Energy Matters

The essence of existence is a spiritual reality because invisible forces of the spirit are the origin of matter and the foundation thereof.

(Shoghi Effendi, quoted in Keven Brown “A Baha’i Perspective on the Origins of Matter.”: Journal of Baha’i Studies 2.3 (1990) 15-44.

Let me start this next series of posts by reviewing the three levels of the divine creation, as I see them.  First and lowest (i.e. most manifest) level is the universe around us, the infinite physical world, with all its galaxies, numberless stars and planets, cosmic dust and layers upon layers of subatomic energies.

Next and higher is the Cosmos, composed of the archetypal thought forms and intellectual structures of reality that science infers or discovers and whose foundation is the on-going Revelations of God that configure the universe.  It is also the human understanding of this level of creation, (i.e. what is called cosmology) written in the various poetic, philosophical and scientific languages of their times and across time.

Finally, at the highest level is the divine Creation, the foundational, spiritual powers (attributes of God,) each a universal, that are revealed and configured by the knowledge of God—i.e. the knowledge that God has of the creation which manifests His Will: a knowledge that is infused into every atom of creation.  From this level or plane of Reality cosmos and universe unfold.  It is what Shoghi Effendi meant, I believe, by "the essence of existence", in the opening quote above.

For me, The Word is the primary creation. The secondary creation is the physical universe, the crafts of God. Yet it is all three levels taken together--in descending order from the foundation: powers, structures, things--along with their inter-relations, that are the whole creation, and which, within the knowledge of God, are as the signs and symbols written in the Book of Creation, or book of existence.  This post will examine the universe.  Discussions of the cosmos and creation will follow.

Material science, which has been the dominant paradigm of the past few hundred years, recognizes only the sensible, physical universe as real, with human knowledge being the results of rigorous and systematic investigation into the laws and principles governing that universe, though that perspective has been changing and enlarging since the turn of the twentieth-century.

Physics now recognizes different levels of matter and energy just in the physical universe.  There is visible matter, dark matter, energy, and dark energy, which seems to power the expansion of the universe, the latter three composing about 96% of the universe. All these it seems arise out from the zero-point field, or quantum vacuum, which is the ground state of energy of the universe.  Visible matter, what we see with our eyes and telescopes is about 4%. 

The concept or notion of ether has been round a very long while, but fell into disfavor in the nineteenth century when, at the height of the materialist era when all things had not only to have physical being but physical, measureable causes, some sensible substance called ether could not be detected.  However it is making a comeback as science again begins to open the door to the possibility of the existence of non-material phenomena.

Still, mainstream science does not as yet recognize non measureable phenomena as real.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha disputes that claim and provides reasoning to infer the existence of realities that are not sensible.  “If we wish to deny everything that is not sensible, then we must deny the realities which unquestionably exist. For example, ethereal matter is not sensible, though it has an undoubted existence. The power of attraction is not sensible, though it certainly exists. From what do we affirm these existences? From their signs. Thus this light is the vibration of that ethereal matter, and from this vibration we infer the existence of ether.”  (Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 190)

To me, this is also a logical proof of the mental foundation (i.e. cosmos) to physical existence.  Apropos this point, He also stated: “In the same way, nature, also, in its essence is an intellectual reality and is not sensible; the human spirit is an intellectual, not sensible reality.” (Some Answered Questions: 83)  Trying to prove the existence of the ether or any purely intellectual reality through the measurement of a physical apparatus will prove fruitless.  Yet such failure should not lead to the fallacy of believing that absence of proof is proof of absence.  It is like trying to prove the existence of a thought by measuring it with some sort of Geiger counter-like apparatus.  At best one does not capture the thought, which is a purely intellectual reality, but the effects or vibrations of that thought on the world.  Effects are signs of existence, as the painting is of the painter, not that existence in itself. Hence anything which creates effects must exist.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha explains: “For instance, the nature of ether is unknown, but that it existeth is certain by the effects it produceth, heat, light and electricity being the waves thereof. By these waves the existence of ether is thus proven.” (Baha'i World Faith: 341)

But all these levels of matter, this infinite depth of the universe, rests on one thing which never changes in nature.  The Master states: “The existence of living things signifies composition, and their death, decomposition. But universal matter and the elements do not become absolutely annihilated and destroyed.  No, their nonexistence is simply transformation.” (Some Answered Questions: 203-204)  We can ask: Is what the Master calls “ethereal matter,” “universal matter,” “the nature of ether”, the same thing as what physicists call zero-point energy?  I don’t know.  That will be a question which, I presume, spiritual science will answer.

’Abdu’l-Baha goes to present the idea that this one, universal matter specialized in its different aspects into the basic elements, and the infinite unities of form and substance, the B and the E joining and knitting together, gradually produced innumerable created things.  “It is necessary, therefore, that we should know what each of the important existences was in the beginning—for there is no doubt that in the beginning the origin was one: the origin of all numbers is one and not two. Then it is evident that in the beginning matter was one, and that one matter appeared in different aspects in each element. Thus various forms were produced, and these various aspects as they were produced became permanent, and each element was specialized. But this permanence was not definite, and did not attain realization and perfect existence until after a very long time. Then these elements became composed, and organized and combined in infinite forms; or rather from the composition and combination of these elements innumerable beings appeared.”

“This composition and arrangement, through the wisdom of God and His preexistent might, were produced from one natural organization, which was composed and combined with the greatest strength, conformable to wisdom, and according to a universal law.”  (Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions: 181)

Let’s return to the idea of an ether.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha says that ether is not a physical reality, but an intellectual one, so it cannot be detected by physical instruments.  Ether, then, is not in or a part of or even the physical foundation of physical space.   Perhaps it is something like a mental medium through which pass waves of thought. It is a non-localized, conceptual or thought-medium, an abstract space characterized not by physical relations but logical, rational ones.  To physical reality it would appear or be conceived as a void, but that is a product of reasoning from certain assumptions and beliefs that make thought itself somewhat unreal, a result only of chemical and neurological interactions.

‘Abdu’l-Baha calls the world of thought a “boundless sea.”  He goes on to state the relation between this “sea” of thought and the world of existence, saying “the effects and varying conditions of existence are as the separate forms and individual limits of the waves; not until the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter their pearls of knowledge on the shore of life.” (The Secret of Divine Civilization: 109)

Ether, then, may, like concepts of space and time and other concepts of physics and science, indeed the whole domain of thought, be part not of the universe but of the cosmos.