Matter that moves faster than light found!

Wisdom Quarterly

Photons (light) are far from ultimate materiality. But how about neutrinos or quanta? There exist subatomic particles Buddhism refers to as kalapas. Name-and-form (nama-rupa) are intimately related, with the more subtle mind ("name") taking precedence.

In Buddhist physics -- gone into great detail in the Abhidharma ("Higher-Teaching"), one of the three divisions of the Buddha's teachings (Dharma), "ultimate particles" are referred to as kalapas.

Those able to see them (as a function of absorption- and insight-meditation called jhana- and vipassana-bhavana) consistently refrain from calling them "atoms."

It's not that Einstein was wrong; it's that we are not told about everything he found. Tesla and he fashioned a unified field theory just before he passed away. The government got those notes and equations. The true story is novelized by Sean David Morton in Sands of Time.

Our modern subatomic theory is wrong. And the next theory (string, quantum, torsion, etc.) is likely to be wrong as well. Why?

Public science does not yield ultimate truth. What happens behind the closed doors of the military-industrial complex is another story altogether. As far as what the public is told or college students taught, it is always a game of catch up with allegiance to Einstein at all costs.

How in the world could a meditator ever know and see subatomic particles? The answer is simple. Mind (cittas) arises faster than materiality (kalapas).

Both are incredibly fast, but by watching ultimate-matter (rupa-kalapas) with "higher mind" (adhicitta), which is purified by right-concentration (samma-samadhi, defined by the Buddha as mastery of the first four absorptions), it becomes possible to record these particles-of-perception and subsequently review them. How? Just as one might record an event with a high speed camera and then review it at normal speed.

Whether or not anyone considers this a satisfying explanation, it is not a meditation "theory." It happens. Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is well aware of people who can do it. Some even say it is necessary to do to systematically attain enlightenment in this very life. Why? The mind/heart stops clinging when it knows-and-sees that everything (mentally and materially) is radically impermanent, arising and passing away almost instantaneously.

• It is not wise to debate it when it is possible to practice it and see for oneself. Seeing is believing, whereas our thinking is deceiving. Einstein did not think, as we popularly imagine. Few mathematicians or artists do. (Eckhart Tolle, a joyful unitarian with Buddhist leanings) explains this as "presence," or thought-free awareness and inspiration, being in the now after one has struggled by rational means.

Einstein saw/intuited the big picture in an instant and developed the math to make sense of it: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift" - Albert Einstein.

Subatomic neutrino tracks: detecting travel faster than light (Dan Mccoy/Corbis)

Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light
Adrian Cho (News.sciencemag.org, Sept. 22, 2011)

Fat lady singing? The OPERA particle detector may have spotted neutrinos traveling faster than light, which would bring down the curtain on special relativity as an exact theory. If it's true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century: Elusive, nearly massless, subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports. If so, the observation would wreck Einstein's theory of special relativity, which demands that nothing can travel faster than light. In fact, the result would be so revolutionary that it's sure to be met with skepticism all over the world. "I suspect that the bulk of the scientific community will not take this as a definitive result unless it can be reproduced by at least one and preferably several experiments," says V. Alan Kostelecky, a theorist at Indiana University, Bloomington. He adds, however, "I'd be delighted if it were true." More

• Faster-than-light particles found, scientists claim: Particle physicists detect neutrinos traveling faster than light, a feat forbidden by Einstein's theory of special relativity. It is a concept that forms a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe and the concept of time -- nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But now it seems that researchers working in one of the world's largest physics laboratories, under a mountain in central Italy, have recorded particles traveling at a speed that is supposedly forbidden by Einstein's theory of special relativity.

Neutrinos are "faster than light": (WND) Recent tests have revealed that a neutrino beam from a CERN lab in Geneva, Switzerland, to the 454 miles remote INFN Gran Sasso lab in Italy seemed to travel 0.0025 percent faster through earth than the speed of light in a vacuum. Some undisputed pillars of classical physics will completely totter if this experiment turns out...

Super speed cameras may one day see particles

Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex at 1 million FPS (Tom Guilmette)

The smallest unit of material in Buddhist physics is the kalapa. These particles of perception are so far visible only to highly trained and concentrated meditators. Most people will never see them even with a meditation practice. It takes specialized training, such as that provided by Pa Auk Sayadaw and the few teachers he has trained. But it is vital to see them to discern mind (citta) and matter, also called consciousness and materiality. Will a camera like the Phantom Flex one day be able to reach the speed and sophistication to prove the Buddha's teachings on physics empirically? Probably not. But while it tries, it is possible for a purified and well trained mind to see ultimate reality, discern it, and be freed from the illusion that composite things are either permanent (from one moment to the next), able to satisfy, or in any way personal (part of an abiding "self" we cling to as our own).

Why do we exist? (Physics and Buddhism)

Matter and antimatter phenomenology (xenomorphic.co.uk)

A Step Closer to Explaining our Existence

John Roach (Cosmic Log, MSNBC)

Why are we here? It remains one of the most perplexing unexplained mysteries of the universe. But particle physicists are gaining more confidence in a result from an atom smashing experiment that could be a step toward providing an answer: We exist because the universe is full of matter and not the opposite, so-called antimatter. When the Big Bang occurred, equal parts of both should have been created and immediately annihilated each other, leaving nothing leftover to build the stars, planets, and us. More

During insight meditation the body becomes transparent and particles become visible in the mind door (Buddhist-images.co.uk)

Why do "we" exist? (Buddhism answers)
Dharmachari Seven (Wisdom Quarterly)
Of course, ultimately speaking, we do not. That is what it means to say all conditioned things are impersonal (not self, anatta). What are "conditioned things"? They are the constituents of being, of clinging, of the delusion that things are self, permanent, or able to bring lasting satisfaction. It should be more obvious that there is a self. But what is the nature of that self?

Self, soul, ego, personality, "I" all refer to five functionally integrated components -- the physical and the psychological. The physical or material components of the self are the four characteristics of matter (called the Great Elements, mahabhuta). They further break down to what is called derived materiality* that make the sense organs, which are just configurations of the Four Great Elements. All of this is referred to as one group labelled "form."

The other Five Aggregates feel closer -- sensations, perceptions, mental formations (such as volition), and consciousness. They cling to the illusion of a "self" independent of them, in possession of them, controlling them. The self originates dependent on them. The illusion of our actual existence arises dependently originated on the aggregation of these five groups of factors. That is the self (soul, atta, atman, I, me, mine)! But what is the nature of the self? Looked at closely -- in a particle physics lab (in the case of form and kalapas) or in a meditation hall after emerging from the four absorptions (in the case of consciousness and cittas) -- it becomes perfectly clear that they are:

• radically impermanent (arising, turning, passing)
• unsatisfactory (disappointing, distressing, unpleasant)
• impersonal (not subject to control, following their own nature, not able to be clung to, dependent on karma, not self, not me, not mine, devoid of an owner and in that sense "empty").
  

It is completely incorrect to say we are "nothing." What we call a "self" is composed of many things. However, as with all "things," the composite is not what it seems.

Buddhist phenomenology, the "Five Aggregates of Clinging" (khandha)

Under the penetrating analysis of meditation (for purifying concentration and analytical insight, jhana and vipassana), even form is revealed. In Buddhist physics, form is seen as kalapas ("particles of perception") as explained in the Abhidharma. In Buddhist psychology, the aggregates of self-awareness are called cittas (mind moments, processes, consciousnesses, which make the most sense to me as being comparable to neuronal impulses, bearing in mind that there are neurons in the heart and throughout the gut as well as the spine, nerves innervating the body, and concentrating in the brainstem and cavity of the skull but in no way limited to the skull).

Why?
What is impelling the process, what causes the "self" to re-arise after passing away? Karma. This is not a guess. It is revealed by the insight-meditation practice of Dependent Origination, tracing back this life through the chain of causation, which the mind discovers is not in this life. It is not the same self -- which is passing away all the time -- but a self dependent past causes and present conditions.

Meditation (virtue, concentration, insight) is the key to realization.

Moral of the Story
All of this is directly, personally verifiable. We don't own a large hadron collider; yet, it is possible for the mind to be collected and intensified (through optimal-concentration, samma-samadhi) to discern kalapas. None of this is to be taken on faith. None of this is dogma. It is all experiential. And this is sure: If one does not make the effort to realize the Truth (not "learn" it or "believe" but realize it for oneself), whatever the Truth is, one will not become enlightened or liberated from ignorance and illusion. Without liberation, disappointment is certain (not eventually but in every moment).

Particle Physics

• That wily Higgs boson is running out of places to hide
• New subatomic particle: real or anomaly?
• Aging U.S. particle accelerator gets more time
• Seven smashing atom smashers
• Night vision contact lenses?
  

Buddhist Physics

• The Nature of Materiality (Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw)
• Mindfulness and Four Elements Meditation
• *What is "derived materiality"?
• The "Ultimate Teaching" (Abhidharma) on materiality
• The "divine eye" knows and sees (direct knowing)
  

Buddhist Physics: particles change "flavor"

Seven Dharmachari (Wisdom Quarterly), LiveScience.com

The MINOS neutrino experiment is located in a cavern half a mile deep in the Soudan Underground Lab, Minnesota. (Yet people doubt there are DUMBs in the US). A mural of famous scientists is painted onto the rock wall (Fermilab).

Buddhist Physics made visible
It shocked me that at a meditation retreat, the revered monk and scholar was explaining how particles-of-perception could literally be observed. The mind purified and intensified through absorption- (jhana) and honed by insight- (vipassana) practice became able to perceive the smallest particles in Buddhist physics.

I had always thought these things theoretical and, although terribly interesting, beside the point. But they were the point. To gain enlightenment, one would have to examine and analyze these ephemeral objects. The purpose of doing so is direct realization that "everything that is of a nature to arise is of a nature to pass away." This is the teaching of radical impermanence.

It is not that eventually things crumble; rather in every moment in every way, things are changing and transforming.

One startling aspect of this teacher (Pa Auk Sayadaw)'s instruction, derived from the Abhidharma and Path of Purification, was the notion that particles-of-perception had "flavor" and "odor." This went against everything I understood about such gross physical phenomena. But had I known then as I know now that ordinary meditators in attendance were seeing them, were enjoying absorption and gaining liberating insight, I should have been much more amazed at that.

What is invisible and transient will become visible through practice. It will not, however, become any less transient. So how in the world will the mind/heart ever see a subatomic particle? The answer is easy to understand, hard to accomplish. The mind perceives it and, like a photograph, lays down a memory trace. That trace can be reviewed even if what it is a trace of happened so incredibly quickly as to be incomprehensible.

Stanford Univ., Los Alamos National Lab (particleadventure.org/KarlTate/LiveScience)

Seeing the transition (anicca, transition or flux), instability (dukkha, disappointment or unsatisfactoriness), and composite nature (anatta, impersonality or emptiness) first hand is what liberates the heart/mind from clinging to things as if they are real, able to yield satisfaction or able to be possessed.

If the mind/heart (other more subtle particles called cittas, the elements or moments of consciousness in Buddhist psychology) sees the "true nature" of things, it withdraws. It naturally lets go. And unbound, unentangled, detached from them, it is freed just for an instant.

But that instant is enough to undo the hold of samsara, this clinging to self, suffering, and rebirth -- giving way to the first stage of enlightenment (stream entry), the gateway, the all important noble attainment. Imagine what surprise, then, to hear science use the term "flavor" to describe the transitory nature of these same unbelievably small and short lived particles! Here's the story LiveScience.com:

Exotic Particle Changes Flavor as Scientists Watch
Scientists have observed the rare phenomenon of one type of exotic particle transforming into another, which could reveal secrets about the evolution of the universe.

The particles are two types of chargeless, nearly massless species called neutrinos, which come in three flavors: muon, electron, and tau. In past experiments, physicists have measured the change of muon neutrinos to tau neutrinos and electron neutrinos to muon or tau neutrinos. But no one has definitively seen muon neutrinos turn into electron neutrinos.

Now two separate experiments -- one in Japan and one in Minnesota -- have both found evidence for this transformation as well. More

• Strange quarks, muons: Nature's tiniest particles dissected

Elusive "Antimatter" trapped in Lab

LiveScience.com (June 6, 2011) According to the laws of physics, the world should not exist. To explain why we're here, scientists are re-creating the universe's fiery beginnings by pitting matter against antimatter and watching them annihilate (popsci.com).

Antimatter, an elusive type of matter [Buddhist, rupa] that's rare in the universe, has now been trapped for more than 16 minutes -- an eternity in particle physics.

In fact, scientists who've been trapping antihydrogen atoms at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva say isolating the exotic particles has become so routine that they expect to soon begin experiments on this rare substance.

Antimatter is like a mirror image of matter. For every matter particle (a hydrogen atom, for example), a matching antimatter particle is thought to exist (in this case, an antihydrogen atom) with the same mass, but the opposite charge.

"We've trapped antihydrogen atoms for as long as 1,000 seconds, which is forever" in the world of high-energy particle physics, said Joel Fajans, a University of California, Berkeley professor of physics who is a faculty scientist at California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a member of the ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus) experiment at CERN.

All matter (gross and fine, sensual and supersensual) is subordinate to mind; yet, mind and matter are interdependent everywhere except the four immaterial (arupa) planes, which are mind only. See Buddhist cosmology's 31 Planes of Existence.

Trapping antimatter is difficult, because when it comes into contact with matter, the two annihilate each other. So a container for antimatter can't be made of regular matter, but is usually formed with magnetic fields. More

Strange Quarks and Muons, Oh my! Nature's tiniest particles dissected
Wacky Physics: The coolest little particles in nature
Twisted Physics: 7 mind-blowing findings