Is Indra's Net myth or physics
The holographic principle gives the answer
In 1947
Hungarian physicist Gabor invented the hologram
The technology later won him the Nobel Prize
But what really made physicists sit up
wasn't that holograms could capture 3D images
it was an accidental discovery
Cut a holographic plate down the middle
and each half still contains the complete 3D image
Cut again
and again
Even down to a tiny fragment
it still holds all the information of the whole picture
just at a lower resolution
The part contains the whole
Those few words
later blew open an entirely new direction in physics
But guess what
In Chang'an more than 1300 years ago
there was a monk who without holography
without quantum mechanics
without any modern physics at all
used a net and a pile of jewels
to precisely describe the same structure
Hello
everyone
I'm Leo Wang
We previously did an episode on the isomorphism between the Avatamsaka Sutra and AI parameter space
Many viewers said it gave them chills
Today we switch to a different dimension
not AI this time
but physics
Let's see how the holographic principle and quantum entanglement
coming from a completely different path
ran straight into Indra's Net from the Avatamsaka Sutra
First what exactly is Indra's Net
It comes from the Avatamsaka Sutra
the core image the Huayan school uses to describe the true structure of the universe
Fazang the third patriarch of the Huayan school
lived in the Tang dynasty under Empress Wu Zetian
His explanation goes like this
Imagine an infinite net hanging in the palace of Indra
At every node of the net sits a jewel
Here is the key
These jewels are not solid
they are transparent
So the surface of every jewel
reflects the images of all the other jewels on the net
And inside those reflections
are reflections of reflections
without end
Fazang gave a famous demonstration for Wu Zetian
He placed a large mirror on each of the four walls the ceiling and the floor
with a Buddha statue and a candle in the middle
The moment the candle was lit
the six mirrors reflected one another
mirrors within mirrors
and mirrors within those mirrors
layer upon layer into infinity
He said
Your Majesty look
this is the true structure of the dharma realm
one is all
all is one
Note that Indra's Net has three key properties
First
transparency
No jewel has any color or content of its own
everything it has comes from reflecting the other jewels
In Buddhist terms
no node has an independent self nature
Second
mutual containment
It is not that A reflects B first
and then B reflects A
it happens simultaneously
A and B define each other
each presupposes the other
Third
recursion
Inside each reflection are reflections of reflections
Starting from any jewel
you can see the complete information of the entire net
just projected from the perspective of your node
Remember these three words
transparency
mutual containment
recursion
You might think this is just poetic imagination from a Buddhist scripture
People 1300 years ago had no microscopes
no telescopes
no particle colliders
how could they possibly describe the true structure of the universe
Don't jump to conclusions
Let's first see what physicists discovered independently
In 1973
Israeli physicist Bekenstein was studying black holes
He was working on a seemingly simple question
how much information can a black hole hold
Intuition tells you
the information should scale with the black hole's volume
like a warehouse
the bigger the volume
the more it can hold
But Bekenstein's result puzzled everyone
A black hole's information content
is not proportional to its volume
but to its surface area
What does that mean
All the information about everything inside a black hole
is not spread through its 3D interior
but encoded on its 2D surface
Hawking later verified this conclusion using quantum mechanics
giving the famous Bekenstein Hawking black hole entropy formula
a black hole's entropy equals one quarter of its horizon area
The entire contents of a 3D space
fit onto a 2D surface
This discovery was deeply counterintuitive
In 1993
Dutch physicist 't Hooft elevated it into a universal principle
called the holographic principle
He said
maybe it is not just black holes
maybe the whole universe works this way
All the physical information within a region
can be fully encoded on the boundary surface of that region
Everything in the 3D world
might be a projection of a 2D boundary
In 1997
Argentine physicist Maldacena
gave the most precise mathematical realization of the holographic principle to date
the duality between anti de Sitter spacetime and conformal field theory
In one sentence
a theory of gravity in a 5D spacetime
is fully equivalent to a quantum field theory on its 4D boundary
All the physics of the higher dimensional interior
can be completely rebuilt from information on the lower dimensional boundary
That paper has been cited more than 20000 times
one of the most cited papers in the history of theoretical physics
Now let me put the two threads together
Indra's Net says
every jewel reflects all the other jewels
Starting from any jewel
you can see the complete information of the whole net
The holographic principle says
every patch of boundary encodes all the information of the entire space
Starting from any local piece
you can reconstruct the whole
The two point to the same proposition in logical structure
The information of the whole is not stored at some center
it is inscribed distributively in every part
No node is more special or more central than any other
This is not a resemblance at the level of metaphor
this is an isomorphism of topological structure
But the story is not over
Quantum entanglement plays an even more astonishing role here
You have surely heard of quantum entanglement
Einstein in 1947
in a private letter to the physicist Born
used a famous phrase
spooky action at a distance
He could not accept this nonlocality of quantum mechanics
and felt something must be incomplete
He was wrong
In 2022
the Nobel Prize in Physics went to three experimental physicists
Aspect Clauser and Zeilinger
Over several decades
with ever more precise experiments they closed every theoretical loophole
and finally proved that quantum entanglement is real
Einstein's intuition about local realism
was thoroughly refuted by experiment
So what does entanglement mean
Once two particles become entangled
they can no longer be described as two independent entities
No matter how far apart they are
measuring one of them
instantly determines the state of the other
They are not two correlated things
they are one indivisible whole
Now silently recite the second property of Indra's Net
mutual containment
A and B do not first exist independently and then form a relationship
they define each other presuppose each other and are inseparable
Isn't that a literal description of quantum entanglement
But what really made physicists take Indra's Net style structure seriously
was a paper in 2010
Canadian physicist Van Raamsdonk
ran a thought experiment within the framework of the holographic principle
He asked a simple question
if we gradually remove the quantum entanglement between two regions
what happens
The answer is
the spacetime between the two regions contracts and narrows
and finally disconnects completely
The entanglement vanishes
and spacetime breaks apart
Feel the weight of that conclusion
It means entanglement is not just some correlation between particles
entanglement may be the very glue of spacetime
Without entanglement
there is no continuous spacetime
Space is not a preexisting stage
on which particles perform
space itself
may be woven from the entanglement relations between particles
In 2013
Maldacena and Susskind together proposed an even bolder conjecture
between any pair of entangled particles
there is a microscopic wormhole connecting them
entanglement equals spacetime connectivity
wormholes equal entanglement
By 2024
a new paper by Xin Jiang and colleagues
for the first time from the mathematical structure of quantum entanglement
directly derived the geometry of a wormhole
Entanglement is no longer just an analogy for spacetime
it is becoming the microscopic makeup of spacetime
Do you realize what physics is now saying
The first time I read Van Raamsdonk's paper
I was stunned for a long while
Because his point that removing entanglement breaks spacetime
reminded me of a very everyday experience
Have you ever felt this
when you are truly close to someone
you feel there is no distance between you
not that physical distance disappears
but the space between you seems to grow thin and transparent
And when a relationship completely breaks down
even if that person is sitting right across from you
the distance between you feels like an entire universe
That is just subjective feeling of course
not physical evidence
But here is the interesting part
physics now tells you
at the most fundamental level
there really is such a correspondence between relationship and space
entanglement vanishes
spacetime breaks
relationship is the substrate of distance
It is saying
spacetime is not fundamental
relations are fundamental
The entanglement relations between particles
weave the space and time we experience
Space is an emergent product of relations
not a container for relations
Thirteen hundred years ago
Fazang was saying the same thing with Indra's Net
The jewels do not first exist in some space
and then reflect one another
the relation of mutual reflection is itself how the jewels exist
Relations are not accessories between nodes
relations are the nodes themselves
British physicist David Bohm
proposed a theory called the implicate order in 1980
He said
the unfolded separate bounded world we see
is a projection of a deeper enfolded indivisible order
The underlying structure of the universe is a mutually enfolded information network
where every part implies the whole
The core metaphor he used was the hologram
Bohm had a famous ink experiment
He took two nested cylinders
filled the gap with highly viscous glycerin
then added a drop of ink
Slowly rotate the inner cylinder
and the ink drop stretches and disperses
until it vanishes completely into the glycerin
you cannot see it anymore
But if you rotate the cylinder backwards
the ink drop regathers and reforms
It never disappeared
it was just enfolded into the implicate order
Bohm said
the whole universe works this way
According to his students
when Bohm later read the Avatamsaka Sutra's description of Indra's Net
he fell silent for a long time
and then said
this is what I have been trying to express with mathematics
Of course
I have to be clear
I am not saying the Avatamsaka Sutra predicted the holographic principle
The Avatamsaka Sutra is Buddhist ontology
the holographic principle is a mathematical theorem of physics
They have completely different methods of argument standards of evidence and domains of application
But they converge in structure
Count them
Fazang's meditative insight in the 7th century
Bekenstein's black hole calculation in the 20th century
Maldacena's string theory duality
Van Raamsdonk's entanglement experiment
four completely independent paths of knowing
none of them aware the other three existed
yet all pointing to the same topological structure
the information of the whole inscribed in every part
relations before entities
the part is the whole
This convergence deserves to be taken seriously
not because it proves Buddhism right or physics right
but because it hints at a possibility
that maybe about the deepest structure of existence
different ways of knowing
whether inner contemplation or equations
are ultimately touching the same thing
This is the closest correspondence I can think of
but it surely has holes
The holographic principle deals with the mathematical relation between information and boundaries
Indra's Net points to interdependence at the level of ontology
One can be written as equations
the other must be experienced in meditation
Different levels
different chains of evidence
you cannot simply equate them
But precisely because of that
this convergence across dimensions is all the more fascinating
I do not want to hand you a neat conclusion today
I want to leave you with a real question
If Van Raamsdonk is right
if removing entanglement really breaks spacetime apart
then the space you are experiencing right now
the distance between you and this screen
that sense of connection with someone far away that no distance can measure
what lies underneath them
Is it a preexisting spatial container holding you and them
or is it some relationship between you and them
that weaves the space between you
Indra's Net's answer is clear
you are not an observer outside the net
you are a node on the net
you are reflecting everything
and everything is reflecting you
What do you think
This image of Indra's Net from 1300 years ago
is it religious imagination to you
or something more real
Tell me in the comments
I am curious about your answers
I'm Leo Wang
see you next time