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Title: The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World by Maggie Goswami, Richard E. Reed, Amit Goswami, Fred Alan Wolf ISBN: 0-87477-798-4 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: March, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.89 (19 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Consciousness Explained Philosophically
Comment: As a non PhD Biologist, which in this case makes me an interested layman, I may not be qualified to review this book. However, as a reader that purchased the book with the expectation that I would gain new insights in to the nature of consciousness let me share my thoughts with you.
The first portion of the book is a crash course in Quantum Physics using various dialogues to make a multitude of points. I am somewhat familiar with the cast of characters of the history of Quantum Physics and the major eastern religious texts and I wish the author had of just stated his case. But then I was soon to realize that the book was not about consciousness, but his theory called "monistic idealism".
I promised myself, in my thirties, that I would go wherever my intellect and curiosity could take me, which is why I finished the book. Now in my middle sixties, I followed his many logical arguments and his quotations from a wide variety of philosophers, psychologists, scientists and religious texts.
It is a wide-ranging book and in all fairness I did gain some new and interesting insights.
However, when the author gives his definition of "Quantum self" as "The primary subject modality of the self beyond ego in which resides real freedom, creativity, and nonlocality of the of the human experience", I decided I felt more comfortable thinking about human consciousness actually being hugged between groups of nerve synapses deep within the human brain.
Rating: 4
Summary: Monistic Idealism Creates Confidence In Your Consciousness
Comment: I've recently returned from a journey to the rain country of western Oregon where I discovered "monistic idealism." It's about to become a philosophy of choice in the consciousness revolution.
I gathered this intelligence at the Eugene home of Amit Goswami, Professor of Physics at the Institute of Theoretical Studies at the University of Oregon. I arranged this special interview because of Goswami's new book, The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. (Tarcher/Putnam). I wanted to meet the person who authored such a book and to make sure I was correctly understanding its many profundities.
At first glance, the book appears to be one of those "new science" books that have become so popular. It does describe quite well the basic experiments of quantum physics, the ones that produce such paradoxes as the dual identity (wave and particle) of electrons and their ability to communicate at a distance with each other instantaneously (non-locality). But rather than simply leaving us with a "Gee, whiz, isn't this incredible?" impression that the real world isn't as we assumed, Goswami boldly, yet very thoughtfully, introduces us to monistic idealism and suggests we accept it as a foundation for a new, and quite compelling, worldview.
Monistic idealism is the academically correct name given to a philosophical position that once was considered pre-scientific. It existed before the advent of what philosophers today label as materialistic dualism,. or what we might call the current official scientific world view. Materialistic dualism is the assumption that physical matter is the primary reality and that mind is separate from, but dependent upon, matter. In this view, mind is a secondary phenomena, or, to use the favored term, is an "epiphenomenon," meaning that it is some kind of separate, extra stuff that bubbles harmlessly out of brains. Monistic idealism, however, turns things around. In this position (dating back to Plato in the West, to Hinduism and Buddhism in the East), there is but one mind and it is the primary reality. Matter is an expression of mind, not separate from mind, but mind manifested materially. The worldview expressed in Edgar Cayce's psychic readings is a perfect example of monistic idealism. Cayce's formula, "Spirit is the Life, Mind is the Builder, the Material is the Result," for example, gives consciousness a very creative role in manifesting the material world.
Goswami's book basically says, "Look, if you'll adopt the viewpoint of monistic idealism, then everything--the paradoxes of quantum physics, the puzzle of individual consciousnesss and free will, the enigma of psychic abilities, the universals in spiritual teachings--everything falls into place!" His book is a journey of creative thinking, providing the most credible and complete tour of the worldview we call "The New Paradigm" that I've yet read.
One of the early warning signs of this new paradigm, which Goswami refers to as the "consciousness revolution," was Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: The observer affects the observed. The scientist looks into the microscope at nature to find nature responding to the observation. How did nature know there was a scientist looking? It takes an electron, it turns out, to know an electron. When the scientist flashes a light on atomic structures, the photons of light disrupt the atoms observed. This simplistic explanation, however, is misleading because it hides the greater truth. Goswami points out that we habitually use materialism to assume that there is a fixed material reality--independent of the observer--one that is simply rebuffed by our gaze. Reality is not fixed, however, and that is where the observing consciousness makes a difference. There is literally a quantum leap of creativity that comes into play as the observer, searching for the material electron "thing" within the etheric electronic wave activity, forces the many possibilities into a single, manifested actuality by the very act of observation The quantum leap is, according to Goswami, like an act of grace--creative, unpredictable, synchronistic and "non-local" (psychic). In talking with him, I realized that it took a quantum leap in my own imagination to fully digest all the implications of monistic idealism. It was easy to understand the ethical implication that we each have to take responsibility for our choices. Goswami emphasizes that it make a difference which ideals we live by, because they determine which potentialities in the unmanifest, quantum mind will materialize through the channel of our individual lives.
Individuality, by the way, especially in the context of a universal consciousness, becomes an intriguing question. Edgar Cayce once had a dream envisioning the mind as being like a single star with spokes radiating out to form individually functioning conscious minds. This model expresses exactly the transcendent, unitary mind assumed by monistic idealism. The spokes even anticipate Goswami's formulation as to how and why the unitary mind creates the impression of separate individual minds.
Why, if consciousness is truly unitive and singular, do we have the experience of separate minds? The brain, according to Goswami, is a measuring instrument. It collapses the non-local (a.k.a., infinite and eternal) quantum mind into concreteness and specificity as manifested through individual experience. Our individual "minds" are necessary to "realize" (make real) the material world. We are co-creators of reality, yet created ourselves to help reality become aware of itself. Goswami refers to the theory of "
Rating: 5
Summary: Spirituality from the perspective of physics.... amazing!
Comment: It has been a long time since I was so happy reading a book.
I grew up in Christian Science. As a Christian Scientist I would not normally approach the subject of spirituality from the perspective of physics. However, even though Goswami doesn't OVERTLY talk about spirituality per se, I was amazed at how you can get to virtually the same conclusions on God, Life, and universal consciousness as Mary Baker Eddy taught and wrote about in "Science and Health" about 130 years ago.
I hope that "The Self-Aware Universe" and Dr. Goswami don't get burdened with erroneous labels of "cultism". Maybe the Science will be a little more accepted in this day and age.
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Title: Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot ISBN: 0060922583 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 06 May, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness: A Physical Basis for Immaterialism by Samuel Avery ISBN: 0964629100 Publisher: Compari Pub. Date: December, 1995 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: Mysticism and the New Physics by Michael Talbot ISBN: 0140193286 Publisher: Arkana Pub. Date: August, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life by Evan Harris, Phd Walker, Evan Harris Walker ISBN: 0738204366 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: December, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Mind into Matter: A New Alchemy of Science and Spirit by Fred Alan Wolf ISBN: 0966132769 Publisher: Moment Point Press, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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