The constitution of the Universe may be put in first place among all natural things that can be known

Galileo

That, of course, is the problem of the physicist, to see if he can figure out the constitution of the Universe. And with the help of the Vedantins, and their old

physics, I think we can. If we can throw in their old notion that the first cause of our physics, namely, seeing in time and space that which is not in time and

space, is apparitional, Vivarta, and that the subsequent causation of our physics is transformational, Parinama; and if we can throw in their old notion that there

must be an existence underlying what we see in time and space, which must be changeless, must be infinite, must be undivided, and must show through, we can

sum it up fairly briefly.

Hydrogen is made out of energy. The Universe is made out of hydrogen. And hydrogen is the changeless, the infinite, the undivided showing through in

time and space. The changeless shows through as inertia. The infinite and the undivided show through as the electrical and gravitational energies (energies of

position in space). The hydrogen is primordial. It arises by apparitional causation (Vivarta). Everything else arises from the hydrogen by transformational causation

(Parinama). And the details are in the paper on "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars" by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle.

But a problem still remains: Why does the apparition take the form of hydrogen and not something else?

Keeping in mind the position of those old Indian physicists, we may ask: If the undivided were to be seen as two, what would prevent the undividedness

from showing through and bringing the two together? And if the undivided were to be seen as many, what would prevent the undividedness from showing

through and bringing the many together? Those old physicists might then have replied that if the undivided were to be seen as a duality within a plurality (such

as we see in hydrogen), then the plurality could prevent the demise of the duality, and the duality could prevent the demise of the plurality. But isn't that exactly

what we do see in the hydrogen?

In hydrogen we see an electrical duality (the electron and the proton in the hydrogen atom) against a gravitational plurality (the hydrogen atoms dispersed in

space). And they keep each other from collapsing. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle does not prevent the demise of the electrical duality of the electron and

the positron because they are not gravitationally dissimilar. But it does prevent the demise of the electrical duality of the electron and the proton, in spite of the

enormous electrical attraction between them, because they are gravitationally dissimilar. The rest energy of the proton is related to its separation, in the

gravitational field, from all the rest of the matter in the observable Universe. And, through Pauli's exclusion principle, the spin-duality prevents the collapse of the

neutron stars. It prevents the collapse of the plurality.

John L. Dobson, February, 2002 4135 Judah St. San Francisco, CA, 94122

(415) 665-4054