The Way of the East

Indra’s Net

Picking up on the history of synchronicity, I promised to add references to Eastern philosophy. I’ll work into it from the perspective of quantum physics.

Let’s start with the concept that the unity and interconnectedness of all things forms an underlying order that complements our everyday world of cause and effect. And synchronicity is our link to that hidden reality.

In quantum physics, this hidden reality, this universal consciousness, is known as the non-local mind. Quoting Deepak Chopra on the non-local mind from The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: “Operating outside the boundaries of normal space and time, it is the great organizingand unifying force in the universe, infinite in scope and duration. By its nature, nonlocal mind connects all things because it is all things. It requires no attention, no energy, no approval; it is whole unto itself, and therefore attracts love and acceptance.”

Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious, and the French philosopher, paleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called it the noosphere, an invisible web linking all existence. He proposed that as mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the noosphere expands in awareness.

These Western ideas are similar to concept of ancient Eastern traditions, dating back 5,000 years.

In the Indian sacred text, the Rig Veda, Indra–the king of gods and god of war–casts a ‘great spiritual net’ in which all members of the cosmos are interconnected.

The ancient Hindu mystics said everything in the universe was inextricably interconnected, and they used Indra’s net to illustrate the concept. “If the net is multi-dimensional, the points where the strings of the net connect would be like intersecting points from which one could access the whole net. One tug pulls the whole net, one tug connects you to the whole net. Basically, that is how synchronicity works,” writes Shawn Randall, Synchronicity in Your Life.

The Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu religious poem, recognizes the synchronous nature of creation and an underlying cosmic unity. The Hindu term, Brahman, refers to the fundamental connection of all things in the universe. The appearance of this universal oneness in the soul is called Atman.

Joseph Franks in Synchronicity and You wrote: “An indication of the deep antiquity of these seemingly advanced concepts is shown in Atmen, the word for ‘breath’ in German, whose Indo-European roots go back to ancestral beginnings on the Steppes of Central Russia, five thousand and more years ago.”

Zen Buddhism refers to satori, a sense of unity felt with the universe and an awareness of the compassionate intelligence that permeates the most minute details. Pratitya-samutpada, a doctrine of Buddhist philosophy, especially in China and Korea, translates as ‘dependent arising’ and refers to an interdependent web of cause and effect. the motivating principal of the universe.

One last reference: Chi in Chinese philosophy is the life force that permeates all things and empowers the universe. In yoga philosophy, Chi is comparable to pranayama, and is manifested in humans through the breath, as one means. Such breathing exercises date back to ancient times and the origins of yoga, and variations of those breathing exercises continue today in yoga classes around the world.

Breathe!

Rob