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THE ILLUSORY ATOM

(This is the second in a series of three articles being published in 2008


and may also be viewed or downloaded at www.joyousness.org. It may
be copied to others provided that it is copied in its entirety, without
alteration, and that no charge whatsoever is made for it.)

It is said by some that everything we see is real. That view is taken to


an extreme point by those who say that we only exist while we are
alive and that clinical death means an end to existence. This is the
hard view, the view that everything is solid and that the only reality is
that which can be seen or otherwise experienced through the senses.
It is an understandable view. Another point of view is that everything
we see is only an appearance, a view that is taken to its extreme by
saying that nothing really exists at all and that everything is an
illusion.

What we do know is that at the basic level of physical appearances or


phenomena is the atom. Nothing can appear in our physical universe
without atoms. For a long time, the understanding was that the atom
was the building block of everything, atoms forming themselves into
molecules to result in different qualities of matter. In exploring the
nature of the atom, though, physicists made some extraordinary
discoveries, the most extraordinary of which was, for the layman at
least, that the atom or even its nucleus is not the solid little particle it
was once thought to be. Deeper investigation found that the atom
itself is made up of particles and that the nature of those particles is
quite mysterious and elusive. From the layman’s point of view, there
is no solid building block of life. Matter, at its most fundamental
state, consists of rapidly moving sub-particles that are not solid at all
and are in a constant state of change. That which appears to be solid
is not. It consists of something that is indefinable, that cannot
actually be grasped and which relies on movement and space in which
movement can take place.

If matter cannot be pinned down long enough to ascertain its true


nature, what we can say is that matter is, or relies upon, energy.
Movement cannot arise without energy and energy can be said to be
movement or the potential for movement. But where does energy
come from? What is the initial source of movement or potential for
movement? It cannot actually be found. If it were said to be the sun,
for example, where or what is the source of the sun? If the sun were
said to be the result of some atomic reaction, we come back to the
question of the source of atoms and their energy. At some point in
our search we might be tempted to give up and rely on a creation
theory but, as we looked at in the previous article, Engineering in the
Cosmic Sense*, the idea of a Creator responsible for manufacturing
the universe is seriously flawed. That the source of energy and the

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source of atoms cannot be found is frustrating for the intellect but has
the potential to be extraordinarily liberating for the mind. It requires
us, if we want to understand our own nature, to look at things in an
entirely different way.

Something that we can say with confidence is that there is a world of


appearance. We see objects and experience them through the senses.
How they appear to us depends on the signals coming through the
sense organs and the interpretation the mind puts on those signals.
The determination of the quality of anything depends upon judgment,
an act of the mind. Together, we might call this perception.

This fact has led to some schools of thought asserting that nothing
exists except in the mind. To an extent that is true in that the
appearance of anything can only arise in the mind. But the “mind
only” view has one major limitation and that is that objects have
something about them that can be perceived by others having sensory
perception. In other words, any number of beings may detect the
presence of object A, even though the quality and interpretation – the
perception – may arise differently to them; and that detection relies on
the presence of atoms. So the appearance of objects arises in the
mind but the objects themselves are not in the mind.

Some phenomena cannot be seen but can still be experienced, like the
wind, for example. What do we mean by “the wind”? There is no such
entity as the wind when we look at things more deeply because the
wind is simply the movement of air – gas molecules moving in unison
through space. It is a phenomenon, not a thing, and can only be
experienced or described as a result of the moving air coming into
contact with other objects. We cannot actually see wind, only its
effects. The causes of wind arise from other phenomena: changes of
air pressure, temperature and so on (which also arise from other
causes in a beginningless chain of events). All phenomena depend on
movement and they also depend on the presence of atoms, which are
not self-existing permanent entities in their own right. So the original
source of atoms cannot be found and the causes of phenomena are
simply effects produced by other phenomena, so their origin cannot be
found either.

Do we come, then, to the conclusion that everything is an illusion? If


that were so, we could say when we stub our toe on a door frame,
“The door frame is an illusion, my toe is an illusion and so the
excruciating pain I now feel is also an illusion.” That would be
absolute nonsense, wouldn’t it? The pain is real enough. Yet our toe
consists of more space than atoms and so does the door frame. To the
extent that nothing is solid and everything that appears solid consists
mainly of space (and the same applies to liquids and gases) everything
does have an illusory nature. It appears to be something that it is
not, just as the weatherman can appear to be in our living room giving

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tomorrow’s forecast but isn’t actually there. In other words, the
appearance is there and to say that it isn’t is nonsensical but its
reality is something else – and that brings us back to the atom.

If the atom, and everything made from atoms, doesn’t have an


intrinsic, permanent nature that can be pinned down so that we can
say, “This is it!” it means that the real nature of everything is
something other than physical. To put it another way, there is no be-
all-and-end-all that we can call purely physical. There is no
permanent “stuff” of the universe. The ultimate nature of our physical
world is ungraspable.

So the man or woman who says that the end of life is the end of
existence is ignoring something quite profound. Their belief is based
on an idea of physical reality which depends on a permanent
foundation called the atom. But there is no permanent structure of
any sort anywhere in the universe and so the whole physical cosmos,
and every atom which comprises it, has to be the play or
manifestation of something deeper – a deeper reality that some call the
“unified field” and others from a more metaphysical standpoint call
the transcendent because it could be thought to be beyond the
physical. A better view might be that it is not a case of transcendent
one side and physical the other but that everything is all part of the
same, or rather an appearance of the same, whatever that same may
be.

Although the ultimate reality of everything is, so far at least,


ungraspable – and sages have always said that it is and will always be
so – intelligence is intrinsic in everything (see Engineering in the
Cosmic Sense*). From that intelligence, consciousness must also arise
or perhaps one is an aspect of the other. Either way, it must be that
the atom is an expression of innate intelligence; and it follows that
your consciousness and mine, experienced now by virtue of the atoms
of the physical brain, must also be an expression or aspect of innate
intelligence. So death can only be the end of the appearance of life,
the end of the appearance of an identity. To arrive at that conclusion,
we must thank the quantum physicists and others who, through their
consciousness and intelligence, discovered the illusory nature of the
atom. Gradually, science and the understanding of consciousness are
coming ever closer together and one day each will inevitably embrace
the other. That will truly be a remarkable and wonderful thing.

Andrew Marshall – July 2008

* Engineering in the Cosmic Sense was published in May 2008 and


may be viewed at www.joyousness.org/Articles.html

© Andrew Marshall 2008

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