Rating: 
Summary: Well-meaning, but vapid
Review: Like many New Age books, The Self-Aware Universe is a confusing and often confused mixture of scientific knowledge, recycled spirituality, good intentions, and gobbledygook. Goswami tells a good story, but his attempt to justify an idealist worldview based on the paradoxes of quantum mechanics is tenuous at best, and his efforts to explain consciousness in quantum terms frequently amounts to no more than applying a new descriptive label to recondite mental phenomena--a strategy that does little to augment our understanding. Goswami also often seems unaware of the inherent difficulties and ambiguities in descriptive language, and his naive treatment of many issues leaves key questions unaddressed. Interested readers would do better to pick up The Embodied Mind, by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, a lucid and cogently argued book that eschews speculation and grand theories to present a grounded and illuminating exploration--also informed by a Buddhist perspective--of the relationship between abstract cognitive concepts and existential realities.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the BEST
Review: Not much more to say about this one. This is a great book. I would recommend this one to anyone. Especially those nonspiritual people. I am a scientist and science lead me back to the spirit. This was one of the major conversion factors that got me into my now everlasting spiritual studies. I recommend the brilliant works of Fred Alan Wolfe.
Rating:
Summary: A book that brings light of sciecne into the spiritual world
Review: Professor Goswami is a guru - he brought light into the darkness. This book built a bridge between the spiritual world and the scientific world. It gave me permission to be scientific and spiritual at the same time.
Rating: 
Summary: Ignore much of the negative reviews
Review: Really good books always challenge you, and the response to the challenge can be quite varied.Some people respond with a wary eye but an open mind. Others don't care. Still others enthusiastically embrace any challenge and work with it to see where they get to in the end. Then there are the people who just as enthusiastically resist any open challenge to an established, "gut" idea. These people respond irrationally, with fear and excessive caution. Many of the reviews of this book fall into the latter category. Yes, Goswami's interpretation of quantum mechanics has been disputed. What this has to do with anything is rather irrelevent. To the gentleman who named Polkinghorne by name, Polkinghorne's interpretation of physics has been challenged numerous times as well. There is no one interpretation physicists agree on. Look at the results and you can even see that not all of them agree the Earth exists! Further, this gentleman points out that the reformulation of Descartes' Cogito argument could well be "God chooses, therefore I am". How silly this is supposed to be a criticism. Anyone who understands the book knows that Goswami is talking about a transcendent mind, not a personal one. He IS talking about God. It is true that Goswami does not hold up every so-called "paranormal" event as evidence of his idealist philosophy. Again, this is irrelevent. Science always progresses this way--a new model appears and allows us to explain something we previously though impossible, but it does not logically follow that everything we thought impossible is now explainable by the model, now does it? I was ready to blast Goswami's point about the OBE (Out-of-body-experience) because I read the Amazon.com review that declares Goswami debunks the OBE because it suggests dualism (which it does not, at least necessarily). This is not at all what Goswami does--what he says in the book is that the appearance that the mind has escaped the body is false, but the event is not. Goswami basically points out that if all that exists is (fundamentally) mind, then the OBE is merely a "shift of perception" if you will in the universal Mind. If I sit across from my friend, there is no difference between perceiving my body through her mind or through my own, because our minds are really the same since both derive from and reside within the transcendent mind--it is the assumption that they are not which leads to the mistaken belief the mind has somehow "left" the body. Goswami makes a fine argument for demolishing material realism. It's not that hard, to be honest, because you have to be a blockhead to be a materialist (pun intended). Goswami's monistic idealism is certainly not the only possible scientific viewpoint (there are dozens of contenders) but so far this is the only view that bridges a gap between science and religion so well.
Rating: 
Summary: intersting attempt, should have left out cliche's..
Review: should have left out cliches' like "mysticism" as a blanket term for an "alternative" to religion. Mysticism is a range of concepts, and each of them only ahve their place within the structure of organized religion. Sorry. Islam has Sufism, Judaism has Kabbalah, Hinduism has vedanta. Each of these religious systems has a series of levels of understanding, open to all who are capable of fathoming their depths. yes, Vedanta has the transcendental component of Brahman, of nondualism, but so does Buddhism, Judaism, and christianity, AS DOCTRINE, not just as abstract musings from "mystics". To disregard the fact that religion is the vessel of the mystical is to display the desire to "have your cake and throw the baby out with the bath water". The most Orthodox believers are, infact, the mystics of the faith! Examples are Sufi Sheiks, kabbalist rabbis, etc. One must know the practical before the theoretical becomes relevant. Enough. the science of the book is fascinating, but his bable about the false dichotomy of religions "versus" mystic"ism" detracts from an otherwise fine book. i owuld like to dialogue with others on this.
Rating:
Summary: Another overly eager synthesis
Review: Summoning up quantum physics to "explain" consciousness has been done by others (e.g. Penrose, R., The Shadows of the Mind, 1994), but it is not at all necessary, and perhaps specious. Serious students of consciousness, who can easily smell yet another scientist in spiritual adolescence aiming to circumscribe the entire universe within a single clever mentation, should consult the mature, unusually well written and scientifically responsible work: The Feeling of What Happens--Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by the distinguished Univ. of IA neuroscientist, Antonio R. Damasio. If you think me overly harsh on Dr. Goswami, please check for a series of Goswami's own sweeping essays extending this quantum "mania" to "explain" everything from Sheldrake's morphic resonance to (no kidding) success in business. Quite entertaining and evidentiary, I think.
Rating:
Summary: Another overly eager synthesis
Review: Summoning up quantum physics to "explain" consciousness has been done by others (e.g. Penrose, R., The Shadows of the Mind, 1994), but it is not at all necessary, and perhaps specious. Serious students of consciousness, who can easily smell yet another scientist in spiritual adolescence aiming to circumscribe the entire universe within a single clever mentation, should consult the mature, unusually well written and scientifically responsible work: The Feeling of What Happens--Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by the distinguished Univ. of IA neuroscientist, Antonio R. Damasio. If you think me overly harsh on Dr. Goswami, please check for a series of Goswami's own sweeping essays extending this quantum "mania" to "explain" everything from Sheldrake's morphic resonance to (no kidding) success in business. Quite entertaining and evidentiary, I think.
Rating:
Summary: good book; "sweeping" thoughts on religion overstated.
Review: the science work in the book is good, and found it more intersting then the deliberate synchretism of "Tao of Physics". It is even handed without going into overwhelming detail. However, he displays a diletante's familiarity with comparative religion, though, and has some historical facts wrong, that ultimately affect the framework of the book. Mysticism has had a TREMENDOUS affect on the Western Mind, contrary to his assertion on page 56; the Renaissance was in good part the result of the translation of neo-Platonic and Hermetic works, the proliferation of "secret societies" and quasi-occult movements in Europe in the Enlightenment era had a tremendous influence on the French Revolution, and became entrenched in the founding of the United States, as well as many south American countries. And the "Hierarchy of Interpreters" claim is also shallow. That these esoteric "schools of thought" were able to survive, as well as the existance of the diversity of religious views on "the basics" necessary for the Reformation, contradict this understanding. So What? Well, it is used to claim that the West is somehow void of its own mystical facet, and requires input from Asia to have a soul of any depth! All and all, its okay.
Rating:
Summary: Good book on Mind, Matter, and Spirituality
Review: There is not much I can add to the extremely thorough reviews already written, but I wanted to add my five stars to this remarkable integration of science, consciousness and spirituality. Although Goswami is hardly the first to attempt to link physics and spirituality, he goes beyond mere analogy and includes more science than some of the other efforts. I found the book thought-provoking and highly readable, with one caveat: the introductory chapters (first 20 pages or so) were a little tedious. Once he gets into the meat of the book, it's a fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring theory - a tad bit preachy near the end
Review: This book uses quantum mechanics to lay down a very satisfying theory. Many individual mysteries that I have pondered in philosophical conversations are naturally solved or illuminated by the concepts in this book. I consider myself a serious skeptic, but this picture of consciousness intuitively "feels" right. The concept of fragmenting the whole to create individual souls is also found in mystical traditions like Jewish Kabbalah. I was somewhat disappointed at the last few chapters in which the author gets a bit preachy toward his personal beliefs about war, religion, ETC. However, this in NO way spills over into the fundamental theory. I believe my faith in GOD and my faith in the human spirit was much enhanced by this book. I read this after reading two other books: THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE and INNER SPACE. What an unexpectedly great combination of books for the thinking believer!
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