According to Ervin Laszlo, the coherence of the atom and the galaxies is the same coherence that keeps living cells together, cooperating to form life. When a complex system made up of many interacting parts is operating, sometimes an unexpected jump to a new level of complex organization happens. Our human body is made up of many such levels, each formed by another jump in complexity. Our lowest level of the cell jumps up a level to body tissue, to body organ, to body system and to the whole body. We are therefore formed with many onion skin like levels that all cooperate in complex ways to make one whole human being. It is really amazing how it all fits together.
At the same time, in the human realm of consciousness, we are – as far as we know – the only creatures able to contemplate who we are, why we are here and how we fit into the universe. We can even contemplate on the fact that we can contemplate about who we are and how we fit into the universe. This coherence also allows evolution to happen and that has enabled us to evolve from a microscopic bacterium right through to the complex beings that we are with all our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual capabilities.
Ervin Laszlo presents a theory that helps to tie both together. He proposes that the quantum vacuum –which we know contains all the information of our history from the Big Bang to now – is also consciousness. Everything in the universe therefore has consciousness; from a pebble to a tree, to a cloud, to a person. While this goes against the view of mainstream science, there are some highly respected scientists such as Freeman Dyson, David Bohm and Fritjof Capra, who support the idea that the universe is in fact conscious. Ervin Laszlo says that life happens because it comes from the quantum vacuum.
What is consciousness? Consciousness is about being aware of our own existence and the environment in which we live. So if one sub-atomic particle reacts in line with another particle somewhere else in the universe, we could say it is aware of what the other one is doing. In a way it is aware of itself in the universe. So, the question is: Is it enough to say all particles in the universe are conscious?
We are conscious of our existence and have evolved a brain able to access and use the consciousness held in quantum vacuum. Consciousness is yet another manifestation of coherence allowing a mass of nerve cells to co-operate and form a unified sense of self.
Ervin Laszlo equates this quantum vacuum with the Akashic Field of ancient Hindu spiritual tradition. The Hindu say the Akashic record is a field from which all the universe is formed and which holds all that ever was, is or will be. The Hindu also say that the Big Bang that started the universe, and the big crunch that will happen when the universe goes into reverse and collapses back into itself, is only a part of many cycles of universes, just like ours, appearing and disappearing, just like the subatomic particles in our world.
Ervin Laszlo states that information can be transferred from one cycle to the next, which explains how the precise numbers for gravity, electromagnetism etc. come to be so exact when there has not been enough time for these to have formed randomly. Those numbers are transferred from previous universes.
The Akashic Field, being the background to the subatomic worlds, also flows through the other realms of stars, galaxies and human life, and is an activating force in all those realms. It is the force moving the stars and galaxies and the spark that gives life to bunches of molecules, driving the power of evolution and giving us the ability to develop our consciousness and experience the unity of the universe.
Ervin Laszlo’s theory says we are therefore linked to all people who have ever lived, and we can get access to them by accessing the Akashic field. This can explain life after death, because the past has never gone away, telling us that the past is ever present in everything we do. It clearly points to a universe where all is one and everything is linked. And if we tune ourselves into the Akashic field, we can access abilities that appear to be supernatural, but are in fact completely natural. Activities such as meditation can help us plug into the Akashic field and become much more than we are at present. Science and spirituality do not need to be set against each other as we have tended to think for so long.
Ervin Laszlo links the world of science with spiritual traditions, presenting it in a seemingly clear and logical way, incorporating all the latest research in so many fields of scientific research and tying it all together into a wonderful cohesive theory that makes sense of so many strange and contradictory parts of the universe. It explains what is usually called the supernatural in natural terms, giving strong evidence for the truth of such things as clairvoyance, reincarnation and spiritual healing.
Information In the universe, states Ervin Laszlo, information is entirely basic. In the latest conception the universe doesn’t consist of matter and space, it consists of energy and information. Energy exists in the form of wave-patterns and wave-propagations in the quantum vacuum that fills space; in its various forms, energy is the “hardware” of the universe. The software is information. The universe is not an assemblage of bits of inert matter moving passively in empty space, it is a dynamic and coherent whole. The energy that constitutes its hardware is always and everywhere in-formed. It is in-formed by what David Bohm called the implicate order and what physicists now regard as the quantum vacuum or zero-point field (also called physical spacetime, universal field, or nuether). This is the in-formation that structures the physical world, the information we grasp as the laws of nature. Without information the energy waves and patterns of the universe would be as random and unstructured as the behavior of a computer without its software. But the universe is not random and unstructured; it is precisely in-formed. Would it be any less precisely informed, complex systems could not have emerged in it, and we would not be here to ask how this on first sight highly improbable development could have come about.
The answer science has to the ‘what’ question refers to an entangled, holographic, non-local connecting in-formation field in the cosmos. In his books – in greatest detail in Science and the Akashic Field – he discusses the evidence for this field and notes that the Hindu seers referred to it as Akasha, the fundamental element of the cosmos. In recognition of this feat of insight, he is calling the information field of the universe the Akashic Field.
But how does the scientific answer to the question regarding the fundamental significance of the spiritual experience relate to the answer given by religion?
For the world’s religions, the larger and deeper reality to which the spiritual experience connects us is a numinous, divine reality. It is either a spirit or consciousness that infuses the natural world (the immanentist view), or a spirit or consciousness that is above and beyond it (the transcendentalist claim). Traditional polytheistic religions leaned toward the former, while the Abrahamic monotheistic religions (with some exceptions) embraced the latter.
The difference between a divine intelligence immanent in the world and one that transcends it is not negligible, but it is still just a difference in interpretation. The raw data for both positions is the same: it is the spiritual experience, a quantum communion with universal oneness. In the Western religious perspective this is communion with the spirit that infuses the cosmos, identified as God. Deepak Chopra writes, “Spirituality is the experience of that domain of awareness where we experience our universality. This domain of awareness is a core consciousness that is beyond our mind, intellect, and ego. In religious traditions this core consciousness is referred to as the soul which is part of a collective soul or collective consciousness, which in turn is part of a more universal domain of consciousness referred to in religions as God.”
Our experience of the core consciousness of the world is ultimately an experience of the universal domain of consciousness Western religions call God. The experience itself, if not its interpretation, is the same in all religions, and in all religions it inspires a sense of oneness and belonging. Michael Beckwith affirms that “when you strip away the culture, history, and dogma of every religion, the teachers of those religions were teaching very similar principles and practices that led to a sense of oneness, that ended a sense of separation from the Whole.”
Science’s answer to the question of what the spiritual experience connects us to is immanentist. The information that underlies the universe, the Akashic Field, is part of the universe. This doesn’t mean that the immanentist position necessarily states the ultimate truth; it only means that science can only take an immanentist position. Scientists are limited to speaking about the natural world; they must leave speculation about transcendent realities to poets, philosophers, and spiritual masters.
It’s time to conclude. If the substance of the spiritual experience is always and everywhere the same, differences in its expression and interpretation are secondary and not a valid cause for conflict and intolerance.
The world to which our quantum brain connects us is fundamentally one, whether its oneness is due to an information field within the natural world or the work of a divine transcendent intelligence. To enter into communion with this oneness has been the quest of all the great teachers and spiritual masters. And to understand the nature of this oneness has been, and is, the ultimate quest of all great scientists.
Still today, physicists seek the one equation that would anchor their famous “Theory of Everything,” the theory that would account for all the laws of nature and explain everything that ever happened in our integrally whole universe. Einstein said that knowing this equation would be reading the mind of God.
About the Author
(image) David Storoy is a deputy head of a Norwegian interest organization in mental health care called White Eagle. His main work is in the community of Bergen as a consultant in the archive of building projects.
His main passion is practicing Vedanta teachings. Vedanta is called Science of Consciousness and he stopped chasing and searching for experience and now he is doing self-inquiry (reflections, contemplation, analyzing, logical thinking and systematizing) as a means of knowledge: Self-Knowledge of Vedanta teachings. James Swartz is his teacher and he has 40 years experience with Vedanta teachings. He has been influenced by Swami Chinmayananda and Swami Dayananda Saraswati. They follow and are influenced by a traditional Vedanta lineage.
Vedanta means end of knowledge and the source is mainly Upanishads. He is also grateful to Science and Nonduality and Deepak Chopra for the influence of following Vedanta teachings.
Source: The Consciousness Revolution
The Consciousness Revolution
Mar 6, 2022
by Ervin Laszlo The Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research
There is not only a revolution in the way our consciousness works, see my blog You can change your mindset, there is also a revolution in our very understanding of the nature of consciousness. There is a new concept emerging at the cutting edge of science and philosophy, and this concept is very different from the old established concept.
Consciousness is at the same time the most familiar and the most mysterious element of our life. Consciousness is mysterious because it is not clear what it is and where it comes from. Is the flow of sensations that makes up our consciousness generated in, and confined to, our brain? Or does it extend in some way beyond our body and brain? The new concept opts for the latter. And if the new concept is true, we are not what we thought we were, and the world is not what we thought it was. Consciousness in the new conception is more than a plaything of our imagination—it is the very substance of our beings. That of course is not the old concept, but /the heart of the new one.
Here I shall suggest the basic features of the new concept, but first I outline the old idea, so as to see the differences.
The old idea of consciousness
Until a few years ago, nobody other than deeply spiritual or religious people would have subscribed to the proposition that consciousness is more than a product of the workings of the brain. The accepted concept of consciousness was consistent with the physics of Newton. In the Newtonian universe, there is no place for consciousness. In the last count, all that exists in the universe are bits of matter moving in passive space and equitably flowing time. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon: something generated by real phenomena but is not real in itself. Consciousness is like the electricity generated by a stream of electrons in a turbine. The electrons are real, the turbine is real, but the electricity generated by them is a secondary phenomenon. It disappears when the electrons cease to move in the turbine. The existence of electricity is contingent on the working of the turbine, just as the existence of consciousness is contingent on the working of the brain. After all, consciousness can no more exists in a dead brain than electric charge could exists in a stationary turbine.
We do not see, hear, or taste electricity; we know it only by the effect it produces. This is said to be the same with consciousness. We experience the flow of sensations, feelings, and intuitions we call consciousness, but we do not perceive consciousness itself. No amount of scrutiny of the brain will disclose anything we could call consciousness. We only find gray matter with networks of neurons firing in sequence, creating the flow of electrons that generates the sensations we experience. When the brain is damaged, consciousness is distorted, and when the brain stops working, consciousness ceases.
For the classical concept there is nothing mysterious, about the presence of consciousness in the universe. Human consciousness is the product of the workings of the human brain.
The new concept of consciousness
The turbine concept of consciousness is a hypothesis and, as other hypotheses, it can be upheld if the predictions generated by it are confirmed by observations. In this instance, the relevant prediction is that when the brain stops working, consciousness will vanish This is confirmed by observation. People who are brain-dead do not possess consciousness.
The above claim does not admit of exceptions. We can no more account for the presence of consciousness in a dead brain than we could account for the presence of electric charge in a stationary turbine. Evidence to the contrary would place in question the basic tenet of the old concept. But evidence to the contrary does exist. It surfaces in rigorously protocolled experiments. There is real and credible evidence today that in some cases consciousness does not cease when brain function does.
The most widely known evidence is furnished by people who have reached the portals of death but returned to the ranks of the living. In some cases, their consciousness persists even when their brain functions are “flat.” Many temporarily brain-dead people report having had conscious experiences during their near-death episode. NDEs—near-death experiences—are surprisingly widespread: in some cases they are reported by up to 25 percent of the people who experienced a condition near physical death.
There are indications that conscious experience persists not only during the temporary cessation of brain function, but also in its permanent absence: when the individual is fully and irreversibly dead. These surprising experiences became known as ADEs: after-death experiences. The evidence for them is offered by mediums in deeply altered states of consciousness. In these trance-states they appear able to communicate with deceased persons. They “hear” the deceased recount their experiences after they have died and in some cases experience visual contact with them as well.
Reports of ADEs have been subjected to systematic scrutiny, exploring the possibility that the mediums would have invented the messages, or picked them up from living persons through some form of extrasensory perception. In a non-negligible number of cases, the theory that they were invented by the mediums or received by them in some nonordinary way could be ruled out: the messages contained surprisingly accurate information the mediums were unlikely to have accessed or invented themselves.
Given the mounting stream of evidence, we are logically obliged to accept that consciousness does not always and necessarily cease with the death of the brain that produced it. But, perhaps, the brain did not actually produce it? The new concept claims that consciousness is more than a product of brain function. “Our” consciousness is a local and temporary manifestation of a consciousness that is an element of the real world. More and more consciousness researchers, brain scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists uphold this concept. Consciousness could and does exist beyond the brain.
In the new concept of consciousness, the flow of sensations we call consciousness is as real as energy, frequency, amplitude, phase, and information, and more real than “matter.” The brain is not a material turbine that generates consciousness, and consciousness is not its by-product. Consciousness is a real-world phenomenon. The brain is not its generator, only its receiver and transmitter.
Consciousness exists as a real phenomenon in the universe, and this phenomenon is universal; it is “one.” Famed quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger said that consciousness in the world does not exist in the plural: the overall number of minds in the world is one. In his last years, Carl Jung came to a similar conclusion. The psyche is not a product of the brain and is not located within the skull; it is part of the one-universe: of the unus mundus. In David Bohm’s quantum physics, the roots of consciousness are traced to the deep reality of the cosmos: the implicate order. A number of contemporary scientists, such as Henry Stapp, elaborate this concept. Consciousness, they say, is nonlocal: it is present throughout the universe.
The quantum scientists revive an ancient wisdom: We are connected through our participation in the world’s one-consciousness. This is a very different condition from being a separate entity with a separate brain producing a separate consciousness.
The new concept of consciousness is more than a theory of consciousness: it is a revolution in our understanding of being.
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
Source: Ervin Laszlo’s Akashic Field and The Dilemmas of Modern Consciousness Research
My Related Posts
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The Great Chain of Being
Indira’s Net: On Interconnectedness
Geometry of Consciousness
Charles Sanders Peirce’s Continuum
On Synchronicity
On Holons and Holarchy
Hua Yan Buddhism : Reflecting Mirrors of Reality
What is Yogacara Buddhism (Consciousness Only School)?
Mind, Consciousness, and Quantum Entanglement
Consciousness of Cosmos: A Fractal, Recursive, Holographic Universe
Law of Dependent Origination
Five Types of System Philosophy
Systems View of Life: A Synthesis by Fritjof Capra
Key Sources of Research
Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything
This book offers an original hypothesis capable of unifying evolution in the physical universe with evolution in biology; herewith it lays the conceptual foundations of “transdisciplinary unified theory”. The rationale for the hypothesis is presented first; then the theoretical framework is outlined, and thereafter it is explored in regard to quantum physics, physical cosmology, micro– and macro–biology, and the cognitive sciences (neurophysiology, psychology, with attention to anomalous phenomena as well). The book closes with a variety of studies, both by the author and his collaborators, sketching out the implications of the hypothesis in regard to brain dynamics, cosmology, the concept of space, phenomena of creativity, and the prospects for the elaboration of a mature transdisciplinary unified theory. The Foreword is written by philosopher of science Arne Naess, and the Afterword is contributed by neuroscientist Karl Pribram.
The Systems View of the World: The Natural Philosophy the New Developments in the Sciences
The Age of Bifurcation: Understanding the Changing World
Ervin Laszlo Gordon and Breach, 1991 – Bifurcation theory – 126 pages
The Connectivity Hypothesis: Foundations of an Integral Science of Quantum, Cosmos, Life, and Consciousness
Author Ervin Laszlo Contributor Ralph H. Abraham Edition illustrated Publisher State University of New York Press, 2003 ISBN 0791457850, 9780791457856 Length 147 pages
The Evolution of Cognitive Maps: New Paradigms for the Twenty-first Century
Volume 5 of World futures general evolution studies, ISSN 1043-9331 Editor Ervin Laszlo Edition illustrated, reprint Publisher Psychology Press, 1993 ISBN 2881245595, 9782881245596 Length 292 pages
System, Structure, and Experience: Toward a Scientific Theory of Mind
Human Values and Natural Science: Proceedings, Volume 3
Volume 4 of Current topics of contemporary thought Human Values and Natural Science: Proceedings, State University of New York College, Geneseo
Editors Ervin Laszlo, James Benjamin Wilbur Contributor State University of New York College, Geneseo Publisher Gordon and Beach, 1970 Original from University of Minnesota Digitized Jan 19, 2010 ISBN 0677139608, 9780677139609 Length 292 pages
Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought
Harper Torchbooks: Philosophy
Author Ervin Laszlo Edition illustrated Publisher Gordon and Breach, 1972 ISBN 067703850X, 9780677038506 Length 328 pages
Studies on the Conceptual Foundations: The Original Background Papers for Goals for Mankind
We Are in the Midst of a Global Transformation (pt. 2 of 2)
Prolific author and philosopher Ervin Laszlo discusses his most recent books, in which he outlines how the latest discoveries in science converge with spiritual insights and point to the ways in which society might evolve in ways that will help overcome contemporary crises.
Consciousness in the Universe is Tuned by a Musical Master Code, Part 3: A Hydrodynamic Superfluid Quantum Space Guides a Conformal Mental Attribute of Reality
We can conclude that consciousness is a quantum mechanical entity that can have an independent existence. It can localize in the human brain when the electron is in a particle state. This provides the necessary quantum mechanical base conducive for it to interact with and function in the brain. When the state changes to that of a wave, consciousness takes flight and starts floating. It takes away with it at least a part of the contents of the memory. It possesses the ability to acquire visual, auditory and olfactory information in spite of the fact that there are no sense organs associated with it. This information is produced by the consciousness projection of a different reality caused by the change in state of the electron, which one may interpret later as a dream or hallucination that comes from an altered perception of reality.
The major stumbling block in solving the brain-mind problem is how does the brain-mind bind together millions of dissimilar neuron activities into an experience of a perceptual whole. How does the “I” or “self” or the perceived wholeness of one’s world emerge from a system consisting of so many parts, billions of neurons. What creates the “Oneness” of thought processes? What creates individuality and I-ness or “self”? What creates feelings, free will, and creativity? The eternal consciousness.
No mechanistic system consisting of separate interacting parts could give rise to the above. What are the structures in the brain that create the property which grant us access to the quantum realm? This is a good question and once this is known by all mankind, mankind will change. It has become clear that to explain this theory, one has to consider the most highly ordered and highly unified structures possible in the universe. The structure that possesses both characters, the most highly ordered and most highly unified is the Bose-Einstein condensate.
In classical science, the most ordered structure that we can find is the crystal. Crystals are rigid, immovable structures. In Bose-Einstein condensates, the quantum properties allow both a “fluid” order and a high degree of unity. Each particle in a Bose-Einstein condensate fills all the space and all the time in whatever container that holds the condensate. Many of their characteristics are correlated. They behave holistically as one. The condensate acts as one single particle. There is no “noise” or interference between separate parts. This is why super fluids and super conductors have their special frictionless qualities and lasers become so coherent. Super conductors, super fluids, and lasers are Bose-Einstein condensates. The photons of a laser beam overlap their boundaries and behave as one single photon and the whole system can be described by a single equation. Hence, the part always includes the whole like in fractal geometry.
Super conductors, super fluids, and lasers are either very low temperature or very high energy systems. Super conductors and super fluids loose their quantum coherence long before they reach room temperature. Quantum coherence at body temperature in body cells was found by Herbert Frohlich. Prior to that, quantum physicist Fritz Popp discovered that biological tissue emits a weak glow when stimulated at the right energy levels.
Cell walls of biological tissue contain countless proteins and fat molecules which are electrical dipoles. When a cell is at rest, these dipoles are out of phase and arrange themselves in a haphazard way. But when they are stimulated they begin to oscillate or jiggle intensely and broadcast a tiny microwave signal. Frolich found that when the energy flowing through the cell reaches a certain critical level, all the cell wall molecular dipoles line up and come into phase. They oscillate in unison as though they are suddenly coordinated. This emergent quantum field is a Bose-Einstein condensate and has holistic properties common to any quantum field (Fig.50). Consciousness may work in a similar matter.
Key Concepts:
Non-locality
Information Field
Classical-Quantum Divide
Akashic Field
Holographic Brain
Holographic Universe
Quantum Consciousness
Entangled Minds
Morphic Resonance
Implicate Order
Decoherence-Coherence
Wave-Particle Duality
Quantum Entanglement
Superpositions
Quantum Tunneling
Fractal Universe
Quantum Biology
Relational QM
Biofield
Key People:
Anton Zeilinger
Markus Arndt
Koichiro Matsuno
David Bohm
Rupart Sheldrake
Roger Penrose
Ervin Laszlo
Deepak Chopra
Subhash Kak
Karl Pribram
Amit Goswami
David Chalmers
Ralph Abraham
Stuart Hameroff
Ken Wilber
Dean Radin
S Grof
Stuart Kaufman
Dirk K. F. Meijer
Simon Raggett
Hans J H Geesink
Max Tegmark
Menas C. Kafatos
Key Sources of Research:
Crucial Role of Quantum Entanglement in Bulk Properties of Solids
“Quantum Wave Information of Life Revealed: An Algorithm for Electromagnetic Frequencies that Create Stability of Biological Order, With Implications for Brain Function and Consciousness.”
Viewpoints which Matter 