I vividly remember the day when Dr. Sumukh Nandan, an assistant professor at the Department of Physics at Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning said during one of the lectures on Modern Physics,
”Scientists, as of now, have discovered that Photons are the fastest moving particle; they travel at the ‘cosmic speed limit’. But we all know the famous philosophy that thoughts travel faster than light. Why not hypothesis a particle called the thoughton? To take it a step further, we all know that in our Indian culture (Sanatana Dharma) and spirituality in general, we give the concept of Atma the highest priority. Why not try to discover an Atmon?”
(Clearly I have paraphrased what he said that day :p)
I don’t know about others but I, that day, thought for a second that he really must be out of his mind!
How do you decipher Atma or the soul? You cannot really define it in scientific terms!
Or can you?
Can’t we just define Atma as one level of energy, that is unattainable/undetectable until a few specific criteria are met? No one can stop me from doing that :p In fact, light, as we know now, has dual nature; particle and wave aspects. That means that it can be detected as both matter and energy. But was our understanding always like that? NO!
Einstein’s famous equation says that matter and energy are interchangeable! So, if Atma is energy, I can definitely find its matter equivalent; an Atmon!
Awesome! But,
HOW?
Well, let us see if my MSc in Particles, Strings and Cosmology can help me get a step closer. I’m 99.9999% sure it will get me nowhere but there is that 0.0001% of hope and that percentage is large enough!