Particles, Perception, and Pulse: A Non-Dual View of the Self-Exciting World

Modern physics, particularly quantum field theory, increasingly speaks in a language that sounds uncannily familiar to students of Advaita Vedanta. Not because physics is “proving” Vedanta, nor because Vedanta anticipated quantum mechanics in a literal sense, but because both are grappling with the same perennial question: how does multiplicity arise from unity, and how does activity arise without an external cause?

A recent discussion in physics describes particles not as independent things, but as localised excitations of an underlying field. Electrons, virtual particles, and even the Big Bang itself are framed not as objects popping in and out of existence, but as behaviours of a deeper, continuous reality. There is only the field; particles are something the field does.

Image Credit: Universe Review

Advaita Vedanta has been saying something structurally similar for millennia.

Brahman is not one thing among others. It is not a super-object sitting behind the universe. Brahman is the substratum, the field of Being-Consciousness itself, from which names and forms arise as appearances, not additions.

The Ocean and the Ripple: A Shared Analogy

The physicist in the dialogue uses a powerful image: a lake with ripples. A ripple is not a thing that can be removed from the water. It has no independent substance. It is water behaving in a particular way, for a time.

56:10 - Why is Mental Activity Localised?

Advaita uses almost exactly the same imagery.

Shankara, commenting on the Upanishads, repeatedly emphasises that the world is not something other than Brahman, just as waves are not other than water. The wave has a name, a form, a duration, and a location. Water alone has reality.

In the Chandogya Upanishad, Uddalaka tells Shvetaketu:

“Vācārambhaṇaṃ vikāro nāmadheyaṃ, mṛttiketyeva satyam” (Chandogya 6.1.4)

All modification is only a name arising from speech; the clay alone is real.

Replace “clay” with “water” or “field”, and the structure remains identical. What appears as form is not a second substance. It is a mode of the one reality.

Similarly, in quantum field theory, there are no particles as substances. There are only fields undergoing temporary excitations. When the excitation ceases, nothing has vanished. The field remains exactly as it always was.

This is similar to how:

• a whirlpool looks like a thing

• a flame looks like an object

But both are just patterns in a medium.

Why Localisation at All?

The deepest question raised in the discussion is not whether everything is one field, but why that field localises at all.

If all that exists is one infinite reality, why is there not one undivided unit of experience? Why electrons? Why galaxies? Why you and me?

This question appears devastating at first glance. But it is precisely the question Advaita has already faced and answered.

Sadeva somyedamagra āsīt ekamevādvitīyam. (Chandogya 6.2.1)

In the beginning, my dear, this was Being alone—one only, without a second.

Shankara's Commentary: Brahman is the non-dual essence; multiplicity is like waves on the ocean—apparent, but not separate from the water.

Gaudapada, in his Mandukya Karika, addresses this directly. He denies that creation is a real transformation at all:

Na nirodho na cotpattir na baddho na ca sādhakaḥ Na mumukṣur na vai mukta ity eṣā paramārthatā (Mandukya Karika 2.32)

There is no cessation, no origination, none bound, none striving, none seeking liberation, and none liberated. This is the highest truth.

From the standpoint of Brahman, nothing has ever happened.

Localisation, multiplicity, and individuation belong to the level of appearance, not to absolute reality. Just as ripples do not change the nature of water, the universe does not change the nature of Brahman.

Self-Excitation and the Absence of an External Cause

One of the most striking moments in the physics discussion is the admission that quantum fields must be self-exciting. There is nothing outside nature to “cause” fluctuations. The field fluctuates because fluctuation is what the field does.

This is not a flaw in physics. It is an unavoidable conclusion once you refuse to posit a second, external principle.

Advaita arrives at exactly the same necessity.

If Brahman is infinite, there can be nothing outside it. If there is nothing outside it, then creation cannot be caused by something else. Yet appearance undeniably occurs.

The Upanishads resolve this not by positing an external creator, but by recognising manifestation as an expression of Brahman’s own power.

The Shvetashvatara Upanishad says:

“Śakti-śaktimator abhedaḥ” - a philosophical aphorism (nyāya / siddhānta-vākya)

There is no difference between the power and the possessor of power.

Shankara repeatedly insists that Māyā is not a second reality apart from Brahman, nor an independent entity. It is dependent, beginningless, and inexplicable, and cannot exist apart from Brahman.

For example, in his commentary on the Brahma Sūtra (2.1.14), Shankara states in essence that:

Māyā has no existence independent of Brahman, just as the power to burn has no existence apart from fire.

In modern physics, the quantum field does not need an external hand to disturb it. Fluctuation is inherent. In Advaita, Brahman does not need a second cause to appear as the universe. Appearance is inherent, while reality remains unchanged.

The Mandukya Upanishad and the Three States

The Mandukya Upanishad offers an especially powerful lens for understanding localisation.

It describes three states of experience: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, all arising in consciousness. In dreaming, an entire world appears without external material. Space, time, bodies, and causality all manifest internally, yet dissolve upon waking.

Gaudapada makes the analogy explicit:

Svapna-māyā-sarūpeṇa dṛṣṭam jagad idaṃ dvijāḥ (Mandukya Karika 2.31)

This world is seen in the same manner as a dream or an illusion.

Like the quantum foam (self-exciting without reason), Gaudapada's ajati-vada (no-birth doctrine) says no real manifestation occurs—fluctuations are illusory, inherent to maya, not a "new" creation.

Just as consciousness in dream localises into multiple dream characters and events, Brahman appears as a universe of localised experiences. The dream does not require an external cause. Consciousness is self-manifesting at that level.

The quantum field analogy maps surprisingly well here. The field does not “import” particles from elsewhere. Excitations arise, persist briefly, and subside. Nothing new is added. Nothing essential is lost.

Why Not One Unified Experience?

The question “Why not one big unit of experience?” is often framed as a problem for non-dual metaphysics. Advaita’s response is subtle.

From the absolute standpoint, there is only one consciousness. There is, in fact, one undivided experience.

Localisation belongs to the empirical standpoint, just as separate dream characters belong to the dream level. Asking why Brahman does not experience everything at once is like asking why the dreamer experiences the dream from one point of view at a time.

Shankara is clear: individuality is not a real division in consciousness. It is an apparent limitation, like space seeming to be divided by pots.

When a pot breaks, the “pot-space” does not merge with “great space”. It was never separate to begin with.

Where the Analogy Must Stop

It is essential to remain precise. Quantum fields are still objects within empirical description. Brahman is not a physical field, nor is consciousness reducible to physics.

The value of the analogy lies not in identity, but in structure.

Both Advaita and quantum field theory reject fundamental particles. Both reject creation from nothing. Both require self-excitation or self-manifestation. Both insist that what appears is something the underlying reality does, not something separate from it.

Physics describes behaviour. Advaita points to Being itself.

The Pulse of Reality: Is the Vibration Real?

If we accept that the universe is a "self-exciting" field, we encounter the final fork in the road of non-dual philosophy. While both Kashmiri Shaivism and Gaudapada’s Advaita agree that there is no external "drummer," they disagree on the status of the "rhythm."

The Divine Pulse (Spanda)

In Kashmiri Shaivism, this self-excitation is called Spanda—the sacred throb or "vibration" or "pulse". it is the primordial throb of Consciousness (Cit). Here, the field doesn't just fluctuate as a matter of mechanics; it pulses as an expression of its own ecstatic power (Shakti). In this view, the "ripple" is just as real as the "water." The universe is not an illusion to be escaped, but a "Self-Exciting" dance to be recognized.

The Mental Vibration (Spandita)

Gaudapada, however, offers a more radical "refutation." He uses the term Spandita (mental vibration) to describe this same phenomenon. For him, the vibration is not a creative act of God, but a symptom of a mind in motion.

• The Fire-brand Analogy: He compares it to a glowing stick whirled in the dark. The "circle of fire" appears to be a self-exciting, continuous object. But the moment the movement stops, the circle vanishes. It never existed; only the stationary point of light was real.

• For Gaudapada, "self-excitation" is something that appears to happen from our perspective, but in absolute truth (Paramartha), Consciousness is Acala (motionless)

Feature	Gaudapada’s Advaita	Kashmiri Shaivism (Spanda)
Status of Vibration	Mithya (Illusory/Mental): The "vibration" (Spandita) is a symptom of ignorance. When the mind stops, the vibration stops.	Sat (Real/Essential): The vibration is the very "heartbeat" of Shiva. It is the creative power of Reality.
Nature of the World	Ajata (Unborn): Because vibration is illusory, no world was ever actually created.	Abhasa (Appearance): The world is a real manifestation of the Divine’s own light.
The Analogy	The Fire-brand: The circle of fire is a trick of the eye; only the point of light is real.	The Mirror: The reflection is a real "expression" of the mirror's capacity to reflect.

This brings us to a critical pivot point: If the "vibration" of the world is actually just the "vibration" of our own cognitive machinery, then the distinction between "out there" and "in here" collapses. This leads us directly to the modern laboratory, where we find that our brains are, in fact, "self-exciting" simulators...

The Neuroscience Perspective: Nothing Ever Happens Outside Experience

There is another layer to this inquiry that is often overlooked, even by those sympathetic to non-dual metaphysics: neuroscience quietly agrees that nothing we ever know happens outside experience itself.

Regardless of how “objective” we believe ourselves to be, there is not a single colour, sound, object, or event that appears anywhere except within subjective awareness. The brain does not present us with the world as it is. It constructs a model of the world, moment by moment, using sensory inputs, memory, prediction, and interpretation.

Neuroscience is clear on this point. What we experience is not reality itself, but a controlled hallucination, a best-guess simulation generated by the nervous system. Light waves do not contain colour. Air pressure waves do not contain sound. Molecules do not contain taste. These qualities arise only when the brain interprets signals and renders them as experience.

In other words, even the most “objective” scientific observation still appears as a private, first-person event in consciousness.

This aligns uncannily well with the Advaitic insight that the world is not encountered outside awareness, but within it.

The Mandukya Upanishad makes no attempt to ground reality in an external world first. It begins with experience itself. Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep are not states of the world, but states of consciousness. The entire cosmos, as far as it is known, appears within these states.

Gaudapada presses this point further. He notes that in dream, an entire universe arises without external matter, external space, or external causation. Yet while dreaming, the experience feels no less real than waking life.

The implication is not that the waking world is unreal in a trivial sense, but that its reality is dependent on consciousness, just as the dream world is.

From a neuroscientific standpoint, there is no privileged access to an external world “as it is”. There is only perception, inference, and experience. From an Advaita standpoint, there is no need for such access, because Brahman is not outside experience to begin with.

This reframes the question of localisation in a subtle way.

Earlier, we asked why there is not one unified experience rather than many localised ones. Neuroscience suggests that even within a single human being, experience is already fragmented, stitched together from multiple processes, none of which have direct access to an external reality. The sense of being a localised observer is itself a construction.

Advaita goes one step further and asks: who is aware of this construction?

Shankara is explicit that the mind and brain are instruments, not the knower. Thoughts, perceptions, and neural processes are objects of awareness, not its source.

Just as particles are not fundamental in quantum field theory, mental events are not fundamental in Advaita. They are fluctuations, ripples, patterns of activity appearing in consciousness.

From this perspective, the statement “nothing ever happens outside of us” is not solipsism. It is a recognition that “outside” is itself an appearance within awareness.

The world, the brain, the nervous system, and even neuroscience itself arise as experiences in consciousness. There is no standpoint from which consciousness can step outside itself and observe an independent reality.

This does not negate science. It contextualises it.

Physics studies the regularities within experience. Neuroscience studies the mechanisms by which experience is structured. Advaita asks what must already be present for any experience, mechanism, or field to appear at all.

And the answer it gives is the same one it has always given: Brahman alone appears as mind, matter, and world, without ever becoming any of them.

In this light, the universe is not merely self-exciting at the level of quantum fields. It is self-revealing at the level of consciousness itself.

Nothing ever happens outside of that.

Neuroscience, Meaning, and the Illusion of Fixed Reality

Neuroscience does not merely tell us that perception is constructed. It also reveals something even more unsettling: much of what we take to be fixed, objective reality is in fact the accumulated result of human decisions, frozen into habit, language, and institutions.

Everything that exists in the human world was, at some point, a decision made under uncertainty by people with particular motives, histories, values, and constraints. Laws, norms, categories, measurements, medical definitions, economic rules, even what counts as “normal” or “abnormal” are not handed down from reality itself. They are choices. Once made, the uncertainty that preceded them is forgotten, and the outcome begins to feel inevitable, as though “this is just how things are”.

The brain is exceptionally good at this forgetting.

01:06:15 - Change, Decisions & Uncertainty

From a neuroscientific perspective, once a rule or interpretation stabilises, it becomes part of the predictive model through which we perceive the world. The mind then treats the model as reality, rather than as one possible framing among many. What could have been otherwise is experienced as necessary.

This is why environments feel fixed until someone questions them. Social rules feel absolute until history reminds us how often they have changed. The more distant one is from the people who made the original decisions, the more natural and unquestionable those decisions appear.

Advaita would describe this as avidyā (ignorance) functioning at the collective level: mistaking convention for truth, map for territory.

Neuroscience adds an important nuance. Meaning itself is not intrinsic to symbols, numbers, or rules. Meaning arises only in experience.

A number like “50 kilograms” does not exist as a self-standing entity in the world. Its meaning lies entirely in experiential states: the felt strain of lifting a weight, the movement of a needle on a scale, the sight of an object sinking in water. Remove experience, and the number loses all semantic grounding. It becomes an empty abstraction.

Similarly, distance, time, and quantity are not things-in-themselves. One kilometre is not an object floating in space. It is a relationship between perceptual states, mediated by instruments, memory, and embodied experience.

Neuroscience recognises that the brain never accesses non-experiential reality. It only ever deals with signals, interpretations, and meanings. When we forget this, we commit a subtle but profound error: we treat descriptions of experience as though they exist independently of experience itself.

This is precisely the error Advaita warns against.

Shankara repeatedly points out that names and forms are superimposed upon reality. They are useful, but they are not ultimate. When we mistake them for what truly exists, we bind ourselves to a world of our own making and then suffer within it.

The insight here is not that rules should be broken indiscriminately, nor that conventions are useless. It is that reality is far more malleable than the mind assumes, because much of what constrains us is inherited interpretation rather than necessity.

From the standpoint of consciousness, meaning precedes structure, not the other way around.

Neuroscience shows that the brain actively constructs a world shaped by prior decisions, learned norms, and internalised rules. Advaita goes further and asks: in what does this entire process of construction appear?

Just as particles are ripples in a field, and perceptions are models in the brain, meanings and rules are ripples in consciousness. They arise, stabilise, and dissolve. They are not fixed truths.

What appears solid is often only forgotten flexibility. And recognising this is not merely intellectually liberating. It is existentially freeing. Because when we see that, what is, could have been otherwise, and still can be otherwise, we loosen our identification with the structures we have mistaken for reality itself.

In Advaitic terms, we begin to see nāma and rūpa for what they are: appearances in Brahman, not limits upon it.

Self-Excitation in Biology: The First Heartbeat and the Origin of Rhythm

If self-excitation sounds abstract when discussed in quantum fields or consciousness, biology brings it uncomfortably close to home.

Consider the first heartbeat.

In a human embryo, the heart begins beating at around twenty-five days after conception, when the embryo is little more than a tiny ball of cells, a few millimetres in size. At this stage, there is no brain, no nervous system, and no external signalling mechanism capable of issuing a command to contract.

And yet, the heart beats.

It must do so, because diffusion alone can no longer supply oxygen to the growing cluster of cells. Circulation becomes necessary. What forms initially is not a complex organ, but a simple tube, contracting in a wave-like, peristaltic motion, pushing fluid around the embryo.

The striking question is this: where does the instruction come from?

In the rest of the body, muscles contract because the nervous system tells them to. But here, there is no nervous system. There is no conductor. There is no external pacemaker. There is not even a central controller.

The system excites itself.

4:43 - What causes our very first heartbeat?

For a long time, this deeply unsettled physiologists. The prevailing mindset assumed that rhythmic behaviour must be driven by something external, some hidden oscillator or forcing mechanism. The idea that a biological system could spontaneously generate and sustain its own rhythm seemed implausible.

And yet, that is exactly what happens.

At the molecular level, networks of ion channels and chemical reactions interact in such a way that activity reinforces itself. Modern language calls these autocatalytic or self-propelling processes. Nothing pushes the system into motion. The motion arises from the system’s own internal dynamics.

Once started, it continues indefinitely.

What is remarkable is that this is not a special exception reserved for the heart. It is a general principle of living systems. Metabolic cycles, cellular rhythms, neural oscillations, and even the earliest origins of life itself rely on the same capacity: the ability of matter organised in a certain way to enter self-sustaining cycles of activity.

Biology, like physics, cannot escape self-excitation.

From an Advaitic perspective, this is deeply revealing. Life does not wait for an external agent to animate it. Order does not need to be imposed from outside. Activity arises from within appearance itself.

This mirrors precisely what we see at other levels.

Quantum fields fluctuate without external cause. The mind generates meaning without accessing a world-in-itself. Biological systems pulse, cycle, and organise without a central commander. At every scale, the same pattern repeats: something happens, not because it is pushed, but because it is what the system does.

Advaita Vedanta would say that this is not accidental. All these self-exciting processes are appearances within Brahman, which itself requires no external cause. Brahman does not need to be set in motion. It is not inert matter waiting to be activated. It is sat-cit, being and consciousness, whose very nature is luminous and self-revealing.

The first heartbeat, then, is not just a biological curiosity. It is a living example of a deeper truth: that activity does not always require an actor, and rhythm does not always require a drummer. Just as the heart begins to beat without being told, the universe appears without being commanded, and experience arises without being summoned.

In all cases, there is no external cause to point to.

There is only self-excitation, endlessly expressing itself in different forms, while the underlying reality remains unchanged.

Conclusion: The Rhythm Without a Drummer

Across physics, neuroscience, and biology, a quiet but unsettling pattern emerges. At the deepest levels we can probe, reality does not appear to be driven from the outside. There is no final lever, no external conductor, no hidden hand issuing instructions.

Quantum fields fluctuate without an external cause. Particles are not things but temporary behaviours of an underlying field. Neuroscience shows that the world we take to be “out there” never appears outside experience, and that meaning, rules, and even objectivity itself are shaped by interpretation, history, and decision. Biology shows that life does not wait for commands to begin. The heart starts beating before there is a nervous system to tell it to beat. Rhythm arises because the system is organised in such a way that it excites itself.

At every level, the same question returns, and at every level the same answer seems unavoidable: nothing external is doing this.

Advaita Vedanta does not find this surprising. If Brahman is infinite, there can be nothing outside it to act upon it. Appearance cannot be caused by a second. It can only arise as self-manifestation.

From this standpoint, self-excitation is not a mystery to be solved but a clue to the nature of reality itself. What we call fluctuation, perception, decision, or biological rhythm are not separate phenomena requiring separate explanations. They are expressions of a single, non-dual ground appearing as multiplicity without undergoing division.

Neuroscience sharpens this insight by revealing that even the sense of a fixed, rule-bound world is itself constructed. What feels inevitable is often what has been repeated long enough to be forgotten as a choice. Meaning does not reside in numbers, laws, or measurements. It resides in experience. Remove experience, and the world loses its semantic grounding.

Biology brings the insight home to the body. The first heartbeat is not commanded. It happens. Life does not wait to be authorised. It begins to move because movement is already implicit in its organisation.

Seen together, these perspectives dissolve the idea of a universe assembled piece by piece, driven by external causes, and observed from a distance. Instead, what appears is a world arising within awareness, structured by meaning, sustained by self-organising rhythms, and described by fields rather than things.

Advaita names the ground of this as Brahman: not a cosmic mechanism, not a supreme object, but the ever-present reality in which fields fluctuate, minds interpret, hearts beat, and worlds appear.

Modern physics' 'self-exciting fields' bridge the gap between two Great Traditions. To the Kashmiri Shaivite, this excitation is the 'Spanda'—the real, creative pulse of life. To Gaudapada, this self-excitation is the final 'Maya'—a vibration of the mind that makes the motionless Absolute appear as a moving world. Whether we see the pulse as a Divine Dance or a Cosmic Dream, one truth remains: there is no external drummer. The music and the musician are one.

There is only the one reality, appearing as many, without ever becoming other than itself.

That is not a theory about the universe.

It is the recognition of what is already happening here, now, in the very awareness reading these words.

Practical Takeaways: Living in a Self-Exciting World

If the universe is not driven from the outside, if experience never happens outside consciousness, and if even life itself begins without being commanded, then this understanding cannot remain abstract. It quietly but decisively changes how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world.

Loosen the sense of inevitability

Much of what feels fixed, necessary, or “just the way things are” is not rooted in reality itself, but in repeated interpretations, inherited rules, and forgotten decisions. Neuroscience shows how quickly uncertainty hardens into apparent fact. Advaita shows that names and forms are appearances, not absolutes.

Practically, this means questioning assumptions before questioning yourself. When something feels constraining, ask whether it is truly necessary, or merely habitual. Very often, what looks like fate is only a frozen choice.

Stop looking for an external controller

The impulse to search for a final authority, a hidden cause, or a master plan is deeply ingrained. Physics, biology, and Advaita all point in the same direction: there is no external conductor.

Applied inwardly, this dissolves the belief that you must be “fixed” from the outside. Growth, clarity, and change do not require a separate force to arrive. Like the first heartbeat, movement can begin on its own when conditions are understood rather than forced.

Treat thoughts, emotions, and identities as ripples

If particles are behaviours of fields, and meanings are constructions of the mind, then thoughts and emotions are not personal possessions or ultimate truths. They are events.

This does not mean suppressing them. It means seeing them as transient patterns rather than defining features of who you are. What is seen clearly loosens its grip without effort.

Re-centre meaning in experience, not abstraction

Numbers, rules, goals, and models are useful, but they derive their meaning entirely from lived experience. When abstractions start to dominate life, anxiety follows.

A practical correction is simple: return often to direct experience. What is actually happening now? What is felt, seen, heard, and known before interpretation? This is not mindfulness as a technique, but as a re-grounding of meaning.

Relate to life as participation, not observation

If nothing happens outside experience, then life is not something you stand apart from and analyse. You are not an observer of the field. You are one of its expressions.

This shifts responsibility in a subtle way. Not toward control, but toward responsiveness. You do not need to manage the whole, but you can participate consciously in what is appearing through you.

Let understanding replace effort where possible

Much spiritual and psychological struggle comes from trying to force change at the level of ripples rather than seeing the water clearly. Advaita’s insistence that nothing fundamentally needs fixing is not passivity; it is precision.

When understanding deepens, many patterns unwind on their own. Effort becomes lighter, more local, more appropriate.

Recognise freedom as already present

The most radical implication of all is this: freedom is not something to be achieved later. It is what remains when false necessities are seen through.

When you recognise that reality is self-exciting, self-organising, and not imposed from elsewhere, a quiet trust replaces the need to control every outcome. Life is no longer a problem to be solved, but a process to be understood.

The heart beats. The mind constructs. The world appears.

And none of it requires a separate commander.

Seeing this does not remove you from life. It places you more fully within it, not as a fragment struggling against the whole, but as an expression of the same reality, moving in its own time, in its own way.

That recognition, more than any technique, is the practical application of everything explored here.