Truth, Love and Uncertainty: A Physics Student's Inquiry

Questioner: Good evening, Acharya Ji. I am Anshuman Misra. I'm doing M.Tech. in Quantum and Solid State Devices in the Department of Physics. So my question would be regarding physics only.

So, when we talk about physics, the modern physics where we talk about quantum mechanics or we talk about the cosmos and everything, there are many things which are taken as postulates. There are many things which are probabilistic. We talk about uncertainty. We talk about the probabilistic model. So, is this ignorance itself fundamental, or would there be some time when we will get out of this ignorance and we will be knowing the complete Truth of the universe? And what is the philosophical way of seeing this, as physics itself was developed from philosophy only, where the Greek philosophers were trying to understand how to read nature, which was physics?

So, is there anything philosophy tells about it, whether the ignorance itself is fundamental or there is a certain answer?

Acharya Prashant: This is not ignorance. If, for example, there is a law of physics in quantum mechanics, that says that something can be determined only probabilistically, that is not ignorance. But that reveals something about the nature of the observer of that phenomenon. I'll explain.

We are insecure people, so we want things to be certain. We want things to be certain, right? You want to know exactly when your flight would depart.

Questioner: Yes. Damn true.

Acharya Prashant: You want to know exactly what your pay package or CGPA are like, and you want to know exactly how your partner looks.

Questioner: Yeah.

Acharya Prashant: Now, in this context, when somebody like Pauli or Schrödinger comes and says, "You cannot determine these two variables simultaneously and precisely." Then the ego feels restless.

Questioner: It's against your instinct.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. "I want to know both the position and the momentum."

Questioner: That's how we evolved as humans.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. Because we feel insecure with uncertainty. Why? Because the one who wants to be certain is founded on insecurity.

Who are we? We are the subjective ego, that does not know itself. Not knowing itself, it is always fearful, and therefore it is always looking for something to hold on to, to lean against. Therefore, we all want security in life, and that's where this question is coming from.

So, when something cannot be known with precision to the nth place of decimal, we label that as ignorance. There is nothing ignorant about it. Just accept that certain things are unpredictable, or not completely unpredictable, but knowable only within a range. There is no problem with that. There is no ignorance in that. But there is one deep ignorance that does show up in this, which is ignorance of the self, not ignorance of the phenomena, the external phenomena, but ignorance of the self.

Since we do not know the nature of the ego, therefore we think that if we cannot determine the external phenomena with absolute certainty, then that belies ignorance of the phenomenal world. No. That, in fact, betrays, displays an ignorance of the inner world, the self.

We want certainty there (outside) because we are uncertain here (inside). Could you be certain here? This craving to have everything secured and predictable and ready-made here, not only just here right now, but also in the future. Don't we want things assured for us in the future?

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. Where is that coming from? Because we are somebody who is very, very insecure here. So we utilize even science to help us feel deterministic, as if the universe is something that you can determine sitting here right now.

And somebody said, I don't remember who it was, "If I know all the variables of the universe at this moment, then I can tell you the position of the universe at any point in the future." Though that was an unfounded claim. You cannot do that, as we now know better, right? The speaker of those words thought of the universe as Newtonian. So he said, "If you know something today, and you know how everything else is and the variables, then obviously you can even predict infinity."

Questioner: A three-body diagram breaks that.

Acharya Prashant: So, why do you want so much certainty? Why?

Questioner: So, not knowing itself is fundamental. Can we say that? Not knowing completely or deterministically, as you say.

Acharya Prashant: No. Please understand.

Looking for certainty where it cannot exist is ignorance.

In a stochastic world, if you are looking for deterministic behavior, that is ignorance.

Questioner: That's the way human beings evolved.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, because we are inwardly very insecure.

Questioner: But what we call science is something which can be reproducible and which is deterministic, isn't it?

Acharya Prashant: By that you mean it is free of the subject, the observer. By that you mean that it remains 2π√(L/g),​ irrespective of whether you measure it or I measure it.

Questioner: But here the measurement paradox comes. If we measure something, it ceases to exist. It changes its state.

Acharya Prashant: That's only at either very, very small levels of minuscularity or at cosmic levels.

Questioner: Because we rely on visually observing something. We rely on photons. Photons interact.

Acharya Prashant: What you're talking of is something not applicable to the pendulum but to the photon, that the observed phenomenon changes with the observer and the observation. That doesn't happen with the pendulum, really.

Questioner: But if we go deep into the pendulum, it itself is composed of matter.

Acharya Prashant: That's right. But the whole thing will be so, so, so infinitely small that you can ignore it.

Listener: I have a microscope. Every day I see it use an electron beam to see the atoms, and the electron beam disturbs the atom. What I’m seeing is, what has happened after it got disturbed, not before what it was. So what is Truth? I’m not seeing, what I'm seeing is something which has got disturbed by what I'm using to observe it. To see you, for example, if this room is completely dark, I can't see you.

Acharya Prashant: Right.

Listener: I'm using light which is getting reflected. Luckily, this light is not disturbing you. Okay? Maybe the wavelength of the light is such that it does not have enough energy to disturb you. So I'm able to see, possibly, things.

Acharya Prashant: So, please see, what does that tell about human nature? In spite of knowing fully well that what you call as certain or available to determination is not certain at all, still all the courses of the institution deal with certainty, don't they?

Questioner: Yeah.

Acharya Prashant: So what does that tell you about human nature? That we have a deep craving for certainty. And we have that craving because there is something within that will never, never feel secure, irrespective of how much certainty you can provide on the outside.

Questioner: That's how humans survive till now.

Acharya Prashant: Yes. And therefore, even at the highest level you know that 2π√(L/g) is only an approximation, yet you would continue to teach it. Have you changed it in the courses? No, you haven't. You know very well that all the Newtonian laws are invalid in the sense that they are only approximate. But have the textbooks been revised to accommodate that knowledge? No. Because that would, and that's not only for reasons of practicality or comprehension. That's for a deeply psychological reason.

If it is admitted by all of us, the entire world, that nothing is certain, nothing is really reproducible, then it would be an assault on the ego because the ego cannot breathe, cannot live in total uncertainty.

Have you seen how suffocated we feel without certainty? Have you seen that what you call as desires or targets or goals are all the ego's efforts towards ascertaining something that can fundamentally never be ascertained?

Life insurance, for example, what is it? Marriage vows, what is it? Business agreements, what else are they? You are trying to somehow make the future predictable. Are you seeing this? And when you see that, you don't want to condemn that. You just want to smile back at yourself, and you want to tell yourself, "Ah, how afraid am I? How deeply fearful am I? Do I need to be so fearful? Do I need to be so fearful?"

I mean, yes, at the macro level there are laws. They exist. But when it comes to the individual, it is extremely difficult to predict what is going on. Think of Brownian motion, for example, right? Or think of what we call the RMS speed of the particles moving during the Brownian motion phenomenon.

So, at an aggregate level, you can say this is Vᵣₘₛ, and based on that you can determine the temperature and everything. But mind you, that's a normal distribution. You can never predict the motion, the behavior, or the temperature of the individual particle.

When it comes to the aggregate here, this one (pointing towards the water bottle), right? We know this has 10^23 of those particles. We are fine with that, and we can determine, we know one variable, and we can come to several other variables, right? But within this (pointing towards the water bottle) here is an entire spectrum from minus infinity to plus infinity, right? And there would be particles with zero speed at a given point, at a given moment. So the individual particle you cannot determine.

Similarly, the universe may have laws, but how those laws would play out with respect to this individual particle or this individual particle, we can never know. Which means life is unpredictable for the human being, less predictable for the species, and more predictable for all the species taken together.

Just as, let's say, you have this dice. One dice. You roll it, you roll it, and you cannot say what kind of number you will get, right? But if you have a thousand dice and you roll them, then with some certainty you can say that 167 of them would be displaying some particular number, 167 ± 5, within the confidence range.

Are you getting this?

So there is some certainty at the aggregate level, but zero certainty at the individual level. But the ego does not want to accept that uncertainty. We want a predictable life, and that's where all the suffering comes from. You want something predictable for yourself. You want something determined for yourself. Whereas, even if it is slightly deterministic, it is for the aggregation, not for the individual. The individual really does not matter.

In this (pointing towards the water bottle) how much does the individual particle matter? Please tell me.

Questioner: Nothing.

Acharya Prashant: It is being kicked around all the time. And that's what Brownian motion is, right? Nobody cares for it. You could even say it's “Bhagya Bharose.” Anybody can come and kick it in any angle, any direction, and the velocity changes, and the temperature, all the things are continuously changing, continuously. That's the state of the individual. That's the human condition.

But we don't want to accept it. We don't want to accept it. We want certainty where it cannot exist. Certainty can exist only at one place, not outside, but inside. And inside you can be certain of only one thing: I am.

Questioner: Yeah, what is this inside then? Again, this following question would be key. Is the consciousness which you are, which we talk about, something fundamental, or is it something just created by our brain?

Acharya Prashant: Based on our discussion, please tell me: if I'm saying there is certainty on the inside, am I talking of the material? Can anything be certainly said about the material?

Questioner: Of some scale, yes.

Acharya Prashant: Certainly, we said certainly?

Questioner: Certainly.

Acharya Prashant: Can anything be certainly? We don't even know whether the cat is actually alive or dead. We don't even know whether the twins born together have the same age or not. Right? The twins paradox.

When it comes to the material, we do not even know whether it really exists. Its existence, we said, is dependent on the observer, right? We cannot even say it really exists. It might be totally phenomenal, in the words of Kant, with something deeper beneath it or maybe nothing beneath it. Right?

Questioner: Yeah.

Acharya Prashant: Maybe it's just a dream, and we don't know who the dreamer is.

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: So, when it comes to the material, obviously there can be no certainty. And I'm saying there can be certainty within. So, obviously, within there has to be an absence of the material.

For certainty to be there, there has to be an absence of the material. And what do I mean by that? You shouldn't have a heart beating within? No. I mean there has to be an absence of dependence on the material. Only then can you be fully, fully certain, and therefore fully fearless.

The more you are dependent on material on the inside, the more fearful you would be. The more you say, "My worth is dependent on material grades, or a material house, or a material car, or a material boyfriend," the more anxious you would be.

Listener: So your definition is just one step away from deviating from a black swan event.

Questioner: So, the inside which you're talking about again, because everything we think is just a signal of neurons. Everything we think is just triggered by some hormonal activity. So what exactly is this inside which you are saying is not dependent on any material? So if it is not dependent on any material, how exactly can we define this inside?

Acharya Prashant: Please see, you cannot see that which is not material. You cannot see, right? But you can see the consequence of depending on that which is material. Therefore, we are talking of an absence, and an absence does not need a definition. An absence is nothing positive.

When you say something ‘is,’ then you define it, and by defining it you limit it. But an absence, how do you define it? Which basically means that as we perceive ourselves, consciousness, we are always dependent on something, always dependent. And that which you are dependent on is not reliable at all.

In your words, as you opened the discussion tonight, it's probabilistic. You are depending on something which is probabilistic in all ways possible. Is that wise? Is that wise?

You are betting your entire life on something which can never be certain. Is that wise, or would you always be anxious if you do this?

Questioner: We can keep that idea that it can be betrayed.

Acharya Prashant: But when you depend on something, you depend on something certain. You never leave the scope for variation. If it is variable, then you want something else that can be certain.

Questioner: But then we, as humans, need to rely on things to get things done.

Acharya Prashant: Don't rush into that. Maybe, maybe not. We don't know.

So, we know the consequences of this positive dependence on something. We are talking of an absence now. Can we examine this and say, "Do I really need to be so dependent? Do I? Do I?" That's the absence we are talking of. This absence is not something that I can talk of or define. This absence is just a rejection. Now, what is being rejected? That we fully well know of. We are rejecting something that's not worth depending on. Do you get this?

So, it's not that I'm talking of this that is not material, and this that is not material is something. No, no, it is nothing. It's nothing at all. This that is not material is nothing at all. It is not something that can be explained or described or defined or laid out in words. No.

Questioner: How can we depend on a void?

Acharya Prashant: That's what you don't need to depend on anything. This lack of dependence, this lack of dependence is what serves you best. You don't need to create or project the void as another something and start depending on it. And that's what man has done in the name of religion.

"No, I'll not depend on anything material, but I'm now depending on something of the skies."

So, you have given the void a name, a form, a figure, a story, and then you start depending on that.

"No, nothing in the world is going to save me, but my God is going to come and save me."

Don't do the same thing with science. The void is simply an absence. And you're not depending on it. You're just refusing to depend on that which is inherently…

Questioner: Uncertain.

Acharya Prashant: Uncertain. That's simple as that. The withdrawing dependence on this, this, or this does not mean attaching dependence to this. It's just a withdrawal, and that's all. Full stop.

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