Amit Goswami´s Self-Aware Universe or Monistic Idealism

Natural from India, Amit Goswami is an experienced physicist living in the United States of America. He is a nuclear physicist, professor at the Oregon University, and Doctor at the Institute of Abstract Sciences in Sausalito, California. What we go to present was based on his book The Self-Aware Universe – as consciousness also creates the material world and in the reference (4), taken from one of the Amit Goswami´s interviews given to Craig Hamilton of WMT, entitled What is Enlightenment?

Amit studying the behavior of sub-atomic particles inside of the domain of quantum physics affirms that it is in this context that the non-material reality discloses itself to the eyes of scientists. Amit considers that the creative force of all the physical reality is consciousness, that is, it is the base of all the being, and from consciousness Goswami introduced the idea of the descending causation, in contraposition to the materialist and reductionist theory of the ascending causation. According to him, both of them occur, but the descending causation is the base of its monistic idealism, different from the dualism Force and Matter. In Goswami vision – the free will has a role of prominence in the explanation of the phenomena and of the world.

Although recognizing the pioneering of physicist Fritjof Capra’s work (11), entitled the Tao of the Physics that admits the spiritual aspect of the human beings, Goswami arrives at the point to emphasize that all in him (Fritjof Capra) is still exclusively based on the material aspect of the reality. Thus, Goswami considers himself a pioneer to suggesting that, in his understanding based in a rigorously scientific explanation, consciousness is the base of the being, only excepting the ideas proposed by the trans-personal psychology. Thus, he insists that the application of his ideas and concepts on consciousness as the fundamental base of the being would solve all the paradoxes of the quantum physics. He admits, still, that if his ideas would be accepted, it would be a radical change of paradigm in the integration of science with the spirituality. He emphasize, also, that his ideas are different from Capra and Zhukov’s ideas, since backwards of the ideas of these physicists it remains the causality derived from the matter. Despite these researchers having recognized the importance of consciousness and spirituality, they consider consciousness just as an epi-phenomenon or secondary one, resultant from the chemical and hormonal interactions in the brain. However, this is not the type of spirituality revealed and taught by Jesus or admitted by the spiritists and serious spiritualists of many eastern religions, as the Buddhism, the Taoism, etc. Thus, in our opinion, this knowledge will not lead to any change of paradigm in the scientific thought for not stimulating science to the serious study of the conscience as spiritual attribute.

According to Goswami, other authors come bringing light to the subject and putting more firewood in the bonfire, affirming that (4):

[... ] contemporary science disclosed the quantum paradoxes, but also, it has shown its real incompetence in explaining paradoxical and anomalous phenomena, such as, the paranormal phenomena studied by parapsychology, and even though the creativity. Even the traditional subjects, like the perception and the biological evolution, were not yet duly explained by the materialistic theories. To give an example, in biology one has what we call "punctuated equilibrium.” The meaning of this is that the evolution is not only slow, as Darwin recognized, but also it has periods of fast evolution, that are known as "punctuated marks.” However, traditional biology has not yet explanations for that.

Nevertheless, if we make science based on consciousness, under the primacy of consciousness, then, we will be able to see creativity in this phenomenon – real creativity, derived from consciousness. In other words, we can truly see that consciousness is creatively acting, in such biology as in the evolution of the species. And thus, we can fill those imperfections that the conventional biology cannot explain, because they derive essentially from ideas of spiritual order, such as the consciousness as the creator of the world.

To place conscience, we say – the spirit, as the creative force of the material world, is a reality that physicists do not desire or want to hear about, because this is too much radical. Nevertheless, through this reality it becomes easy to explain why, in the quantum physics, the particles are not seen as defined things, as we are accustomed to see elsewhere in the real life, that is, in the form as were taught by the Newton’s classic physics, in which objects can move in all the directions with well-defined trajectories. The quantum physics does not see objects (particles) this way, but it sees them as possibilities, waves of possibility. Then, it results the question: what converts possibility into reality, because when we see, do we see real events and things? When you see a table, you see a real table, not a possibility of a table. In the quantum physics, this is the "paradox of the quantum measurement theory.” According to Goswami, what is behind this paradox of the matter is the consciousness creative force.

According to the materialists, the human body together with our brain, all is, in its essence, comprised of atoms and elementary particles. Then, according to The Quantum Theory, how can that brain convert the waves of possibility that inhabit exactly in it (the real brain), if lacks the efficacy of the causality? The brain itself is made of waves of possibility and elementary particles, and therefore, theoretically, it can convert its waves of possibility into reality waves, but the brain does not create them. Then, what does convert waves of possibility into reality? It is the consciousness, Goswami answers, because consciousness does not obey the quantum physics; for not being made of matter, but of transcendental nature, the material world is revealed by it. This is the discordance that exists when we compare consciousness with spirit, which is the same one that exists between science and Spiritualism.

So much in his book as in the interview in reference, Goswami, also extends himself in explanations on the universe and on the “anthropic principle", adopted by astronomers and cosmologists, who affirm that the universe has an intention. This belief elapses from the fact of the existence of many coincidences, of many fine adjustments, which take the astronomers and cosmologists to believe that the universe has a purpose – to serve to the living beings, mainly the man. Goswami does not forget to mention, also, the so-called quantum healing, in which the thought has outstanding role.

Finally, we must detach the importance of the "non-locality principle", in order to be able to understand Goswami ideas. According to Goswami, it is the non-place consciousness that all penetrates and permeates, and it is not being contained in any place, it is contained in all the places. It is by means of this non-place consciousness that we can understand and perceive the connection that exists among all the things of the universe. Goswami transmits us the idea that, for backwards of the reality of the material world that we see and we observe, something exists as a matrix, a pattern of all that is created. It is this pattern or network that permeates all that exists and connects all with all.