Ayurveda, Quantum Physics and Consciousness
By Andrea J. Seiffertt, D.O.
Health, of course, isn’t just the absence of disease. I could get into linguistics here, but I’d rather jump right across to chaos theory and modern physics. Language is important, and I’ll have to define things more clearly when I write my book but for now…
Modern medicine seems to be stuck in Newtonian physics. Which is fine, if someone needs surgery or resuscitation or antibiotics… but honestly at this point to create true health (and to stop spreading diseases created by our wasteful consumerist culture) we need to make the quantum leap physics made decades ago? A leap that takes ideas like the uncertainty principle and ‘strange’ nutrino behavior and dances with them, and harnesses the possibilities to create positive change for ourselves and our Earth.
There is this great (and proven) idea that observing an object changes it. Sit with that for a second if you haven’t heard it before. Now, this concept is more obvious with things like quantum particles, which are small enough that observing with our tiny individual minds can have a measurable (meaning we can measure it with tools we have now) effect. with bigger things, made up of more particles and space, that are more solid/slower, effects are tougher to see. This doesn’t mean we don’t affect them; it’s just more difficult to observe. Most importantly for this discussion, it implies that it is possible that we affect our own bodies simply by observing- at every moment. I won’t get into intention too deeply on this page, but there are many studies that confirm that observing/being aware with intent can affect how we change things. Boiling this all down, for the purposes of this website, grounded in the amazingness of quantum physics, I’d like to suggest that we, with our ability to observe and become more and more aware, can change everything- including our health, including the planet’s health.
If you’re still with me so far- let me also remind everyone that most of “Everything” is space. Our bodies are actually 99.9% space. Every atom is 99.9% space, and since that’s what we’re made of, so are we. Now, if you look at yourself, and your computer, and the furniture in your room, and the walls of your room, and the world outside your window if you have one, things seem big, solid, and as if they take up space. However, things like nutrinos, since they don’t have a charge and have almost no mass, pass right through everything. Because really it’s mostly space. I won’t get into gnarly theory here, but nutrinos cause all kinds of problems with our ‘laws’ of physics, so much so that recently they caused a stir when they were found to be traveling possibly faster than the speed of light.
What’s funny to me is, relativity is relative so it doesn’t mean much to me that the limit science thought was a barrier might not be for particles that are either really small, or for things that don’t abide by physics ‘laws’ anyway, but if you’re attached to rules, then it would be nerve-wracking I suppose. The point is, since we are mostly space, there is a LOT of room for change and creation and movement, and the solidity that we think of as ‘real’ isn’t actually real, it’s just our current perception. (I know, I’m getting “Matrix”-y here, but stay with me a bit longer…)
One other important concept is chaos theory- which is sort of a misnomer because it’s actually very organized, just on a scale and with rules humans haven’t quite understood yet (Sound familiar? Climate science anyone? Too many pesky variables…). One of the concepts included in chaos theory that is awesome besides the butterfly effect and complexity and unpredictability (by humans as yet) are fractals. The best idea illustrated by fractals is that patterns repeat. Meaning, patterns in an atom are similar to patterns in galaxies; patterns in Earth systems are similar to patterns in the universe, which are similar to patterns in the human body. My mother told me something incredible when I was about 21, and unable to find a PhD program I could devote years to and be passionate about in environmental ethics and complex systems/chaos theories- that if I went to medical school and learned about the human body, I would be much closer to understanding the planet’s health and systems and maybe be able to help even more than I could if I didn’t delve deep into a different but similar complex system. She was right- she understood fractal theory far better than I did at the time- but it still blows my mind how insightful she was.
Now, after spending so much time in the world of science myself, I am really enjoying playing with things that don’t make sense to most Newtonian science-minded people at all. For me, the best part about Ayurveda is that it bridges all worlds at the same time, and can operate in any with ease and comfort- its patterns repeat at every level from physical to energetic to mental/emotional to spiritual. This is because the science of Ayurveda, much like the focused science of quantum physics, understands that there is an underlying field- a Unified Field- from which everything arises and within which everything operates.
In Ayurveda we usually discuss this as Consciousness, but you could call it Source, Unity, God, Atman, the Unified Field, whatever you like. The Ayurvedic ‘doshas’ (which are present in different ratios in absolutely everything on every level) are consistent energies within this field, that relate to combinations of subatomic particles like the Higgs, matter, force, gravitino, and graviton (which are present in different ratios in absolutely everything on every level too). (Questions? I can expand if you like in the comments section This all means that this 6000+ year old science from Egypt is still valid, and fits right in with modern physics. Ayurveda gives us tools to connect ourselves back to the underlying field of consciousness from which we came, and in which we operate and exist. The tools we can learn allow us to create better health with intentions and practices that are aligned with our higher natures. Consistently and consciously connecting ourselves with the underlying unified field allows the possibility of affecting larger positive shifts, changing the energy around us, healing others and of course, extending to heal the entire Earth. This really does change everything!
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