Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A New Information Theory Explains Śūnya in Samādhi

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Quantum Reality and Theory of Śūnya

  • 338 Accesses

Abstract

There is an obvious analogy between the concept of the vacuum state in quantum field theory and that of ‘emptiness’ or Śūnya. When the mind settles down in meditation to the state of pure consciousness, it has lost all content, all feelings and all emotions, and qualia or qualities also disappear. Some describe the state as fullness, a ‘field of all possibilities’, while others emphasize its lack of content. As the Bhagavad Gita, II.45, puts it, ‘nistraigunyo bhavārjuna’, ‘be without the three gunas’. Only from a state of purity of the heart and mind can a human fully realize his or her potential and act fully in accordance with all the laws of nature. Our approach shows that such a state is empty of wave functions or quantum fields and that the human mind achieves a state where all such excitations are annihilated.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Books LLC. Branches of Buddhism: Hinayana, Pragmatic Buddhism, Schools of Buddhism, Buddhist Modernism, Southern, Eastern and Northern Buddhism. Memphis: General Books LLC; 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Potter KH. Nāgārjuna and Mādhyamika Buddhism (from Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies). Westport: Greenwood Press; 1976. http://www.advayavada.com/nagarjuna-and-madhyamika-buddhism-potter/.

  3. Radhakrishnan S. Principal Upanishads. New Delhi: Harper Collins; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Pruthi RK. Prehistory and Harappan civilization. New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing; 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Danino M. The Lost River: on the Trail of the Saraswati. London: Penguin; 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Rajagopalachari C. Ramayana. Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Rajagopalachari C. Mahabharata. Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Subramanian K. Shrimad Bhagavatam. Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Muller M. The six systems of Indian philosophy, Collected works of Max Muller, vol. 16. Charleston: BiblioBazar; 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Subhash S. Creation from Śῡnya. Anand: Anand Press; 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Müller M. Sacred books of the East. Oxford: Oxford UP; 1880.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Chogyel T. The life of the Buddha. London: Penguin Books; 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Bodhi B. The noble eightfold path: the way to the end suffering. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Soc; 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  14. HH The Dalai Lama, (Trans Jinp G.T.) The four noble truths, Thorsons, London, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Radhakrishnan S. Svetasvetara Upanishad. In: Principal Upanishads. New Delhi: Harper Collins; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Chattopadhay R. Swami Vivekananda in India: a corrective life. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas; 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Suzuki DT. Manual of Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Press; 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hart W. The art of living: Vipassana meditation as taught be S.N. Goenka. Onahlaska: Pariyatti; 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Powers J. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca: Snow Lion; 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Six Yogas of Naropaand Niguma. Available at: www.maha-kala.com/archive/naropa/naropa101.htm.

  21. Hershock PR. Chan Buddhism. Honolulu: U Hawai’I Press; 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Radhakrishnan S. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. In: Principal Upanishads. New Delhi: Harper Collins; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Travis F, Shear J. Focused attention, open monitoring and automatic self-transcending: categories to organize meditations from Vedic, Buddhist and Chinese Traditions. Consc Cogn. 2010;19(4):1110–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.01.007.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Yogi MM. Science of being and art of living: transcendental meditation. New York: Plume; 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Tiwari R. The whole thing, the real thing: brief biography of Shri Gurudeva. New Delhi: Delhi Photo Company; 1977.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Sharma U. Teachings and philosophy of Buddha. New Delhi: Diamond Pocket Books; 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  27. See addresses by Chief Guest and Guest of Honour in these Proceedings.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Boothroyd J. Galileo Galilei: a life of curiosity. Minneapolis: Lerner Pubs; 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Aristotle. (Waterfield R. Trans) Aristotle physics. Oxford: Oxford’s World Classics; 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Chalmers D. In: Shear J, editor. Explaining consciousness: the hard problem. London: Academic Press; 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Hankey A. Complexity biology-based information structures can explain subjectivity, objective reduction of wave packets, and non-computability. Cosmos and History, J Nat Soc Philos. 2014;10(1):237–50.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Hankey A. A complexity basis for phenomenology: how information states at criticality offer a new approach to understanding experience of self, being and time. Progr Biophys Mol Biol. 2015;119(3):288–302.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Shetkar R, Hankey A. Nagendra H.R. First person accounts of Yoga meditation yield clues to the Nature of Information in Experience. IJOYPPP to be published.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Shetkar R, Hankey A, Nagendra HR. Biophysics of meditation. Submitted to the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Shetkar R. Hankey A. Nagendra H.R. Reason for health benefits of deep meditation: self-organized criticality restores regulation to optimal. Eur J Pharm Med Res, 2016,3(5), 435–441.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Hankey A, Shetkar R. Self-transcending meditation is good for mental health: why this should be the case. Int Rev Psychiat. 2016;28(3):236–40.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Von Neumann J. (Beyer R.T. Trans.) Mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. Princeton: Princeton U.P.; 1955.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Penrose R. The Emperor’s New Mind: concerning computers, minds and the laws of physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Penrose R. Shadows of the mind: a search for the missing science of consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Domash L. Lectures to Maharishi Internotional University, 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Shear J, editor. Explaining consciousness: the hard problem. London: Academic Press; 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Radhakrishnan S. Taittariya Upanishad. In: Principal Upanishads. New Delhi: Harper Collins; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Bjorken J. LSC relativistic quantum mechanics. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Wigner E. On the consequences of the symmetry of the nuclear hamiltonian on the spectroscopy of nuclei. Phys Rev. 1937;51(2):106.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Goswami A, Reed RE, Goswami M. The self-aware universe: how consciousness creates the material world. New York: Penguin-Putnam; 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Ellis J. The superstring-theory of everything, or of nothing? Nature. 1986;323:595–8.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Waldrop MM. Complexity – the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York: Simon and Schuster; 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Kipnis AA, Avelov BE, Rowlinson JS. Van Der Waals and molecular science. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Johnston DC. Advances in the thermodynamics of the van der Waals fluid. San Rafael: Morgan and Claypool; 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Descartes R. Meditations on first philosophy. Blackwell: Start Publishing LLC; 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Newton I. The mathematical principles of natural philosophy: principia mathematica philosophiae naturalis. Luxembourg: CreateSpace Publishing; 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Hankey A. Free will in a quantum universe. Tucson: Science of Consciousness; 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Kauffman S. At home in the universe. The search for the laws self organization and complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Bassingthwaighte JB, Liebovitch LS, West BJ. Fractal physiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Bak P, Tang C, Wiesenfeld K. Self-organized criticality: an explanotion of the 1/f noise. Phys Rev Lett. 1987;59:381.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Jensen HJ Self-organized criticality: emergent complex behavior in physical and biological systems. Cambridge Lecture Notes in Physics, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Shannon CE. A mathematical theory of communication. Bell Syst Techn J. 1948;27:379–423 & 623–56.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Deutsch D. Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer. Proc R Soc A. (1985)400 (1818):97–117. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1985.007.

  59. Lesieur M. Turbulence in fluids. 4th ed. Dordrecht: Springer; 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  60. Husserl E. The phenomenology of internal time consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; 1964.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Kant I. The critique of pure reason. Pluhar W.S. (trans), Hackett, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Heidegger M. 1927. Sein und Zeit (Tübingen): Niemeyer. 19. Aufl. (2006), ISBN-10: 3484701536; ISBN-13: 978–3484701533. Being and Time. Trans Macquarrie J. & Robinson E. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Harper Perennial Modern Thought edition (2008). ISBN-10: 0061575593; ISBN-13: 978–0061575594.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Adishankaracharya. (Chinmayananda S. trans) Atmabodha. Mumbai: Chinmaya Prakashan; 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  64. Thom R. Structural stability and morphogenesis. New York: Addison Wesley; 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Plato. (Cornford F.M. Trans) The Republic of Plato. Oxford, 1941. See also, Allen R.E. Trans, Yale U, New Haven Conn, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  66. Sinha KP, Sivaram C, Sudarshan EC. The superfluid vacuum state, time-varying cosmological constant, and nonsingular cosmological models. Found Phys. 1976;6(6):717–26.

    Google Scholar 

  67. Hankey A, Rao RN. A new kind of biologically active orientation-sensitive field coupling to complexity based biological regulatory systems? Forsch Komplementmed. 2013;20:314–5. https://doi.org/10.1159/000356797.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SVYASA, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

    Alex Hankey

Authors
  1. Alex Hankey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Siddheshwar Rameshwar Bhatt

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Hankey, A. (2019). A New Information Theory Explains Śūnya in Samādhi. In: Bhatt, S.R. (eds) Quantum Reality and Theory of Śūnya. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1957-0_26

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation