Review of "Time and Now" by Steve Hagen

Recently I clicked on the article "Time and Now" in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. It caught my attention with the first couple of sentences

How could it be that the Buddha's enlightenment occurred simultaneously with all beings? Didn't this event happen a long time ago? And if it already happened, where is it now? Doesn't "all beings" include us?

In various Buddhist texts, seemingly counterfactual statements along these lines are made. One such saying is that when the Buddha was enlightened, so were all sentient beings. Actually, this sort of cryptic comment was one of the first hooks that got me interested in Buddhism. Although I didn't understand what this and other statements meant, they sounded deep and I wanted to learn more. On the other hand, since I've become a Buddhist, I actually haven't heard a teacher address the particular phenomenon mentioned in this quote, so it was with high expectation that I read the article.

Unfortunately, my expectations were foiled. In a nutshell, the author mentions several modern physical theories, described in everyday language ---which is fine---, but with no indication of how accepted they are by the modern physics community ---which is not fine. Further, there are no sources or clues for the interested reader to research more carefully the various claims and models that are casually bandied about. It treats physics like an oracle, which can be relied on for certain cryptic pronouncements. In a way, the article felt condescending.

Okay, so let's go through the article a bit more carefully. The first physical model that is introduced "has been around since the 1940s." I already have no idea what he is talking about historically, but the model is clear enough. For the purposes of illustration one imagines that the universe is only two dimensional, and then imagines stacking all of the different moments of time on top of one another to get a stack of snapshots of the universe. These fit together to make a three dimensional whole, and one can imagine the progression of time as  the rise of a cross-section like an elevator through the 3D block. Hagen goes on to point out that time need not be considered movement. The 3D block (or in our universe the 4D block exists) and the passage of time can be regarded as an illusion of consciousness. There are certain paths through the block which correspond to the lives of people, and if you read the path in one direction, memories accumulate and time seems to be passing for the observer. The idea of a uniform 4D universe which exists outside of time dates back to Einstein in 1916 at least, if not earlier.  I have no idea why Hagen refers to the 1940s. A reference would have been nice.
 
As far as how mainstream this theory is, you can't get more widely accepted than general relativity. So the idea that the whole 4D universe already exists, including both past and future, would seem to be an ineluctable consequence. To be fair, the philosophical interpretation of general relativity is far from clear. But anyway, we're resting on pretty solid ground here. (Although there is a disturbing lack of free will in this completely deterministic model!)

The next model that is discussed is the idea that positrons are electrons traveling backward in time. This is a charming theory, one that the famous physicist Richard Feynman apparently subscribed to, at least during part of his career. If a positron (the antimatter version of the electron) collides with an electron, they both disappear in a flash of photons. One way to conceptualize this is that the electron "bounces off" the photons and is sent careening backward in time as a positron. That appears to be a consistent view, and Feynman described feeling quite excited about this way of thinking. (I once even considered writing a short story based on the phenomenon myself.) However, despite the charm of this interpretation, it doesn't actually seem to solve any questions, and furthermore doesn't seem to give us any insight into the passage of time that wasn't already gained by thinking of the 4D model of the universe as existing all at once, as opposed to being continuously created. I would say that the interpretation of positrons as backward-traveling electrons is respectable in the physics community, though perhaps not widely shared. Feynman himself would later downplay the idea, feeling that it didn't lead anywhere, and I think a lot of modern physicists would take a similar view. (Please correct or corroborate!)

Now we get to the last example, which is the one I find the most bothersome.

To put it in highly simplified terms, physicists are beginning to hypothesize something like the following. When, say, an electron in your kitchen vibrates, it sends out a signal traveling at the speed of light through all of time and space. When another electron receives that signal, it vibrates sympathetically and sends a return signal back to the original electron in your kitchen. Each electron gets this information from other particles anywhere and everywhere—indeed, from literally everything that it reaches out to touch in all of time and space. As a result of this process, each electron "knows" its exact place and importance in the universe.

I think he may be referring to the theory of pilot waves, which is a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics that has its small number of adherents. It is certainly a respectable theory, but not widely shared in the modern physics community. I expected more of Steve Hagen, but what is "As a result of this process, each electron "knows" its exact place and importance in the universe." supposed to mean? That is a fine example of new age technobabble. The main point of the pilot wave example is to again give evidence that time is not what we commonly perceive it to be. He could easily have done this without invoking controversial physics. 

In the end, he gave no satisfying connection between the physics discussed and the enigmatic Buddhist quotes beyond the bare fact that physics supports the illusory nature of time. I had been hoping for an explanation of why it might be reasonable to describe the event of enlightenment as occurring at the same time for all sentient beings, but the discussion as presented could easily have been used to legitimate any weird quote where time doesn't make sense. I felt like there was a bait and switch. 

I once met a dharma student who had given up a career as theoretical physicist to pursue the dharma full time. I mentioned to him that having such detailed knowledge of reality must help his dharma practice, and he scoffed at the notion. He agreed that knowing that matter is made up of strangely behaving "particles" is helpful for breaking down our usual solid notions of reality, but the details of complicated physical theories don't really help. The current article has not refuted his view.