JAINA Convention 2005 07 JCNC

Author(s): Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA

Page 68

JA INA
2005
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Jain Education International 2010_03 20
ing from a kind of interaction from the latter" There is yet no "proof" for this principle but Einstein is said to have derived much inspiration from the Mach's principle for development of his Theory of Relativity.
The implication is that inertial mass cannot exist in isolation. Now we may ask if this principle can be extended to other physical entities or even spiritual entities? Is everything interactive? Are we living in a totally interactive world and everything here is interactive. The same may be postulated for life or consciousness. Life certainly cannot exist in isolation. If all living species, except one, in the universe or even on Earth vanish, the last one also will not be able to survive. Therefore the life is a result of interdependence (or interaction) with other living species. The principle of non-violence immediately follows since the whole becomes a cause for the existence of a part of it and both are indistinguishable. In effect, when, one does any harm or kills some body, howsoever primitive, one is killing a part of one self, because his very existence is interactive in nature. It is like committing a small suicide, howsoever small the quantum may be. Thus the inertial mass, which is a physical entity and the consciousness, which is a spiritual attribute, are both interactive in nature and their origin is a consequence of interaction.
Many great minds who developed the basic concepts of modern physics have written about things beyond physics. To cite a few of them, we may mention the book on "Physics and Philosophy" and "Physics and beyond" by Werner Heisenberg who gave the concept of the Uncertainty principle. There are others like Feynman (The character of Physical Law), Einstein (Ideas and Opinions) and various essays and books that deal with science, philosophy, religion, society and reality.
The crowning glory of modern physics has been the Quantum mechanics. The laws of classical physics i.e. of macro world are not found to be valid in microworld. It took lot of debate to understand the quantum theory and Feynman, one of the greatest minds of the modern era said "nobody understands quantum mechanics..... I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that may be she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, enchanting thing. Do not keep saying to yourself.... 'how it can it be like that?' Because you will get into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. No body know how it behaves like that." Some Quantum phenomena cannot be described in a language, they are "crazy beyond words", and cannot be comprehended.
The quantum mechanics puts severe constraints on certainty of our knowledge. Two tenets of quantum mechanics that are relevant here can be crudely described as follows. One is that the universe does not exist if you don't observe it, equivalent to the paradox of the Schrodinger's cat. This implies that universe and the observer exist as pairs and neither can exist without the other. The other is that a particle knows how
Extending Jain Heritage in Western Environment