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Vol. XIX, No. 1 of a quantum state because the very act of observation alters that quantum state. A particle, we have seen, has no independent existence without reference to the obser. ving mind.
This microcosmic phenomena can be related also to the macrocosmos. The Big Bang, for example, may be perceived as a Who? or as a What? depending upon the worldview one chooses for oneself. If one's view of the world is mechanistic, the Big Bang obviously becomes a What? But if he is a bit of a mystic after the new physics and is prepared to take an evolutionary look, the same phenomenon may then be seen as a Who Thus the Eastern mysticism always understood the cosmos as person, Purusha And for the scientific mind it always remained a what ?
Since the evolutionary view of the cosmos has been an irreversible trend of the iwentieth century, the Big Bang is likely to receive new interpretations.
For a primitive person or for a devotee a stone is not a stone, but God. The unfolding eco-mysticism is eleva. ting earth to the status of Gaia. The mystic view, now confirmed also by the new physics, may then elevate the cosmos to a person-the natural counterpart of the Gaia.
What emerges from the Big Bang then is not heat and gas, but Form, as Sheldrake argues--the Tao, or the creative potency of the Yin and Yang. This creative potency is Consciousness-the cosmic Purusha, emanating his Shakti. Shakti is energy. The mystic view of this Shakti is the quantum view. i.e. it is matter and movement same time, like a particle, which is mass and wave at the same time. But the mystic view of Shakti also goes beyond the quantum view. For Shakti is not a what ?--but a she, the feminine counterpart of the Who ? Shakti is Consciousness—which includes the Subconscious, Unconscious, Superconscious, and Cosmos itself. If the particle represents the dual mass-wave reality, Shakti (energy) represents the triune reality Energy--mass, wave, consciousness.
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