Modern Physics Parallels Buddhism on Views of a Cyclic, Timeless Universe

"You often hear cosmologists say that the Big Bang is the moment when space and time began, there's no such thing before the Big Bang. The truth is the Big Bang is the moment where our understanding ends. We don't know what happened before the Big Bang, but it's absolutely possible that something did." So says Caltech theoretical physicist, Sean Carroll. Carroll's proposal that there once was a realm of space and time that preceded our universe's Big Bang is part of a cosmological model first toyed with by theoretical physicists, including Einstein, in the 1930's. It is known as the Cyclic Model or Oscillatory Universe. A basic form of the theory posits that the universe we live in is one component of an interconnected, dual system of bouncing universes. The first begins with a Big Bang and expands for a period of time. Upon reaching some thermodynamic limit of expansion, it then experiences a "Big Crunch", as the universe begins to shrink back toward a singularity. This force then propels the Big Bang of a second universe outward in the "opposite direction", and the cycle continues back and forth perpetually. Within this framework, a Big Bang can therefore be defined as the event after a period of contraction and before a period of expansion. Furthermore, our universe may be the first, sixth, billionth, or some infinite number universe to exist in this cycle.

Let's consider what exactly is meant by a universe sprouting in the "opposite direction" of our own. This directional plane is best conceptualized not as direction in physical space, but rather, as direction in time. Thus, one universe exists in the realm of "forward" moving time, and the other in the realm of "backward" moving time. Of course, these terms are completely relative, which is why they have been placed in quotations. The Cyclic Model therefore paints a universe perfectly symmetrical in time. Astonishingly, this so-called "time symmetry" or "time parity" offered by the Cyclic Model theory better reflects what the laws of physics say about time than the more widely accepted and standard Big Bang theory does. 

The Big Bang theory, along with our own intuitive observations of the world, suggests a reality that is controlled by a relentless, unilateral arrow of time, moving in one direction and one direction only - forward. We cannot turn back the universal clock to reverse a glass cup falling to the ground and shattering, having the tiny pieces of broken glass return back into our hand to reform the whole. It all seems very obvious. Yet, many of the most important and fundamental laws of physics exhibit time-symmetry, working equally well regardless of time's direction, and suggest that the master clock we perceive may be an illusion.

In addition to resolving the time problem, the Cyclic Model also allows physicists to circumvent the troublesome conditions of the singularity theorized to be the origin of the Big Bang. The singularity is a point of zero volume and infinite density, and at it the current laws of physics break down. Barring a major advance in a quantum theory of gravity, we have no tools with which to understand it, which may suggest that the phenomenon isn't actually physically realizable to begin with.

So the Cyclic Model has its group of legitimate supporters in the scientific community, and continues to gain credibility, at least as part of a larger and more complex Multiverse theory. But such a conception of reality existed long before Einstein and others, guided by reason, ruminated about it in the 1930's. Since before the seventh century CE, a cyclic universe has been described by the cosmology of Tibetan Buddhism, bearing striking similarity to the candidate theory developed today by modern physics.  A passage from Professor of Buddhist Studies Reginald Ray's "Indestructible Truth" provides a succinct overview: "The life span of the worlds is called a great kalpa and is divided into four. In the kalpa of creation, the worlds come into being; in the kalpa of duration, they have their life and support sentient beings; in the kalpa of dissolution, they are destroyed in a final conflagration; in the final kalpa, there is nothing but empty space. Then the entire process of manifestation begins again. The process of creation, duration, and destruction goes on and on, repeating itself ad infinitum throughout endless time."

The analogy to the scientific terminology of universal progression, from Big Bang to period of expansion to Big Crunch to period of contraction, all within an eternal, timeless reality, is just about perfect. Even the physical details accounting for the cause of the process in both frameworks resemble each other. Unlike other spiritual belief systems, for example, Hinduism, which attributes the cycles of the universe to the supernatural interaction of deities, Tibetan Buddhism explains the oscillations as a result of natural processes. It describes five particles - earth, water, wind, fire and space - that conglomerate and disassociate in a systematic fashion when a universe forms or is destroyed. We'll start with the stage of emptiness, in which there are only space particles. When a sufficient amount of karma has accumulated from the sentient beings of the previous universe, the space particles begin the creation stage, allowing air particles to coagulate to form "wind". Then fire particles join to make "lightening", causing water particles to bond and create "rain". Finally, the resulting "rainbows" herald in the joining of earth particles. After a duration period, the particles come apart in the period of dissolution, and result once more in the emptiness defined only by space particles.

A strong analogy can be drawn between "wind", "lightening", "rain" and "rainbows" and modern scientific terminology used to describe the events after the Big Bang, such as the initial clouds of randomly drifting matter (wind), the forming of electromagnetic fields (lightening) and the other fundamental forces, the particles shot off into space from dying stars (rain), and the eventual conglomeration of cooled matter to form planets (earth particles/rainbows).

Whether these similarities are purely coincidental or indicative of something more significant is left up for personal speculation. However, it is becoming more and more evident how eerily findings and predictions of modern physics are beginning to coincide with long-established beliefs of the Orient. For a seminal text on this topic, check out "The Tao of Physics".