anything else, to say: “I don’t know”. Because only from not knowing is born the drive of divine curiosity towards exploration, the relentless search for the unknown that must be approached with an open mind, open to the wonder that we are and that surrounds us.

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This article is published in, or manifests in response to, Leo’s 5^th sector (15°-20°: from August 8 to 15), activated by the Sun-Earth direction along the Leo-Aquarius zodiacal axis, Signs or ‘Nodes’ transmitting the 1^st and 5^th Rays, universal Energies of Power and Science-Knowledge.

[1] Technically speaking, the threads that form this fabric are the lines of the gravitational field, each closed into a sort of ring. Every loop is “ringed” with other loops and the contact points where the loops touch are the nodes. Precisely because we are talking about loops, this theory being expounded here is called “Loop Quantum Gravity”.