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exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Dr. Amit Goswami

What quantum physics tells us about
the scientific rediscovery of God.
How does a non-material God, without
exchange of energy, interact with
material objects in a 3-D world?

 

 

return to the main-page article on "God"

 

 

 

biographical information from amitgoswami.org

Theoretical Quantum Physicist Dr. Amit Goswami is a retired full professor from the University of Oregon’s Department of Physics where he served from 1968 to 1997. He is a pioneer of the new paradigm of science called “science within consciousness,” an idea he explicated in his seminal book, The Self-Aware Universe, where he also solved the quantum measurement problem elucidating the famous observer effect...

In his most recent book, The Everything Answer Book (April 2017), Goswami’s basic premise is that quantum physics is not only the future of science, but it is also the key to understanding consciousness, death, God, psychology, and the meaning of life.  In short, quantum physics offers a theory of everything.

In his private life Goswami is a practitioner of spirituality and transformation. He calls himself a quantum activist. He appeared in the film What the Bleep Do We Know!? and its sequel Down the Rabbit Hole as well as the documentaries Dalai Lama Renaissance and the award winning The Quantum Activist.

 

Editor's note:

Few subjects command greater importance than Amit Goswami's quantum mechanics. No one can claim to be an educated person without understanding the basics of Goswami's assertions.

Most high school - college, as well - physics courses focus, in the main, upon a Newtonian perspective of determinism, cause-and-effect, and predictability. There's much to be said for Newton's paradigm: it took us safely to the Moon and back and works well in certain contexts, especially, the macro-world. However, as we've come to see in the last hundred years, the domain of quantum mechanics knows little of this well-ordered life.

 

"the only mystery" of science

A good place to begin one's investigations is the classic Double-Slit experiment. The results will rock your world. Nobel Laureate Dr. Richard Feynman, speaking of the Double-Slit Experiment:

"We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible to explain in any classical [Newtonian] way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery."

 

Editor's note:

The above preliminary discussion to Dr. Goswami's work has been excised from an "Afterlife" article featuring his research in relation to consciousness and human post-mortem survival. I would highly recommend that the reader review that material first as primer before proceeding here. 

 

 

The article below features a brief synopsis of Dr. Goswami's book, "God Is Not Dead," a discussion of the scientific evidence for the existence of God based on research in quantum mechanics. No mere summary can do justice to Goswami's important work; therefore, you'll want to read his book for yourself.

 

 

How does a non-material God, via downward causation, interact with material objects in a 3-D world?

Any interaction with the material world takes an exchange of energy. But the energy of the material world is always conserved. No energy ever flows out to God or comes in from God. Therefore, how is it possible for God to interact with the world?

This is called the problem of dualism; that of, subject and object. In this view, God is separate from the world. This is the God of popular conception, of the traditional world religions.

 

upward vs. downward causation 

 

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 of matter. And causation 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 causation moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call upward causation. So in this view, what human beings think of as 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, God, as Universal 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.

 

 

Materialists claim that "God" and consciousness is an emergent epiphenomenon [secondary trait] of the brain, produced by the brain - that, matter is the ground of all being. However, the evidence produced by quantum physics reveals a different ordering: the brain derives from consciousness; brain exists within consciousness - and consciousness is the ground of all being.

  • "Consciousness is primary. Brain does not do consciousness, consciousness does the brain." Dr. Amit Goswami

 

 

 

How is God related to consciousness? 

Downward causation not only interacts with but "creates" the world. We learn from the "Double Slit" experiment (see above) that consciousness collapses wave-forms, turns them into particles, thereby, manifesting matter in the world. This could be called a creation-process and the attending consciousness might be viewed as God.

What are the implications? Observation - that is, a Perceiving Consciousness - determines what manifests as "reality" or does not. Without this Monitoring Awareness, all things remain in a state of infinite possibility - what Werner Heisenberg called potentia - and come into materialistic being only when a choice is made, when an Observing Presence collapses wave-forms to produce particles. When this takes place on the cosmic level, it is not unreasonable to refer to this Witnessing Awareness as God.

 

If choices collapse wave-forms into material particles, does this mean that we, ordinary people, create our own reality?

The universe may be plastic in our hands, required to conform to our intentions - but, only to sacred intentions; only those intentions independent of the Small Ego.

Dr. Goswami offers a striking everyday-example of this principle:

 

"We create our own reality, but there is a subtlety in consciousness. We do not create reality in our ordinary state of consciousness, but in a non-ordinary state of consciousness. This becomes clear when you ponder the paradox of Wigner's friend. Eugene Wigner was the Nobel laureate physicist who first thought of the paradox.
 

 
"Imagine that Wigner is approaching a quantum traffic light with two possibilities, red and green; at the same time his friend is approaching the same light from the perpendicular road. Being busy Americans, they both choose green. Unfortunately, their choices are contradictory; if both choices materialize at the same time, there would be pandemonium. Obviously, only one of their choices counts, but whose?"

 

When two Egos collide, each seeking private and narrow interests, someone will be disappointed - such is the state of the world.

Only the choices of the "non-ordinary state of consciousness" create reality - only the higher-self choices, the sacred intentions, those of one's better nature - not that of the Small Ego - will prevail and mold the universe!

We have learned that there is but One Primal Consciousness in the universe. That "ordinary state" is the world of the dysfunctional Small Ego, with the "non-ordinary" as the True Self, that part of ourselves linked to Universal Consciousness.

Consider the profound implications: The selfish Small Ego, ever grasping for more, attempts to create reality with its choices - but cannot; not in an all-inclusive way. The world is chock-a-block with billions of individual yapping egos, each attempting to gain advantage. How temporary, mercifully so, are these futile efforts.

However, when we look at life from a higher perspective, having allied ourselves with Universal Consciousness, we find ourselves energized with altruistic purpose; to borrow Dr. Frederic Myers' phrase, we become "ambitious for the sake of others." But, when we do, this spirit of beneficence is properly viewed not just as individual good intention, but now part of something much larger - the very spirit of love and service that created the universe for the ultimate benefit and happiness of all.

Stated succinctly, there is but One Consciousness in the cosmos. Our choice is to either find resonance with it or to succumb to base, one-against-all survival instincts.

 

Quantum nonlocality explains how a non-material God interacts with material objects in a 3-D world.

Dr. Goswami:

"Quantum physics gives us an amazing principle - nonlocality. The principle of locality says that all communication must proceed through local signals that have a speed limit. Einstein established this limit as the speed of light (the enormous but finite speed of 299,792,458 m/s). So, this locality principle, a limitation imposed by Einsteinian thinking, precludes instantaneous communication via signals [e.g. radio signals].

"And yet quantum objects are able to influence one another instantly [even across the universe], once they interact and become correlated through quantum nonlocality. This was demonstrated by the physicist Alain Aspect and his collaborators (1982) for a pair of photons. The data are not seen as a contradiction to Einsteinian thinking once we recognize quantum nonlocality as signal-less interconnectedness outside local space and time."

 

 

Editor's note: for further discussion on nonlocality, see Dr. Dean Radin's "Entangled Minds," a plethora of scientific investigations; most interesting, however, are the studies concerning those sharing a love-bond, as they affect each other across time and space, instantaneously!

 

 

In chapter five of "God Is Not Dead" Dr. Goswami reviews several scientific experiments offering hard evidence of nonlocality. These demonstrate the recently revealed fact that when people interact on a level of "non-ordinary" consciousness - that is, not influenced by the Small Ego, but are linked to Universal Consciousness - there exists a "signal-less" communication, without the exchange of energy.

 

In Dr. Goswami's DVD, there is
a section that well explains
the nonlocality experiments.

 

And by these studies, in a manner that satisfies science, we begin to understand how a non-material God interacts with a material world. 

 

 

 

Editor's last word:

"Consciousness is the ground of all being" because consciousness collapses wave-forms, transforming them into particles, and thereby draws from Potentia a material form to manifest in the world! This is "downward causation."

All things of the universe exist within consciousness - not, consciousness as just another element within the universe, which is the view of materialists: "upward causation."

Goswami suggests that, as consciousness is necessary to precipitate matter, such process becomes evidence for the existence of a supreme power, the Great Consciousness, the original superintending awareness of the cosmos.

All this makes a ready link to our subject of Afterlife. We are not primarily physical beings, living out transitory and ephemeral lives; in our deepest persons, we are linked to, and share in, the Great Consciousness. As this sacred sense of Awareness rests not upon material foundation, it will survive the disintegration of the outward, material shell.

No one, in quietest moments, especially, upon peering into the dazzling starry night, has ever failed to sense an affinity with the Great Consciousness.