Curiously, the science of physics became almost a science of metaphysics in the twentieth century. Relativity theory, particle physics, hidden variables, the atomic age, quantum theory – all are terms that have by now entered the scientific canon, and even pervade everyday thinking and public discourse. If we wish to sum up what happened, we could perhaps say that the positive science of matter has reached its own borderland. If we go further and examine the scientific terms of the twenty-first century, taking other disciplines into account as well: flow theory, the genome map, the God particle, dark matter and dark energy – well, we see the same tendency, as though beyond the tangible the intangible, beyond the measurable the believable, were becoming the object of inquiry. The notions of the interconnectedness of the universe and of the implicate order were born, and more than one proponent of this new kind of scientific thinking exchanged ideas with spiritual teachers of the Far East. Both the orderliness hidden behind phenomena and the indeterminacy glimmering behind that orderliness characterise this thinking, and in its light it is worth reaching back to the secret teachings.
An episode of the ancient Indian Secret Teaching of the Great Forest, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, probes this very theme. Janaka, king of Videha – the present-day state of Bihar – holds a sacrifice, and on this occasion the sages gather at his court for an intellectual contest. Janaka, the very model of the enlightened and generous ruler of ancient times, sets a handsome reward for the wisest speaker: a thousand cows and a gift of gold. Yajnavalkya, arriving at the contest, tells his disciple without further ado to drive the cows away. The priests take a dim view of this and besiege the sage with searching questions, and one after another he gives all nine of his challengers a disarming answer. One of the questioners is a lady, the learned Gargi, who spoke as follows:
– Well, Yajnavalkya, that of which people say, on high is Heaven, below is the Earth, and that which lies between heaven and earth, and what people call past, present and future, well, on what is it woven, warp and weft?
He answered thus:
– On space it is woven, warp and weft.
– But on what, then, is space woven, warp and weft?
– That, Gargi, is what the brahmins call the Imperishable. … At the command of this Imperishable the Sun and the Moon stand apart, … the Earth and the Sky. Verily, Gargi, at the command of this Imperishable the moments, the hours, the days and nights, the months and the years stand apart. Truly, Gargi, at the command of this Imperishable some rivers roll eastward from the snowy mountains, others westward, each on its own course. … This Imperishable is unseen, yet it sees, unheard, yet it hears. Imperceptible, yet it perceives. Inconceivable, yet it thinks. There is no other seer than it, there is no other hearer than it, there is no other perceiver than it, there is no other thinker than it. Into this Imperishable, Gargi, is the ether woven, warp and weft. (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.8.6–11.)
Yajnavalkya teaches Gargi that the whole world – the present, the past and the future – is woven into the ether element, this subtle material element that fills and embraces all, and that the ether element is woven into the Imperishable (aksharam). This Imperishable is Consciousness, the higher intelligence. On it depend the spatial and temporal order of the universe and that hidden universal law which everything in the world obeys. Gargi declared Yajnavalkya the victor, and then fell silent. This gives us one possible answer as to the nature of the order behind things: transcendent Consciousness.