Astro Sciences - Astrology by Vishnu Bhaskar

Executive Summary: We are passing through the Age of Spiritualism. This is reflected from the international best sellers and award winning publications. Most of these books have occult, spiritual message. The world wide spread of the massage of Yoga further strengthens the belief of the word in occult sciences. Modern science in their attempt to explain the origin of the universe has stumbled upon human consciousness as one of the important component of unified theory to explain cosmic to cosmos. The modern age of communication and mass media like TV have taken the isolated unexplainable events to the home of the masses. Many of these events appear miraculous and remains unexplained by conventional Newtonian science. There is convergence of views appearing in the horizon of frontiers of human knowledge. In this paper an attempt has been made to put together the convergence of miracles, Veda and modern science. It is hoped that readers see the reason behind miracles in a more scientific way.

I Background

1 Miracles are phenomena or events that cannot be explained by conventional science; because miracles cannot be explained in terms of science their existence is often challenged. Even when they are seen in reality explanations for their occurrence are subject to frequent debate and controversy. Since the rise of modern science anti-supernatural arguments have stressed the principle of uniformity. Scientists argue that:

2 Two things should be noted about this argument. First, this form of the argument does not deny that unusual events like miracles may occur. It simply says that scientific law is based on regularities. And until one can establish a constant conjunction between cause and effect there is no scientific basis for assuming a causal connection between them.

3 Second, neither does this argument deny that there is any scientific way to analyze singularities, such as the origin of the universe, or the origin of life, or receiving one message from outer space. It simply says that observed regularities must be the basis for analyzing singularities. For example, if we observe over and over again that a certain kind of effect regularly results from a certain kind of cause then when we discover even a singular case of this kind of effect (whether from the past or present), we have a scientific basis for assuming it had the same kind of cause too. This same assumption is behind the scientists' search for a chemical basis for the origins of life and an evolutionary basis for the origin of species. In both cases repeatable observations in the present are used as a basis for understanding the singularity of origin in the past. Without this principle of uniformity there would be no way of getting at singularities in either the past or the present.

4 In brief, the principle of repeatability that scientists use to attack miracles actually boomerangs to support the miracles. Scientist is defeated at its own game of science on its own principles.

1 If one already believes that there are facts, which are impossible for science to explain, then one would be already predisposed towards a belief in miracles. Such facts could be:

2 It is argued above that when people work as scientists, they necessarily have a scientific worldview. But do they, in addition, necessarily believe that such a worldview is complete and not contradicted by anything else in reality? There are indeed scientists who do not regard the scientific worldview to be complete in that way. In their scientific work, they are only methodological scientists and not also metaphysical scientists. That is, they assume laws of nature as an outlook presupposed by their scientific work, but they do not regard naturalism to be generally true of all reality. They might say, "I can make no reference to miracles here in science, but science is limited; there are aspects of reality that lie beyond it."

1 Traditional science excludes miracles altogether. But quantum mechanics and thermodynamics make miracles possible, the Multiverse makes them likely, and the Anthropic Principle makes it possible for us to actually observe them.

2 From Impossible to Improbable: Classically speaking Law of Conservation of Energy states impossibility of building a machine, which makes energy out of nothing. The definition of a miracle in terms of impossibility is useful, but times have changed. Ludwig Boltzmann discovered that the so-called Second "Law" of Thermodynamics is not a statement of prohibition – it is only a statement of improbability. The flow of heat from a cooler body to a hotter isn't impossible, it is just improbable. The probability of it happening to a measurable extent is extremely small, but nevertheless it is a positive number greater than zero (the exact size of which depends on what the temperatures of the "hotter" and "cooler" bodies are and how much heat we want to flow between them).

3 Quantum mechanics takes this a step further, because in the quantum world almost anything is possible with some non-zero probability. For example, quantum mechanics says that objects can penetrate (classically) impenetrable barriers. You probably won't get through a brick wall just by walking into it, but there is some extremely small but non-zero probability that you will.

4 Since, in practice, the notion of "impossibility" is a very useful one, we have had to redefine the meaning of "impossible". Where it used to mean a zero probability, now it means a very small probability.

1 The critical part of this Anthropic Principle is the statement that "regardless of how improbable" an event is, the improbability could be lower than any chosen bound for "impossibility", which means that the Anthropic Principle is telling us that, in certain circumstances, an "impossible" event must have happened. Thus the Anthropic Principle gives us a scientific theory of "miracles".

2 An Example: One of the biggest mysteries of biology is the origin of life. The combination of Darwin's theory of evolution, the fossil record and modern genetics can tell us a lot about the evolution of life from the earliest single-celled organisms up to the appearance of human beings and other modern life forms. But we remain profoundly ignorant about how the first life form arose from non-living predecessors. What the Anthropic Principle tells us is that if there is no way for life to form without some miraculous event E, then, by the principle of necessity, and the observation that we do exist, we can conclude that miracle E did occur.

1 There are really only two ways to get a large number of opportunities for unlikely events to happen within a universe like our own:

2 As for the multiverse, it is not even possible in principle to place an upper bound on the number of distinct "universes", once we admit the possibility of there existing some universe other than our own. If you prefer to actually know that there must exist multiple universes, before you are prepared to believe that there might exist multiple universes, then your best option is probably the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Many-Worlds interpretation asserts that the quantum wave-function doesn't "collapse", and this non-collapse forces a reinterpretation of classical approximations to quantum mechanics as ever-splitting classical "universes". The number of "splits" that you can get from the Many-Worlds interpretation is more than enough to create a bacterium-sized origin of life miracle.

1 One of the supposed "fallacies" of evolution is the idea that there is something special about the sequence of evolutionary steps leading to our own existence. Evolution is the result of the natural phenomena of mutation, recombination and natural selection acting on our ancestors in the same way as on the ancestors of all other living creatures. To think otherwise is to give ourselves an unjustified special place in the scheme of things, as if we were the very things for which the Universe had been constructed (for example, by God).

2 It's all very humbling to accept that we are not special; except that the Anthropic Principle suggests that maybe we are still special. If there are any miracles in the path of evolutionary development, those miracles will only be observed on that part of the evolutionary pathway, which leads directly to us. As the reconstructions of genetic evolution become more detailed, it may turn out to be possible to spot these miracles, or, at least, to spot characteristics of evolution on the "main line" (i.e. the line leading to us).

1 Until we find hard evidence that some miracle has occurred in the origin and evolution of life, it might seem that the Anthropic Principle is a theory looking for something to explain. But there is one mystery that it can help clear up, which is the mystery of the missing aliens. We would expect that if an alien civilisation developed to the stage of current human civilisation, then soon afterwards it would expand into space and have a visible effect on its surroundings, and one way or another we would be able to observe this effect ourselves. But there is no visible sign of any life in the universe other than our own, leading to speculation about what "happened" to the aliens.

2 If the development of intelligent life requires one or more miracles, then we will never see the development of any intelligent life independent of our own origins. Of course if there's a multiverse of universes, then there will be aliens living in other universes, but almost every intelligent species will be utterly alone in the universe that it inhabits (and we must presume that there is no way to travel between universes, otherwise we would be back to having to explain why we can't see any aliens ourselves).

1 In the field of parapsychology we have a large number of classes of mental and physical phenomena which are considered miracles. These three classes are given below:

Ų Mental phenomena: often described as extrasensory perception – phenomena aquired by means other than five senses, this class includes unusual mental states or abilities, such as:

Ø Precognition – Information about future place or events before they happen

Ų Physical phenomena: this class includes unusual physical occurrences, such as:

Ø Stigmata – marks, sores or pains at locations of crucification wounds of Jesus

Ø Paranormal vanishing – disappearance of object or person before an audience

Ø Reality shifts – changes in physical (easy healing) or in spatial environment

Ų Survival phenomena: this class deals with the survival of consciousness after physical death and includes:

Ø Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) – sensation of floating outside one’s body and seeing oneself from outside

Ø Near-death experiences (NDEs) – experiencing clinical death and then revivied (more common in modern times specially with the development of cardiac resuscitation techniques)

Ø Alien abduction experiences - non-human creatures (usually aliens) kidnap individuals

Ø Cryptozoology – animals rumoured to exist but no proof eg. Yeti, Sea-serpent, mythological animals

Ø Folie a deux – madness (other psychoses) shared by two individuals by transmission from one to another

Ø Spontaneous human combustion – burning of a person’s body without external source of ignition

2 To be classified as a miracle, a phenomenon must lack a scientific explanation. When an any such miracle receives a valid scientific explanation, it becomes an accepted scientific truth. This has happened in the past in many cases. For example, while the idea of stones falling from the sky was once considered anomalous, meteorites are now acknowledged and well understood. Another examle is that of electromagnetic fields (EMF). At one time EMF was debatable from a scientific perspective but later was proven to be real and is currently accepted by scientific and medical communitities.

1 The Vedas describe an ultimate reality, which they call Brahman. The awareness of this reality is attained through the practice of yoga and meditation. “Aham Brahmasmi” (I am Brahman) is the statement of this realization and identification, which is synonymous with the concept of nirvana. Conceptions of Brahman and nirvana are integral to the different schools of Indian and Buddhist Philosophy. However until, recently, they had not been subject to scientific scrutiny. Physicists have discovered that the various quantum fields, which underline all physical reality, arise from one common source, namely the unified field. There is an over all connection between two primary realities-the unified field and consciousness.

2 John Wheeler and Roger Penrose, the foremost theorists about space and time believe that the mysteries of consciousness and quantum physics are linked. Penrose insists that a universe whose laws do not take consciousness into account is not much of a universe. The theory that consciousness emerged as a natural consequence of the unique features of our universe has become a topic of much scientific discussion. It is called the “Anthropic Cosmological Principle”.

3 In quantum physics consciousness could scarcely play a more pivotal role. No quantum phenomenon is a phenomenon until is observed in a communicable form by a conscious observer. For example, a photon exists both as a wave and as a particle, but the individual property of a wave or a particle becomes manifest only hen it is observed.

4 According to Vedic and Buddhist spiritual traditions, consciousness is not something that comes about merely though the functioning of neural connections in the brain but is a basic characteristics of all reality, a spirit pervading all manifestations. The role of the human nervous system is to provide an appropriate material structure to individualize consciousness. In other words, we are the tuners of the all-pervading field of cosmic awareness. The discoveries of modern quantum physics seem, therefore, to parallel Vedic and Buddhist conjectures about the nature of reality.

1 The current reality is something akin to what prevailed in the Age of Alchemy when the then so-called Alchemists were engrossed in their search for the ‘Philosopher's Stone’, the substance which was believed to transform lesser metals into gold. Though they never found the much sought after stone itself, their quest promoted science in general. Ultimately leading to the industrial revolution and modern science.

2 In our search for an explanation of consciousness we may or may not be able to solve the riddle of reality, but our attempts at solving this problem has lead, and will continue to lead, to amazing discoveries about consciousness and related matters. And with the passage of time many of the phenomena – mental or physical classified at present as miracles will find scientific explanations.