The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World

Rating:
Summary: Great re-thinking of the implications of quantum physics!
Review:
Most books that explore the intersection between science and spirituality seem to be written by non-scientists who explain some basic scientific principles and then extrapolate wildly to support their spiritual viewpoint.

Goswami, a physics professor, approaches it from the other direction. He carefully lays out a scientific theory - essentially that matter is a phenomina of consciousness rather than vice versa.

In the process he navigates through various topics in physics, mathematics, religion, and philosophy in order to provide the necessary components for us to get a grip on his theory of "monistic idealism" which he proposes as an alternative to the current "material realism" (matter is all that is real) which pervades scientific thought today.

I don't want to imply that I'm stupid, but the only fault I found with the book was that much of his jargon and scientific references went right over my head - so I came away with a good understanding of his theory, but also with the impression that much of it's depth and subtlties were lost on me.

I'm not sure how this book was received by the author's peers (if at all) but he impressed me as a "blow-the-lid-off-the-subject" type of scientist who is willing to ruffle feathers and push beyond the traditional limitations of his field to integrate various disciplines in a search for a truth that doesn't just look right on paper but also jives with human experience and the soul.

Well worth reading.


Rating:
Summary: Consciousness Explained Philosophically
Review: 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:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I picked up this volume with a great deal of sympathy for Amit Goswami's thesis, only to discover he does not deliver in the crucial areas he claims. He sets up exponents of material realism as straw men he then knocks down, rather than examining the actual range of thinking in this realm of discourse. His arguments for monistic idealism are of the nature of, "my imagination fails to include an alternative so what I am comfortable believing must be true." Even as I read I envisioned alternative monistic postures never explored, discussed, or suggested in this volume. Rather than a demonstration of his argument Goswami has produced an attempt at persuasion to his personal biases. I quite agree a thoughtful critique of material realism is in order, and also that a monistic posture can address the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, but this is not the text to go to for the goods. Admittedly, Goswami's outline of quantum mechanics is cogent and useful. It's the new age fluff approach to philosophizing that destroys his credibility.

Rating:
Summary: Monistic Idealism Creates Confidence In Your Consciousness
Review: 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:
Summary: Spirituality from the perspective of physics.... amazing!
Review: 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.

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: Accepting new concepts of reality
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: 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: Fails to establish credibility.
Review: When I read books on subjects I am not very familiar with, such as subatomic physics, I tend to access the reliability of the author by his accuracy on subjects I know more about. That's one reason I wasn't able to work up much confidence in Goswami's physics. He throws out too many low-wattage ideas on language, philosophy and history that distract me.

To begin with, he uses "paradox" as a synonym for "self-contradiction."

According to Goswami, religions are all founded by mystics who believe in monism, a trancendant Brahma, divine play, the whole Upanishadic kit and kaboodle. Later, disciples dumb the "real teachings" of the Master down for the masses. This is doubtful historically in almost every actual case of which I am aware -- and I study the origins of religions for a living. In the case of Jesus, still less Mohammed, only massive falsification or at least wishful thinking can save the paradigm. I realize this idea is not original with Goswami. But I am a little tired of people making a case for monism from the NT by quoting a few teachings that seem to agree with it out of context, and ignoring the rest.

As for philosophy, Goswami's ideas about love seem shallower than those of theistic thinkers like C. S. Lewis, Lin Yutang, or even Scott Peck, to me. He thinks love is best when based upon the premise of monism. "How can you not love when there is one consciousness and you known that you and the other are not really separate?" A silly question; there are categories of neurosis that work precisely that way. On a philosophical level, the question is meaningless. On a historical level, if monism is the True Path to love, and if the culture that has embraced monism the most enthusiastically is India, then why did it take a foreign religion (guess which one) to challenge the cruel and inhuman institutions of caste, widow-burning and confinement, human sacrifice, etc? (See J.N. Farquhar, Crown of Hinduism; Vishal Mangalwadi.) Given that history, it is a bit bizarre for a Hindu to accuse Christians of a "world-negating" faith.

Again, "If we could single out one historical concept that has propelled humans and their societies towards much violence and warfare, it is the concept of hierarchy." This kind of statement may sound good to many readers, but it strikes me as facile and historically incomplete. (Though his idea of "tangled hierarchy" is interesting.) Actually, some of the bloodiest movements, like early Islam and Marxism, have preached radical equality. And the Sisters of Charity are hierarchical, I believe. Goswami makes sweeping historical generalizations that sound good, but it seems a hit-or-miss proposition whether they are in fact true.

I am less qualified to debate Goswami's science. I assume he's getting his basic facts right, and don't see any too obvious errors in that regard. But another way to access a writer on unfamiliar topics, is to see how he engages opposing points of view. Those who know more about physics than I do (I'm thinking of John Polkinghorne for one) have objected to the interpretation of quantum facts Goswami offers. It doesn't appear to me that Goswami really engages such views well.

Back to philosophy, when Goswami argues that, given the facts of physics, Descarte's famous statement should be re-written as, "I choose, therefore I am," an alternative phrasing, "God choses, therefore I am," seems to me equally valid, on Goswami's premises. Why prefer his interpretation? He offers no good reason. It appears he hasn't really thought the question through from anyone else's point of view but his own.

The diagrams are good; the writing clear and colloquial, the subject interesting. I think the best thing Goswami could do would be to read a lot of good books he doesn't agree with. The book would be more interesting to me were it part of a dialogue, rather than a monologue by Schrodinger's cat alone a box. But maybe that's one of the dangers of monism.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man