to read the mind of God, sensed it as a Unified Field but was unable to prove it mathematically.
Journalist Lynne McTaggart explains that this “Unified Field” concept as it exists today is “not simply based on beliefs but based on science, on thousands of published scientific studies.”105 Scientists interviewed for her book The Field said that they had “discovered . . . that . . . there was a giant matrix, a field of fields called the Zero Point Field,” a pulsating energy field “like an invisible web” connecting everything that exists.106
They also discovered that we were made of the same basic material. On our most fundamental level, living beings, including human beings, were packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with this inexhaustible energy sea.107
McTaggart’s research has shown that cultures as far-flung as “the aborigines, the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, Indians, the Eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism . . . all share a description of the rise of matter from a non-physical energy field.”108
The Bhagavad Gita (VII.7) describes this field as a great web of consciousness, a web of idea-beads, a consciousness that connects and embraces All That Is:
mayi sarvam ida
sūtre ma
On Me all this is strung,
Like rows of gems upon a string.
Commentator Swami Chidbhavananda explains that “Pure consciousness” itself is a thread, “the string-like supporter of the manifest worlds.”109 We are the beads upon it.
The pearls in the necklace are necessarily uniform and homogeneous, and its thread, which is generally unseen, passes through the central core of every pearl, and holds them all, the big and the small, into a harmonious ornament of beauty . . . the same conscious Principle works through all.110
The cutting edge of mid-1990s science described this concept as superstring theory:
In this picture, each subatomic particle corresponds to a distinct resonance that vibrates only at a distinct frequency . . . think of a violin string, which can vibrate at different frequencies, creating musical notes like A, B, and C . . . In principle, the string can vibrate at any of an infinite number of different frequencies . . . what is fundamental is the string itself . . . According to string theory, if we could somehow magnify a point particle, we would actually see a small vibrating string . . . The string can, in turn, break into smaller strings or collide with other strings to form longer strings.111
McTaggart describes this idea in everyday terms: “We’re a bit like an antenna, beaming and receiving information with our environment.”112
Another Eastern metaphor for this concept is Indra’s Net:
Far away in the heavenly abode of the Great God Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite.113
Michael Talbot remarks, “This is the key to creativity, that every thought is contained in every other thought like the pearls in Indra’s net.”114
P.M.H. Atwater stresses that this web is real: that survivors of near-death experiences have seen it:
microscopic “threads” of luminous, vibrating light they see connecting everything and everyone together in a giant “web.” . . . They also say that once light pulsates harmoniously through any section of the webbing, regardless of distance or time span, synchronicity naturally results, signaling that one portion of the network now resonates with others of equal light.115
McTaggart describes this network as “the plenum of all energy in the universe in a basic ground state . . . a vast information headquarters . . . a recording mechanism . . . a vast telephone network with everything the universe constantly on the phone.”116 Like McTaggart, Atwater says that stories about this field appear in traditions “across the globe, and each describes the same basic type of invisible, interconnecting threads or energy webbing created by life-forms interacting with each other,” an “entire fabric net existent throughout the universe since the beginnings of time and space.”117 In the Huna tradition of Hawaii, the vibrating strings are called Aka Threads.118 In the Hopi tradition they are the web woven by Spider Grandmother.119 Carlos Castaneda describes them as “an egglike cluster of luminous fibers” seen by sorcerers around the human body.120
David Bohm, discussing the microcosm in quantum physics, speaks in similar terms: “the interactions between different entities (i.e., electrons) constitute a single structure of indivisible links, so that the entire universe has to be thought of as an unbroken whole . . . Further, the non-local, non-causal nature of the relationships of elements distant from each other evidently violates the requirements of separateness and independence of fundamental constituents that is basic to any mechanistic approach.”121 Ervin Laszlo, who calls this network the “a-field,” writes of “a universe that is made up neither of just vibrating strings, nor of separate particles and atoms, but is instead constituted in the embrace of continuous fields and forces that carry information as well as energy.”122
In biological terms this “a-field,” as described by Rupert Sheldrake, is a “morphic field” of “information”123 that shapes the embryo in the womb and the plant in the garden. It is the reason that the apple tree knows not to grow peaches and the chameleon knows how to grow a new tail. This field of information is so creative and ever-evolving that once any member of a species has accomplished a task, it becomes easier for the others.
For instance, rats have been getting smarter at running laboratory mazes. In one experiment at Harvard the first generation of rats “made on average over 165 errors” before locating a “safe” exit from a tank of water. The thirtieth generation “made an average of only twenty errors.” This continued learning is evident even in rats from differing genetic pools and in different locations. A replication of the experiment in Melbourne showed “the first generation tested far quicker” than those at Harvard. There was also “a progressive increase in the rate of learning” in fifty generations over twenty years, even “amongst rats not descended from trained parents.”124
Plato spoke of the Forms, the Divine Ideas that structure physical reality. Roger Penrose (Oxford University) says that in mathematics, such an ideational realm “provides a blueprint” for scientific investigation. He explains, “Platonic existence, as I see it, refers to the existence of an objective external standard . . . Such ‘existence’ could also refer to things other than mathematics, such as to morality or aesthetics.”125 In fact, he posits the existence of three worlds: the Platonic realm of Truth-Morality-Beauty and the other worlds
