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Sufism and Quantum
Physics
Ibrahim B. Syed,
Ph. D.
President
Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc.
7102 W. Shefford Lane
Louisville, KY 40242-6462, USA
E-mail:
IRFI@INAME.COM
Website:
http://WWW.IRFI.ORG
There are parallels in
Sufism and in quantum theory. A view of the world is very similar to the views,
held by Sufis and modern physicists. In contrast to the mechanistic world view
of the Westerners, for the Sufis all things and events perceived by the senses
are interrelated, connected, and are but different aspects or manifestations of
the same ultimate reality. For Sufis “Enlightenment” is an experience to become
aware of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things, to transcend the
notion of an isolated individual self, and to identify themselves with the
ultimate reality.
An exact science is
expressed in the highly sophisticated language of modern mathematics, whereas
Tasawwuf is based on meditation and insists on the fact that Sufis’ insight
cannot be communicated verbally. Reality as experienced by the Sufis is
completely indeterminate and undifferentiated. Sufis never see the intellect as
their source of knowledge but use it merely to analyze and interpret their
personal Tasawwuf experience. The parallel between scientific experiments and
Tasawwuf experiences may seem surprising in view of the very different nature of
these acts of observation. Physicists perform experiments involving an elaborate
teamwork and a highly sophisticated technology, whereas the Sufis obtain their
knowledge purely through introspection, without any machinery, in the privacy of
meditation or Dhikr. To repeat an experiment in modern elementary particle
physics one has to undergo many years of training. Similarly, a deep Tasawwuf
experience requires, generally, many years of training under an experienced
master. The complexity and efficiency of the physicist’s technical apparatus is
matched, if not surpassed, by that of the mystic’s consciousness-both physical
and spiritual-in deep Dhikr. Thus the scientists and the Sufis have developed
highly sophisticated methods of observing nature which are inaccessible to the
layperson.
DHIKR
The basic aim of Dhikr
is to silence the thinking mind and to shift the awareness from the rational to
the intuitive mode of consciousness. The silencing of the mind is achieved by
concentrating one’s attention on a single item, like one’s breathing, the sound
of Allah or La Ilaha Illallah. Even performing Salat is considered as Dhikr to
silence the rational mind. Thus Salat leads to the feeling of peace and serenity
which is characteristic of the more static forms of Dhikr. These skills are used
to develop the meditative mode of consciousness. In Dhikr, the mind is emptied
of all thoughts and concepts and thus prepared to function for long periods
through its intuitive mode. When the rational mind is silenced, the intuitive
mode produces an extraordinary awareness; the environment is experienced in a
direct way without the filter of conceptual thinking. The experience of oneness
with the surrounding environment is the main characteristic of this meditative
state. It is a state of consciousness where every form of fragmentation has
ceased, fading away into undifferentiated unity.
INISGHT INTO REALITY
Sufism is based on
direct insights into the nature of reality, and physics is based on the
observation of natural phenomena in scientific experiments. In physics the model
and theories are approximate and are basic to modern scientific research. Thus
the aphorism of Einstein, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
Whenever the essential nature of things is analyzed by the intellect, it must
seem absurd or paradoxical. This has always been recognized by the Sufis, but
has become a problem in science only very recently, e.g. Light as wave or photon
or duality of light. Great variety of natural phenomena belonged to the
scientists’ macroscopic environment and thus to the realm of their sensory
experience. Since the images and intellectual concepts of their language were
abstracted from this very experience, they were sufficient and adequate to
describe the natural phenomena. However the atomic and subatomic world itself
lies beyond our sensory perception. The knowledge about matter at this level is
no longer derived from direct sensory experience, and therefore our ordinary
language, which its images from the world of the senses, is no longer adequate
to describe the observed phenomena. As we penetrate deeper and deeper into
nature, we have to abandon more and more of the images and concepts of ordinary
language. Probing inside the atom and investigating its structure, science
transcended the limits of our sensory imagination. From this point on, it could
no longer rely with absolute certainty on logic and common sense. Quantum
physics provided the scientists with the first glimpses of the essential nature
of things. Like the Sufis, physicists were now dealing with a nonsensory
experience of reality and, like the Sufis, they had to face the paradoxical
aspects of this experience. From then on therefore, the models, and images of
modern physics become akin to those of Tasawwuf of the Sufis.
COMMUNICATION PROBLEM
Scientists realized
that our common language is not only inaccurate, but totally inadequate to
describe the atomic and subatomic reality. With the advent of Relativity and
Quantum mechanics in modern physics it was very clear that this new knowledge
transcends classical logic and that it cannot be described in ordinary language.
Similarly in Tasawwuf it has always been realized that reality transcends
ordinary language and the Sufis were not afraid to go beyond logic and common
concepts. The problem of language faced by the Sufi is exactly the same as the
problem the modern physicist faces. Both the physicist and the Sufi want to
communicate their knowledge, and when they do so with words their statements are
paradoxical and full of logical contradictions. These paradoxes are
characteristic of all who practice Tasawwuf and since the beginning of the 20th
century they are also characteristic of modern physics.
DUALITY OF LIGHT
In Quantum Physics,
many of the paradoxical situations are connected with the dual nature of light
or – more generally – of electromagnetic radiation. Light produces interference
phenomena, which is associated with the waves of light. This is observed when
two sources of light are used resulting in bright and dim patterns of light. On
the other hand, electromagnetic radiation also produces the “photoelectric”
effect: when short wave length light such as ultraviolet light or x-rays or
gamma rays strike the surface of some metals, they can “knock off” electrons
from the surface of the metal, and therefore it must consist of moving
particles. The question which puzzled physicists so much in the early stages of
quantum theory was how electromagnetic radiation could simultaneously consist of
particles (that is of entities confined to a very small volume) and of waves,
which are spread out over a large area in space. Neither language nor
imagination could deal with this kind of reality very well. Sufism has developed
several different ways of dealing with the paradoxical aspects of reality. Works
of Attar, Hafiz, Ibn Arabi, Rumi, Bastami, etc show they are full of intriguing
contradictions and their compact, powerful, and extremely poetic language is
meant to arrest the reader’s mind and throw it off its familiar tracks of
logical reasoning. Heisenberg asked Bohr: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it
seemed to us in these atomic experiments?
Whenever the essential
nature of things is analyzed by the intellect, it must seem absurd or
paradoxical. This has always been recognized by the Sufis, but has become a
problem in science in the 20 the century. The macroscopic world is in the realm
of our sensory experience. Through this sensory experience one can draw images,
intellectual concepts and express them in a language. This language was
sufficient and adequate to describe the natural phenomena. The Newtonian
mechanistic model of the universe described macroscopic world. In the 20th
century the existence of atoms and subatomic particles or the ultimate “building
blocks” of nature was experimentally verified. The atomic and subatomic world
itself lies beyond our sensory perception. The knowledge about matter at this
level is no longer derived from direct sensory experience, and therefore our
ordinary language, which takes its images from the world of the senses, is no
longer adequate to describe the observed phenomena. As we penetrate deeper and
deeper into nature, we have to abandon more and more of the images and concepts
of ordinary language. From this point on, it could no longer rely with absolute
certainty on logic and common sense. Quantum physics provided the scientists
with the first glimpse of the essential nature of things. Like the Sufis the
physicists were now dealing with a nonsensory experience of reality and, like
the Sufis, they had to face the paradoxical aspects of this experience.
MODERN PHYSICS
According to the Sufis,
the direct mystical experience of reality is a momentous event, which shakes the
very foundations of one’s worldview, that is the most startling event that could
ever happen in the realm of human consciousness (as-Shuhud). Upsetting every
form of standardized experience. Some Sufis describe it as “the bottom of a pail
breaking through.”
Physicists in the early
part of the 20th century felt much the same way when the foundations
of their world-view were shaken by the new experience of the atomic reality, and
they described the experience in terms which were often very similar to those
used by the Sufis. Thus Heisenberg wrote: “…recent developments in modern
physics can only be understood when one realizes that here the foundations of
physics have started moving; and that this motion has caused the feeling that
the ground would be cut from science.” The discoveries of modern physics
necessitated profound changes of concepts like space, time, matter, object,
cause and effect, etc., and these concepts are so basic to our way of
experiencing the world, that the physicists who were forced to change them felt
something of a shock. Out of these changes a new and radically different
world-view is born which is still in the process of formation. Quantum theory
implies an essential interconnectedness of nature. Quantum theory forces us to
see the universe not as a collection of physical objects, but rather as a
complicated web of relations between the various parts of a unified whole. This
is the way the Sufis have experienced the world.
SPACE-TIME
The Sufis seem to be able to attain
nonordinary states of consciousness (Shuhud) in which they transcend the
three-dimensional world of everyday life to experience a higher,
multidimensional reality. In relativistic physics if one can visualize the
four-dimensional space-time reality, there would be nothing paradoxical at all.
The Sufis have notions of space and time, which are very similar to those
implied by relativity theory. In Tasawwuf, there seems to be a strong intuition
for the “space-time” character of reality. The Sufis have experienced a state of
complete dissolution (Fana) where there is no more distinction between mind and
body, subject and object. In a state of pure experience, there is no space
without time, no time without space, they are interpenetrating. For the
physicist the notion of space-time is based on scientific experiments whereas
for the Sufi it is based on Tasawwuf. The relativistic models and theories of
modern physics are illustrations of the two basic elements of Tasawwuf
world-view-the Tahwid of the universe and its intrinsically dynamic character.
Space is curved to different degrees, and time flows at different rates in
different parts of the universe. Our notions of a three-dimensional Euclidean
space and of linear flow of time are limited to our ordinary experience of the
physical world and have to be completely abandoned when we extend this
experience. The Sufis talk about an extension of their experience of the world
in higher states of consciousness, and they affirm that these states involve a
radically different experience of space and time. They emphasize not only that
they go beyond ordinary three-dimensional space in meditation, but also - and
even more forcefully-that ordinary awareness of time is transcended. Instead of
a linear succession of instants, they experience an infinite, timeless, and yet
dynamic present. In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the
past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single
moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense.
MASS-ENERGY EQUIVALENCE
Einstein showed the
mass-energy equivalence, through a simple mathematical equation, E=mc*2.
Physicists measure the masses of particles in the corresponding energy units.
Mass is nothing but a form of energy. This discovery has forced us to modify our
concept of a particle in an essential way. Hence particles are seen as "Qunata"
or bundles of energy. Thus particles are not seen as consisting of any basic
"stuff." But energy is associated with activity, with processes, which means
that the nature of subatomic particles is intrinsically dynamic and they are
forms in four-dimensional entities in space-time. Therefore subatomic particles
have a space aspect and a time aspect. Their space aspect makes them appear as
objects with a certain mass, their time aspect as processes involving the
equivalent energy. When subatomic particles are observed, we never see them as
any substance; but what we observe is continuously changing patterns of one to
the other or a continuos dance of energy. The particles of the subatomic world
are not only active in the sense of moving around very fast; they themselves are
processes. The existence of matter and its activity cannot be separated. They
are but different aspects of the same space-time reality.
The Sufis, in their
nonordinary states of consciousness, seem to be aware of the interpenetration of
space and time at a macroscopic level. Thus they see the macroscopic world in a
way which is very similar to the physicists' idea of subatomic particles. For
the Sufis "all compounded things are impermanent" - fanah. The reality
underlying all phenomena is beyond all forms and defies all description and
specification, hence to be formless, empty or void. To the Sufis all phenomena
in the world are nothing but the illusory manifestation of the mind and have no
reality on their own.
CONCLUSION
The principal theories
and models of modern physics lead to a view of the world, which is internally
consistent, and in perfect harmony with the views of Tasawwuf. The significance
of the parallels between the world-views of physicists and Sufis is beyond any
doubt. Both emerge when man inquires into the essential nature of things-into
the deeper realms of matter in physics; into the deeper realms of consciousness
in Tasawwuf-when he discovers a different reality behind the superficial mundane
appearance of everyday life. Physicists derive their knowledge from experiments
whereas Sufis from meditative insights. The Sufi looks within and explores his
or her consciousness at its various levels. The experience of one's body is, in
fact, often seen as the key to the Tasawwuf experience of the world.
Another similarity
between the physicist and the Sufi is the fact that their observations take
place in realms, which are inaccessible to the ordinary senses. To the physicist
the realms of the atomic and subatomic world; in Tasawwuf they are nonordinary
states of consciousness in which the sense world is transcended. Both for the
physicists and the Sufis, the multidimensional experiences transcend the sensory
world and are therefore almost impossible to express in ordinary language.
Quantum Physics and
Tasawwuf are two complementary manifestations of the human mind; of its rational
and intuitive faculties. The modern physicist experiences the world through an
extreme specialization of the rational mind; the Sufi through an extreme
specialization of the intuitive mind. Both of them are necessary for a fuller
understanding of the world. Tasawwuf experience is necessary to understand the
deepest nature of things and science is essential for modern life. Therefore we
need a dynamic interplay between Tasawwuf intuition and scientific analysis.
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