Quantum Mind: The Edge Between Physics & Psychology

Rating:
Summary: Holistic Understanding of Ourselves
Review: Being someone who has been on the path of self-discovery for many years, I find this book to be an informative piece of the puzzle that we call ourselves. Dr. Mindell pulls together physics, mathematics, and self- discovery in a way that I have not previously seen. Quantum Mind is a must read for anyone who is attempting to understand themselves and their environment. This book is a book that has a lot of information that is based on physics and mathematics so the book is more of a study time than a story time.

Rating:
Summary: Seminal, ground-breaking, informative.
Review: In Quantum Mind, Arnold Mindell takes the reader to the common root underlying both physics and psychology to reveal physics as the basic pattern for understanding psychology, and the psychology of perception as the basis of physics. Mindell offers a wealth of practical guidance backed by theoretical insight. He brings quantum awareness to such everyday matters as difficult relationships, physical symptoms and life-threatening illness, spiritual emergence, and the complexities of community life in a world of human diversity. Starting with the psychological foundations of numbers and counting, Quantum Mind takes the reader on a fascinating tour of mathematics, quantum physics, relativity, and cosmology -- showing at each point the myriad levels on which human consciousness and the physical world intertwine and co-create one another. The reader comes to know the universe and individual consciousness as two sides of an interactive mirror reflecting one another. Quantum Mind is a seminal, ground-breaking, enthusiastically recommended, completely accessible survey and analysis that will engage, inform, and challenge students of psychology, psychotherapy, physics, and the symmetry between the mathematics of physics and everyday perceptual experience.

Rating:
Summary: Beginning of a new science
Review: Mindell's Quantum Mind is bringing the discussion on the connection between consciousness and matter to a new level. I want to focus on the aspect that was the most exciting to me. He shows, that our definition of physics, of psychology and of religion needs to be updated, and how in fact the progress of both sciences is blocked by how these fields define themselves. Mindell makes it clear, that psychology cannot make the next quantum jump without including the insights from QM, and physics needs the study of consciousness to understand the contradictions it's facing. Mindell brings forth his process-oriented concepts, which bridge these two worlds, and in fact establish a new scientific field, for which a term still needs to be coined.
As a psychologist, I found the theoretical and mathematical aspects of physics really well explained, and liked it, that I had a choice as a reader, how detailed I wanted to get involved in them. I was still be able to follow his line of thought in those instances, when I choose to skip the math parts.

The exercices in the book show, how modern physics and psychological theories are not only abstract concepts, but experiences that we have on an ongoing basis, and how they are connected to our personal development and spiritual understanding of our existence and the universe we live in. We understand Newtonian physics experientially, when the cup that we drop on the floor keeps breaking. We develop a similar intuitive understanding of Quantum Mechanics in addition to the theory, when we do Mindell's exercises at the end of each chapter. This is one of the huge side benefits of this book. QM never became popular knowledge because its concept are not "anschaulich" or intuitive, but rather mathematical. Mindell's book belongs in every personal and public library.