During World War II my grandfather had been stationed as an officer in the then British colony of Ceylon. It would have made a great impression on him for he spoke about it for fifteen years when I was growing up. Great stories of holy mountains, rock fortresses, and ancient kingdoms with the most advanced irrigation systems in the world. For many years I thought he was making most of it up, but it intrigued me. So one day I finally decided to visit the Island to find out if he was telling the truth.
The Airport is about 30 Kilometers from the capital Colombo. Colombo borders the sea and its port is one of the busiest in Asia. In the lower central part of the country, there is a mountainous area where tea is grown so abundantly that it looks more like a picturesque painting than an actual mountain. There really is a holy mountain here called Sri Pada which is said to be the holiest mountain in the world. And the Sigiriya Rock fortress built in the 5th century is one of the marvels of the ancient world. And the great Tank Civilization of ancient Sri Lanka is still being used today to irrigate. I was amazed to find out everything my Grandfather said was true, this really is a great Island.
But the most interesting aspect of this island is the people. Although I do not have a degree in psychology I have a strange habit of analyzing the people in every country I go to, so I would do the same here. Sri Lankans in general are very friendly and very intelligent, but for an intelligent people they do not think deeply about some things that trouble at least a small minority in some other counties, like for example: how was the universe created? Are there things smaller than atoms? Are we related to monkeys? This kind of thinking is absent even among highly educated scientists who are qualified to answer these questions. But even here there is an extremely small minority of people who think of such things, but unfortunately, they are so rare that you could spend an entire lifetime without meeting one.
But I did meet such a person on the island and he was the clerk in the hotel. “Aren’t you Carl Saban the famous American astronomer, and the world authority on supernovas?” said he. “Yes,” said I a little surprised that someone here knew me. “I’ve been reading the articles you write, they are interesting and I have used your observations to verify my theories, theories that I think solve all the problems of the universe, including how it was created, and I have written it down in this book, it would only take a few minutes to read, can you tell me whether it is correct,” said he. He took out of his pocket a much-crumbled book that looked like it had been slept on. For a moment I could not decide whether he was just joking or completely mad, but he thrust the book at me so fervently that I reluctantly took it.
I present below just the first two pages of his book, exactly as he wrote it without any modification by me:
Everything is made up of atoms, but atoms themselves are made up of even smaller particles. Even though our senses fool us we and everything around us are energy fields. The movement of these tiny energy particles moves electrons, atoms, aero-planes, stars, galaxies and everything else in the universe. These tiny particles and their ability to move are the only reality in the universe and other things such as Time or Space are not real and are how the mind perceives the movement of these particles.
According to this theory, there is nothing called space, three-dimensional or otherwise, for when these particles move, as they always do it creates this illusion in our senses. There is nothing to fill, for there is nothing else. Similarly, there is no dimension called Time, this is what the mind perceives when these particles move, but it isn't real, for there isn't anything separate called Time. If there is nothing called Time then the universe could not have been created at a particular point in time in the past, this solves the mystery of creation. These particles would have always been and will always be.
So how does this explain Singularity, or what is popularly known as the Big Bang? If matter were to lose its ability to move, it would converge to a point infinitely small, but soon the deep tendency to move would lead it to expand outward, which would eventually form Stars, planets, Galaxies and everything else that is in the Universe. How does this explain Gravitation? It has been found that when a sub-atomic particle was moved another particle that was seven miles away moved in exactly the same way, and it has been estimated that however far these particles are separated they would move exactly in the same way. This is strange for nothing moves faster than the speed of Light. This twin movement could be used to explain Gravitation, for if a particle were to move, its twin particle would move towards it.
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The rest of the book contains calculations to prove this theory, which I can’t fully understand, but which seem profound all the same. Can somebody tell me by reading this book whether this young man in Sri Lanka is, in fact a great scientist or a little wrong in the head?
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