Quantum Self vs Predetermism of Ramesh

[Guest guest]

The Self-Aware Universe

 

An Interview with Amit Goswami

 

by Craig Hamilton - What is Enlightment?

 

WIE: In your book The Self-Aware Universe you speak about the need

for a paradigm shift. Could you talk a bit about how you conceive of

that shift? From what to what?

 

Amit Goswami: The current worldview has it that everything is made

of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles

of matter, the basic constituents—building blocks—of matter. And

cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or

elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make

molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the

way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the

elementary particles. This is the belief—all cause moves from the

elementary particles. This is what we call "upward causation." So in

this view, what human beings—you and I—think of as our free will

does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary

phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal

power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an

illusion. This is the current paradigm.

 

Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with

consciousness.That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In

this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other

words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are

acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also

has causal potency—it does not deny that there is causal power from

elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation—but in

addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows

up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral

decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward

causation by consciousness.

 

WIE: In your book you refer to this new paradigm as "monistic

idealism." And you also suggest that science seems to be verifying

what a lot of mystics have said throughout history—that science's

current findings seem to be parallel to the essence of the perennial

spiritual teaching.

 

AG: It is the spiritual teaching. It is not just parallel. The idea

that consciousness is the ground of being is the basis of all

spiritual traditions, as it is for the philosophy of monistic

idealism—although I have given it a somewhat new name. The reason

for my choice of the name is that, in the West, there is a

philosophy called "idealism" which is opposed to the philosophy

of "material realism," which holds that only matter is real.

 

Idealism says no, consciousness is the only real thing. But in the

West that kind of idealism has usually meant something that is

really dualism—that is, consciousness and matter are separate. So,

by monistic idealism, I made it clear that, no, I don't mean that

dualistic kind of Western idealism, but really a monistic idealism,

which has existed in the West, but only in the esoteric spiritual

traditions. Whereas in the East this is the mainstream philosophy.

In Buddhism, or in Hinduism where it is called Vedanta, or in

Taoism, this is the philosophy of everyone. But in the West this is

a very esoteric tradition, only known and adhered to by very astute

philosophers, the people who have really delved deeply into the

nature of reality.

 

WIE: What you are saying is that modern science, from a completely

different angle—not assuming anything about the existence of a

spiritual dimension of life—has somehow come back around, and is

finding itself in agreement with that view as a result of its own

discoveries.

 

AG: That's right. And this is not entirely unexpected. Starting from

the beginning of quantum physics, which began in the year 1900 and

then became full-fledged in 1925 when the equations of quantum

mechanics were discovered, quantum physics has given us indications

that the worldview might change. Staunch materialist physicists have

loved to compare the classical worldview and the quantum worldview.

 

Of course, they wouldn't go so far as to abandon the idea that there

is only upward causation and that matter is supreme, but the fact

remains that they saw in quantum physics some great paradigm

changing potential. And then what happened was that, starting in

1982, results started coming in from laboratory experiments in

physics. That is the year when, in France, Alain Aspect and his

collaborators performed the great experiment that conclusively

established the veracity of the spiritual notions, and particularly

the notion of transcendence. Should I go into a little bit of detail

about Aspect's experiment?

 

WIE: Yes, please do.

 

AG: To give a little background, what had been happening was that

for many years quantum physics had been giving indications that

there are levels of reality other than the material level. How it

started happening first was that quantum objects—objects in quantum

physics—began to be looked upon as waves of possibility. Now,

initially people thought, "Oh, they are just like regular waves."

But very soon it was found out that, no, they are not waves in space

and time. They cannot be called waves in space and time at all—they

have properties which do not jibe with those of ordinary waves. So

they began to be recognized as waves in potential, waves of

possibility, and the potential was recognized as transcendent,

beyond matter somehow.

 

But the fact that there is transcendent potential was not very clear

for a long time. Then Aspect's experiment verified that this is not

just theory, there really is transcendent potential, objects really

do have connections outside of space and time—outside of space and

time! What happens in this experiment is that an atom emits two

quanta of light, called photons, going opposite ways, and somehow

these photons affect one another's behavior at a distance, without

exchanging any signals through space. Notice that: without

exchanging any signals through space but instantly affecting each

other. Instantaneously.

 

Now Einstein showed long ago that two objects can never affect each

other instantly in space and time because everything must travel

with a maximum speed limit, and that speed limit is the speed of

light. So any influence must travel, if it travels through space,

taking a finite time. This is called the idea of "locality." Every

signal is supposed to be local in the sense that it must take a

finite time to travel through space. And yet, Aspect's photons—the

photons emitted by the atom in Aspect's experiment—influence one

another, at a distance, without exchanging signals because they are

doing it instantaneously—they are doing it faster than the speed of

light. And therefore it follows that the influence could not have

traveled through space. Instead the influence must belong to a

domain of reality that we must recognize as the transcendent domain

of reality.

 

WIE: That's fascinating. Would most physicists agree with that

interpretation of his experiment?

 

AG: Well, physicists must agree with this interpretation of this

experiment. Many times of course, physicists will take the following

point of view: they will say, "Well, yeah sure, experiments. But

this relationship between particles really isn't important. We

mustn't look into any of the consequences of this transcendent

domain—if it can even be interpreted that way." In other words, they

try to minimize the impact of this and still try to hold on to the

idea that matter is supreme.

 

But in their heart they know, as is very evidenced. In 1984 or '85,

at the American Physical Society meeting at which I was present, it

is said that one physicist was heard saying to another physicist

that, after Aspect's experiment, anyone who does not believe that

something is really strange about the world must have rocks in his

head.

 

WIE: So what you are saying is that from your point of view, which a

number of others share, it is somehow obvious that one would have to

bring in the idea of a transcendent dimension to really understand

this.

 

AG: Yes, it is. Henry Stapp, who is a physicist at the University of

California at Berkeley, says this quite explicitly in one of his

papers written in 1977, that things outside of space and time affect

things inside space and time. There's just no question that that

happens in the realm of quantum physics when you are dealing with

quantum objects. Now of course, the crux of the matter is, the

surprising thing is, that we are always dealing with quantum objects

because it turns out that quantum physics is the physics of every

object. Whether it's submicroscopic or it's macroscopic, quantum

physics is the only physics we've got. So although it's more

apparent for photons, for electrons, for the submicroscopic objects,

our belief is that all reality,all manifest reality, all matter, is

governed by the same laws. And if that is so, then this experiment

is telling us that we should change our worldview because we, too,

are quantum objects.

 

WIE: These are fascinating discoveries which have inspired a lot of

people. A number of books have already attempted to make the link

between physics and mysticism. Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics

and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters have both reached many,

many people. In your book, though, you mention that there was

something that you felt had not yet been covered which you feel is

your unique contribution to all this. Could you say something about

what you are doing that is different from what has been done before

in this area?

 

AG: I'm glad that you asked that question. This should be clarified

and I will try to explicate it as clearly as I can. The early work,

like The Tao of Physics, has been very important for the history of

science. However, these early works, in spite of supporting the

spiritual aspect of human beings, all basically held on to the

material view of the world nevertheless. In other words, they did

not challenge the material realists' view that everything is made up

of matter. That view was never put to any challenge by any of these

early books. In fact, my book was the first one which challenged it

squarely and which was still based on a rigorous explication in

scientific terms. In other words, the idea that consciousness is the

ground of being, of course, has existed in psychology, as

transpersonal psychology, but outside of transpersonal psychology no

tradition of science and no scientist has seen it so clearly.

It was my good fortune to recognize it within quantum physics, to

recognize that all the paradoxes of quantum physics can be solved if

we accept consciousness as the ground of being. So that was my

unique contribution and, of course, this has paradigm-shifting

potential because now we can truly integrate science and

spirituality. In other words, with Capra and Zukav—although their

books are very good—because they held on to a fundamentally

materialist paradigm, the paradigm is not shifting, nor is there any

real reconciliation between spirituality and science. Because if

everything is ultimately material, all causal efficacy must come

from matter. So consciousness is recognized, spirituality is

recognized, but only as causal epiphenomena, or secondary phenomena.

And an epiphenomenal consciousness is not very good. I mean, it's

not doing anything. So, although these books acknowledge our

spirituality, the spirituality is ultimately coming from some sort

of material interaction.

 

But that's not the spirituality that Jesus talked about. That's not

the spirituality that Eastern mystics were so ecstatic about. That's

not the spirituality where a mystic recognizes and says, "I now know

what reality is like, and this takes away all the unhappiness that

one ever had. This is infinite, this is joy, this is consciousness."

This kind of exuberant statement that mystics make could not be made

on the basis of epiphenomenal consciousness. It can be made only

when one recognizes the ground of being itself, when one cognizes

directly that One is All.

 

Now, an epiphenomenal human being would not have any such cognition.

It would not make any sense to cognize that you are All. So that is

what I am saying. So long as science remains on the basis of the

materialist worldview, however much you try to accommodate spiritual

experiences in terms of parallels or in terms of chemicals in the

brain or what have you, you are not really giving up the old

paradigm. You are giving up the old paradigm and fully reconciling

with spirituality only when you establish science on the basis of

the fundamental spiritual notion that consciousness is the ground of

all being. That is what I have done in my book, and that is the

beginning. But already there are some other books that are

recognizing this too.

 

WIE: So there are people corroborating your ideas?

 

AG: There are people who are now coming out and recognizing the same

thing, that this view is the correct way to go to explain quantum

physics and also to develop science in the future. In other words,

the present science has shown not only quantum paradoxes but also

has shown real incompetence in explaining paradoxical and anomalous

phenomena, such as parapsychology, the paranormal—even creativity.

And even traditional subjects, like perception or biological

evolution, have much to explain that these materialist theories

don't explain. To give you one example, in biology there is what is

called the theory of punctuated equilibrium. What that means is that

evolution is not only slow, as Darwin perceived, but there are also

rapid epochs of evolution, which are called "punctuation marks." But

traditional biology has no explanation for this.

 

However, if we do science on the basis of consciousness, on the

primacy of consciousness, then we can see in this phenomenon

creativity, real creativity of consciousness. In other words, we can

truly see that consciousness is operating creatively even in

biology, even in the evolution of species. And so we can now fill up

these gaps that conventional biology cannot explain with ideas which

are essentially spiritual ideas, such as consciousness as the

creator of the world.

 

WIE: This brings to mind the subtitle of your book, How

Consciousness Creates the Material World. This is obviously quite a

radical idea. Could you explain a bit more concretely how this

actually happens in your opinion?

 

AG: Actually, it's the easiest thing to explain, because in quantum

physics, as I said earlier, objects are not seen as definite things,

as we are used to seeing them. Newton taught us that objects are

definite things, they can be seen all the time, moving in definite

trajectories. Quantum physics doesn't depict objects that way at

all.In quantum physics, objects are seen as possibilities,

possibility waves. Right? So then the question arises, what converts

possibility into actuality?Because, when we see, we only see actual

events. That's starting with us. When you see a chair, you see an

actual chair, you don't see a possible chair.

 

WIE: Right—I hope so.

 

AG: We all hope so. Now this is called the "quantum measurement

paradox." It is a paradox because who are we to do this conversion?

Because after all, in the materialist paradigm we don't have any

causal efficacy. We are nothing but the brain, which is made up of

atoms and elementary particles. So how can a brain which is made up

of atoms and elementary particles convert a possibility wave that it

itself is? It itself is made up of the possibility waves of atoms

and elementary particles, so it cannot convert its own possibility

wave into actuality. This is called a paradox. Now in the new view,

consciousness is the ground of being. So who converts possibility

into actuality? Consciousness does, because consciousness does not

obey quantum physics. Consciousness is not made of material.

Consciousness is transcendent. Do you see the paradigm-changing view

right here—how consciousness can be said to create the material

world?The material world of quantum physics is just possibility. It

is consciousness, through the conversion of possibility into

actuality, that creates what we see manifest. In other words,

consciousness creates the manifest world.

 

 

second page: http://www.twm.co.nz/goswam2.htm

 

 

his new book the Quantum Self ponders on a predetermed idea ...