A solo seminar session, the first of a series, on the passage from scientific materialism to what Pinchbeck calls animistic idealism. He opens with Gerald Heard's line that civilization is the shadow cast by evolving consciousness, then argues that materialism — matter as the only reality, consciousness an accidental byproduct of the brain — still governs universities and institutions and underwrites transhumanism and the Silicon Valley singularity, which he reads as a technological rewrite of Christian eschatology. Against it he sets monistic idealism as named by Amit Goswami, alongside David Bohm's holographic universe, Robert Lanza's biocentrism and Rudolf Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom. He recounts his own turn from skepticism, his mother's connection to the Beats, and the psychedelic initiations behind Breaking Open the Head, framing his work as joining revelation to intellection.
In brief
- Monistic idealism holds that consciousness is the only fundamental reality and that the physical universe is a projection arising from it.
- A unitary consciousness requires the temporary illusion of separate selves in order to generate a subject-object split and reflect on itself.
- Pinchbeck argues that the singularity ideology dominant in Silicon Valley borrows the structure of Christian eschatology, substituting technological immortality for redemption.
- Strict scientific materialism rules out telepathy, telekinesis and meaningful synchronicity, and treats the universe as an accident.
- Steiner used the term monistic idealism in The Philosophy of Freedom as an attempt to refute Kantian dualism.
- Pinchbeck describes his own method as combining revelation, reached through psychedelic shamanism with ayahuasca, iboga and DMT, with intellection through research and philosophy.
Full text
first session uh is called from scientific materials or animistic idealism. Um and um yeah, I love this quote. I mean there's you know I I often you know think like in terms of like my my style of thinking is often very like quoty like I love to sort of mull on different quotes from different theorists, intellectuals and philosophers who I I really am you know moved by. Uh you know Gerald Herd is is is not very well known. I guess he was an English kind of polymath. Um he definitely wrote a couple fascinating books but yeah civilization is the shadowcast by man's evolving consciousness. Um I think it's a brilliant you know formulation and um you know what it suggests is that if our you know collective consciousness was to evolve past the point where it is right now uh that could also have a tremendous transformative effect on our civilization as a whole.
And um yeah may maybe we could see ourselves in a kind of uh you know civilizational crisis uh consciousness crisis which are forcing that kind of uh transformation um and the basic kind of concept that I want to discuss today is that you know we are in this midst of this paradigm shift um where we're coming out of this scientific materialism you know which developed over the last like 400 500 100 years going back to you know Newton Deard and so on uh and we're moving into something else uh and different thinkers and scientists have been trying to name this something else. I mean for the physicist David Bow who talked about the holographic universe um um Robert Lanza who we're going to look at talked about bioentrism uh in his work um and um Emma Swami uses a term called monistic idealism which for me was was very exciting because it's actually also the term that one of my great kind of intellectual heroes the visionary philosopher Rudolph Steiner uh used uh in his original kind of philos ophical dissertation, the philosophy of freedom, which was actually an effort in, you know, kind of like I think he was probably writing in like the 1880s or something to refute canon dualism. Um, and um, yeah. So, so you know, some of the basic premises of scientific materialism is that only you know, ma matter is real. You know, matter is what exists.
Consciousness arises out of the physical universe. it was kind of an accident or a byproduct of everinccreasing evolutionary complexity. Um, and you know, so so it's essentially an EP epiphenomenon and it's entirely based in the physical brain. So, you know, there from from a reductive like, you know, from from the most like strong, you know, perspective of of a scientific materialist, there really couldn't be things like telepathy, telekinesis, synchronicities don't have any meaning. The universe is just a sort of random accident. And yeah, I think that this the worldview of scientific materialism is still the dominant worldview certainly in our institutions, ourmies. Um, and it's kind of what drives like this whole uh kind of technological world view, you know, transhumanism, the singularity.
uh this idea that I mean it's to me it's actually quite interesting because I feel that um the ideology of the singularity um you know that which has become very dominant in Silicon Valley in the tech world uh is is actually something that borrowed a lot from uh you know es the esquetology of Christianity uh and this idea it's you know sort of like the fallen the fallen matter that's going to be redeemed uh but in but in the singularity worldview it's this sort of technological redemption like we're going to you know develop up immortality uh by merging with machines, by uploading our consciousnesses onto computers and so on. Um yeah, so so um it's very interesting that even that scientific materialist worldview ultimately seems to be like it's moving towards this kind of you know kind of esqueological salvationist idea. Um uh so yeah and so the the alternative to scientific materialism uh that we're going to look at is called monistic idealism and you know the that is that that puts posits the idea that it's actually only consciousness exists. Consciousness is the fundamental reality and what we experience as a phys the physical universe is kind of a projection of consciousness. Uh so the physical material universe actually emerges from you call it the plenum or the source field of uh of consciousness.
Uh and also an aspect of the monistic idealism paradigm is that this consciousness is um um indivisible. It's unitary. Uh you know the Hindus called it one without a second. Uh and um although this consciousness is ultimately indivisible and unitary it requires this kind of like temporary illusion of separate selves separate separate you know beings like ourselves because that's the only way it would it would be able to create sort of a subject object dichotomy and then kind of reflect upon itself explore uh learn uh and so on. So yes that's kind of some of the basic ideas that we're going to look at. Um, and yeah, I was mentioning a little bit about my uh my journey um, you know, which I've spoken about a lot um, in all sorts of different ways and written about, but um, yeah, I've written a number of books.
Uh, my first book came out in 2002. It was called Breaking Open the Head. And, um, I started writing that book in the late 90s during this kind of existential emergency. Uh, up until that point I was a materialist and and a skeptic. Um, you know, even though my parents were artists, they had no religious or spiritual beliefs. Uh, and um, yeah, I began to find this kind of intolerable. Uh, I didn't really see the point of of existence. Um, and it seemed like, um, you know, the people that I knew were just distracting themselves, you know, with drugs or with material ambitions and so on.
Uh I was kind of lucky because uh my mother when she was young had been part of a counterculture movement called the Beats. Uh and um you know that included thinkers and writers like Alan Ginsburg and William Burroughs and um uh Greg you know Gregory Corso and Jack Carowak of course uh and um and and these these these guys in the in the 40s had kind of had a similar freakout uh where they had sort of recognized uh when they were young that it was almost like consciousness wasn't present in in the world the institutions the political structures people were was kind of talking out of received ideas like indoctrination out of their conditioning. And so they kind of went on a on a journey to excavate kind of consciousness, spontaneity, um yeah, they they used all these different methods. They used, you know, drugs, meditation, sexuality, um you know, spontaneous writing and so on. um you know so so in a way they were they were trying to recapture kind of a spontaneous flow state uh that they felt you know had been kind of lost to humanity and they went to the Amazon I mean Burroughs was one of the first western you know kind of artists to explore Iawaska uh then Ginsburg you know explored Iawaska Ginsburg also became kind of like an advocate for LSD and eastern mysticism he was involved with the Harry Krishna he helped launch that movement uh then he became the Tibetan Buddhist uh was very involved with with Buddhism.
So, you know, the the the beats basically were all about, you know, direct experience, unmediated experience as being kind of the only experience you could really trust. And um they um yeah, so and and and that there, you know, they they also had had mystical experiences. I mean, Carowak was very much a Buddhist, kind of a western Buddhist. Uh you know, as I said, Ginsburg also became a Tibetan Buddhist in the end. So um so having that in kind of my pedigree because my mother had been involved with that group when I was in my existential emergency I was open to this idea of exploring more direct uh connections and I remember my psychedelic experiences in college that became like my path of um you know kind of self-discovery inquiry uh I ended up going to West Africa I went through a uh tribal initiation into a group called the Buidi who use ibogga as their sacrament.
uh ibogga is kind of like the um indigenous psychedelic of that region of Gaban and Cameroon and so on. And um you know during that experience with Iboga um you know I was still more or less a materialist although questioning wondering if there might be you know other other layers or levels of existence. Uh a lot of the experience was very um psycho psychological, psychoanalytical. It um I had lying down I had all these visions of my early childhood. I saw I went back into scenes uh you know that were crucial in my kind of development whether it was of my parents fighting or different illnesses and so on.
But the the really strong sense was that there was a intelligence uh in the in in the plant medicine that um was sort of having a conversation with me or was showing things in a certain way and in a certain sequence and um along with that there were certain other kind of things that happened. I mean what one of the things that um you know stayed with me is one of the uh wedi shamans um told me that he could see uh the spirit of my mother's mother hovering around me and that she had died very recently uh but she was still very possessive and she was sort of clinging on to me and also wasn't letting me go into certain parts of the spirit worlds um and I felt kind of blocked in a strange way and um you know what what was amazing to me about him saying that was that you know my mother's mother was actually the only grandparent that I'd known at all. All the others had passed away before I was born and that actually um she had uh she had died within a year and I hadn't told anybody you know on that voyage no nobody knew that was the case. So um you know so a number of things about that you know certainly struck me you know one was it seemed that this you know shaman or or their term naganga is their word for shaman was able to access information about me you know from a kind of transpersonal domain. So for that to be possible then there would have to be some sense in which in which consciousness could extend outside of the body in some way.
And then the other was that you know he you know if I was to take him seriously he had this perception of this kind of spirit you know of my mother's mother uh that that was able to continue on in some way you know after her death. So yeah so that that stayed with me and as I wrote breaking up in the head I had many different psychedelic experiences and you know the Amazon and Mexico and and you know festivals in the US and and you know many other types of explorations. Um and I had you know many many paranormal you know psychic experiences that ultimately forced me to kind of um break through the the scientific materialist paradigm and recognize that the from my perspective you know based on experience the uh struct the deep structure of reality is closer to what somebody like Carl Young talks about or some something like these shemetic cultures talk about that there are these kind of different layers of reality there are you know psychic capacities There are archetypal forces that move through the collective psyche. There are, you know, spirits and so on. I mean, it's it's hard to articulate exactly, but a lot of my work has been an effort to try to kind of um yeah, I guess um find the juncture between, you know, our modern western logic and language and these types of direct um you know, experiences that you can have.
Uh so my pe second book was 2012 the return of ketwaddle uh where basically once I had recognized that these indigenous cultures had an access to a whole realm of knowledge that modern technoccratic society had totally suppressed and rejected. Uh I then realized that these cultures you know had knowledge that was important to us and we had to uh revalue it and try to understand it in our own way. And I also discovered that many of these cultures have prophecies about this time that we're in being a time of very intense transformation. Uh you know, cultures like the Hopi talk about it transition from the fourth world to the fifth world or the Aztecs talking about the age of the fifth son and age of the sixth son. So 2012 was a very deep dive to try to understand um you know how how these prophetic knowledge systems related to the time that we're in now.
Um and I you know in that book I looked a lot at kind of um you know metaphysics uh you know Fred of Capros the Dao physics the relationship between kind of uh indigenous cosmologies uh eastern metaphysics and modern western science and quantum physics and so on. Um so that in a way like you know was sort of the groundwork in a way for for what we're talking about today. And then my third book came out about 10 years later. Uh that book was called How soon is Now? Uh and in that book it was it was basically for me for me my my books have always had followed kind of like um uh you know to me it seems like a very rational uh progress in a way because you know I first wanted to understand you know was there anything else uh you know outside of the western you know kind of narrow scientific worldview.
Uh I discovered that there were these other dimensions and other realities which we'll talk about you know in more depth over over the course of the month. Uh I then realized that we we'd undervalued uh indigenous knowledge and kind of suppressed and ridiculed and dismissed it and that these cultures were telling us something very profound about the time that we're in now that we needed to understand how you know figure out how to listen to them, how to learn from them and so on. And then when I understood that um you know that the pro these prophecies were were suggesting that we were going through this you know intense planetary transformation you know transformation of human consciousness you know destruction recreation process uh that um led me to want to think about that not just on a on a metaphysical level but then actually on a practical level like okay if you know if if human society has to reconfigure itself to deal with the ecological emergency you know what does that actually look life I felt there wasn't you know and and for me one of the ways I've written books is always kind of like I feel this kind of like almost like anxiety this like uncomfortability it's like there's there's something that I feel needs to be understood in the culture and you know if I go to a bookstore or a library I can't find that thing that that it's like missing a vitamin or something so ultimately I realized that like maybe I'm the one who has to you know create that thing or that or you know create that vitamin or something so you know how soon is now was my was my effort to kind of think about what this new paradigm would be and and and kind of the systems and structures that we would have to kind of put in place um around this ecological emergency. And um you know for me as I mentioned earlier some something that I had realized was that um because the scientific materialist worldview you know automatically engenders kind of separation and nihilism we probably can't you know you know fundamentally address uh you know what we're doing ecologically without a new paradigm or a new worldview. Uh and so that's why I think uh yeah the subject matter that we're looking at this month is so incredibly important.
I think if there was to be a revolution in the modern psyche uh away from uh materialism you know both in its scientific technological form but also in terms of mass consumption and consumerism and this idea that you can sort of fill the inner void through you know objects or even experiences um you know that that that that could provide the basis for a healthy uh future culture for humanity. So I I think it's actually very very important and very and very deep in that sense. Um yeah just uh I mean Terrence Mc Kenna has you know been one of my you know philosophical inspirations for a long time. I don't agree with everything. I mean he's you know extremely entertaining and mesmerizing as a thinker and speaker.
Um this is one quote uh that you know has sort of resonated with me. Our institutions or epistemologies are bankrupt and exhausted. We must start a new and hope that with the help of shematically inspired personalities, we can cultivate the ancient mystery once again. The logos can be unleashed and the voice that spoke to Plato and Permendedes and Heracitis can speak again in the minds of modern people. When it does, the alienation will be ended because we will have become the alien. This is the promise that is held out. It may seem to some a nightmare vision, but all historical changes of immense magnitude have a charged emotional quality.
they propel people into a completely new world. Okay. So, um yeah. So, so you know essentially um um you know there is as we're going to as we're going to explore in in subsequent weeks when I I decided to start the seminar from more of this high level you know kind of inquiry around um you know the scientific paradigm and quantum physics and so on for for reasons which I hope will become clear because I feel unless we have some coherence around that then then the evidence almost doesn't really matter. Uh and in fact when I wrote this piece for um this this contest uh you know they were asking for the best evidence for life after death or conscious after death.
And as we'll explore, there's a lot of incredibly fascinating evidence like children who remember their you know past lives and early childhood you know very specifically and you know you know you know professors who've taken them to meet the families and and shown that they have similar birthmarks and so on. you know, extraordinary evidence from from mediumship, uh, where, you know, people are given like privileged information, you know, related to that person or able to speak with somebody in kind of the discourse they used to have when they were alive and so on. Um, even though the medium didn't really have access to that that discourse or understand it. Um, you know, near-death experience, you know, which we can, you know, which we'll go through in in in some depth. Uh although there's a question, you know, whether those are actually, you know, showing us insight into an after- deathath realm or if it's more kind of like a, you know, BTO of of the living realm in a way.
Um but all of that evidence is going to always be, you know, dismissed unless unless we kind of, you know, address the underlying paradigm. Uh and and that means somehow finding our way past reductive scientific materialism. Uh so so Chris Carter is a wonderful writer in these whole areas. He has a a trilogy of books um science and psychic phenomena, science in the near-death experience and science in the afterlife. Uh and in science and the psychic phenomena he goes through all the different uh arguments, you know, common arguments made by skeptics to refute psychic phenomena and kind of you know refutes them, you know, quite effectively.
Uh but he also points out that um you know even though if you have a mass of favorable evidence that exists that can hardly be disputed if one has ever taken the trouble to look at it but but it doesn't really matter because the conclusions to which the evidence seems to point you know only depending on the skeptical objections and by implication of their underlying philosophical and scientific assumptions. So, so you know, you know, the the understanding of the afterlife, the understanding of psychic phenomena, you know, all all these areas are contingent upon, you know, digging down into the the this paradigm. Then, you know, we've seen it so far. Um, you know, somebody was last night I was talking to somebody about kind of like the debates between like Deepak Chopra and Sam Harris and so on, which ended up, you know, with kind of Deepak looking kind of, you know, dismissible. Um I mean it requires a lot of subtlety and a and a lot of work on sort of rhetoric and language to kind of uh you know reach a level where um yeah we we we can kind of you know contest the scientific materialist paradigm um at at at its own at its own kind of level in a way.
Um and then and then there's you know intrinsic there there at least up to now there's been these kind of intrinsic aspects of these area other areas which are um make them more complex um and and more more difficult. Uh George Hansen has this wonderful book, The Trickster and the Paranormal. Uh where he he talks about how sigh phenomena, paranormal phenomena, supernatural tend to be fundamentally linked linked to destructuring, change, transition, disorder, the ephemeral, you know, fluidity, ambiguity, the blurring of boundaries. Uh and uh by contrast, the phenomena are repressed or excluded with structure, routine stasis, regularity, precision, rigid, rigidity, and clear demarcation. So kind of um they they you know he believes that out of their own nature they tend to fall you know outside of institutional structures.
They have a sort of subversive quality in and of themselves. Now I I actually don't agree with Hansen ultimately. I think that this is the case when you have a civilization that's founded on a kind of scientific materialist worldview then of course these are you know anything sigh anything paranormal are destructuring elements or sub subversive elements but you know we we do see you know complex societies that have completely integrated um psychic phenomena and um you know reincarnation and understanding of the mechanics of reincarnation and obviously You know, one of the most significant of those and probably the most sophisticated is Indotibetan Buddhism, you know, which has developed a whole science of reincarnation over, you know, over a thousand years and so on and um and also has a place for different types of psychic phenomena, you know, understands their their value, their meaning, you know, and so on. So, um but you know, from where we are now in our current cultural paradigm, I think Hansen's work uh you know, makes a very good point. Um, similarly, Colin Wilson uh wrote a book about the afterlife where he noted that the evidence for life after death shall always be strong enough to reassure the converted but never conclusive enough to have the slightest influence on the unbelievers.
Um, so that's quite fascinating. It like falls into this, you know, kind of permanent twilight, this gray area. And um yeah, you know, be because I think it's so crucial um you know, that we we somehow push it, you know, above above that out of that twilight uh and into and into the the sort of clear light of conscious inquiry. Um and I I think it's possible to do that. It's it's just still kind of like a uh a struggle to get there, if that makes sense. Um William James who we'll come back to uh later uh notes that a concrete test of what is real of what is really true has never been uh agreed on.
I just love that comment. I think it's uh very significant. I mean you know one question is you know what what kind of reasoning you know could be accepted from a scientific framework for the existence of a form of afterlife or for reincarnation or something. I mean um you know you're never gonna you know obviously you know you'd have to die yourself to I mean you know how else could you prove that there is or isn't an afterlife right um so um yeah and so we could look at it for instance you know we don't actually know for certain that anybody besides ourselves actually has a subjective consciousness right like we we live under the assumption that everybody does have subjective awareness like ourselves and our beings like ourselves you know who have free will to a certain extent or at least a you know expression of it but that that actually is ultimately you know based on on you know reasoning on deductive reasoning inductive reasoning inference you know we see how other people react how that person you know reacts to pain the way I do they react to pleasure the way I do you know they they you know they they reason as I do and we make you know a certain set of you know kind of judgments um you know around them and around ourselves and we're like okay we we live in a world of other people where other people you know equally as as I do, you know, have have consciousness and will. Um, so, you know, in the case of, you know, near-death, I mean, in the case of um kind of establishing um, you know, kind of um, yeah, kind of the possibility of reincarnation in the afterlife and so on, you know, we we could use the same type of type of reasoning.
I mean, you know, we're never going to know for 100 with a 100% certainty, but other hand, you know, a concrete test of what is really true has never been agreed on and perhaps can never be agreed on. So, science is always in that sense um you know, building theories and and hypotheses and probabilities, you know. Um um yeah this is just one of you know as we'll talk about in future weeks there are many many books on this topic that um you know and many many you know philosophers and scientists you know like Chris Carter who did incredible amounts of research and became completely you know convinced that there's some form of afterlife and that the evidence really supports it. uh and they always come up in the same kind of level of frustration at the impossibility of of having this taken seriously by by by the culture at large. Uh so this is um you know just one example of that.
Dr. Jeanjac Charbanier uh who wrote a book called seven reasons to believe in the afterlife. According to skeptics and detractors, the existence of a life after this life and therefore of a hereafter has not been scientifically proven because for them the experience of a near-death experience is a phenomenon that is observable only by those undergoing it. Uh the NDE is of course not reproducible in a laboratory or measurable by equipment designed for this purpose. Since these two conditions of being reproducible and measurable, which are deemed to be essential for a proof to be scientific, are missing, the hereafter therefore is not about to be recognized as a scientific reality.
Reasoning in this way, scientific thought becomes frighteningly reductionist and authenticating what belongs to the realm of the real. Yeah. So, so you know, it's it's there there is a level of philosophical, you know, work that somehow needs to be done to move the needle here. uh and you know it's it's also the case that there are more and more there's more and more forms of evidence even around you know psychic phenomena paranormality you know if you look at the works of people like Dean Raiden and Rupert Sheldrake and so on uh it's almost like there's an alternative you know kind of academy uh of of thinkers and and researchers and philosophers um you know who really you know I mean I I would say it's been you know the existence of psychic phenomena has been very much demonstrated obviously if you have the you personal experience of it. You know, you don't you don't doubt it anymore more.
You actually know it, you know, rather than just think it, you know. Uh so yeah, I thought we'd go back and talk about, you know, the formation of the modern scientific worldview, uh you know, which developed, you know, over the last say five centuries. Um just a little quick review. I mean, Copernicus, um you know, was the one who realized that the earth, you know, was not at the center of of the universe or of the solar system. uh Renee Deart uh developed the concept of mindbody dualism you know I think therefore I am uh Isaac Newton um you know developed the theory of gravity um and Charles Darwin developed evolution so it's just kind of you know it's kind of I think useful to get the sort of spread of of how these these ideas have developed over the last centuries this is a beautiful image of Newton from uh William Blake uh Isaac Newton I love I actually just love this painting of Newton because you know obviously these people just you know when we think about them they're just these kind of abstractions but when I look at this painting of him he looks like you know a cool young dude like a hipster alchemist dude like the people that I know in England like my friend David Luke who runs you know Breaking Convention and you know studies you know the paranormal and so on you know he just kind of looks like an awesome you know character somehow uh but anyway yeah so some of Newton's ideas is that you know there was you know an absolute space that continues news on you know in a kind of unvarying way and similarly there was an absolute time.
So they were separate but but equivalent domains. Um, one of the philosophers who uh I worked with a lot in the 2012 book is Gene Gibbser uh who wrote a book called The Everpresent Origin. And um GBser um kind of looked at the uh evolution of consciousness in terms of um yeah kind of these different structures in a very kind of Germanic way. uh he talked about the aboriginal structure of consciousness, the magical structure, the mythological uh structure of consciousness, then the mental rational structure. Uh and he believed that, you know, we were currently at the end of the mental rational structure and that we were moving, you know, kind of through towards a crisis that would lead to a mutational break into a new structure of consciousness that he he called the integral or the apectival.
And uh Gibbser said that in this mental rational uh structure, part of what had happened to us is that we'd become kind of fascinated by space and matter in a way that um you know wasn't the case for you know people in the mythological or Aboriginal structures and you know so in the Renaissance we discovered perspective you know suddenly we kind of located ourselves in space um and in a sense uh we became so kind of haunted or fascinated by space It's almost like we got possessed by space and we began to you know take this idea of a spatialized materialized universe and kind of um you know extend that idea to things that actually don't work in that way like time you know so time is not really an invariable linear extension in the same way that space is um I mean there are different different ways to you know think about the nature of time that that that that um that's just one of them. So yeah, so so so Ger felt that this kind of um kind of misperception of time that that characterized the mental rational structure was uh you know leading to this sort of crisis and this in this breakthrough into another uh form of of consciousness that he called integral or a perspectival. So yeah, so so so Newton was a you know seminal figure in kind of seeing you know space and time as these separate equivalent domains that were kind of absolute in in in this sense um uh yeah and and you know similarly the the mechanistic worldview um you know the kind of you know clockwork universe linear cause and effect uh you know these all became more and more you know after Newton kind of the the basic understanding you know of of the modern psyche uh you know and you know there were developments but obviously the breakthrough was was Einstein space we realized that space and time are not separate domains they're you know totally interrelated uh in the space-time continuum uh where you know objects physical objects have a gravitational force they curve space uh time bends as well well time is subjective to the perceiver Mendel saxs and other physicists said uh relativity theory implies that the space and time coordinates are only the elements ments of a language that is used by an observer to describe his environment. So that was like the first big shift. I mean I can say you know we can look at the 20th century as these kind of successive scientific revolutions whereas before you know maybe there was one every you know 300 years you know suddenly there was like you know five in in in the last century you know uh you know Vander Heisenberg you know we're super lucky that that Heisenberg uh you know who was a Nazi you know didn't develop the nuclear bomb you know before before you know we did uh but he developed the uncertainty principle uh he realized that you know with quantum objects such as photons and electrons it was impossible to determine both their position momentum at the same time and if you try to observe the momentum then the quantum element appears as a wave.
Uh if you try to observe or determine the um you know the position the quantum object appears as a particle but in fact uh they're neither or both at the same time. uh the path of the electron comes into existence when we observe it. Uh Heisenberg said um and Neils Boore his collaborator isolated material particles are abstractions uh their properties only being definable and observable through their interactions with other systems. Um so this is from Heisenberg's book the physicist conception of nature. Um and yeah, it it takes quite a considerable effort to um kind of integrate uh this this understanding. I mean, you know, and it's only been 50 70 years that we we've had this new understanding.
So may maybe that makes sense that we're still integrating it. Uh we can no longer speak of the behavior of the particle independently of the process of observation. As a final consequence, the natural laws formulated mathematically in quantum theory no longer deal with the elementary particles themselves with our with our knowledge of them. Nor is it any longer possible to ask whether or not these particles exist in space and time objectively. When we speak of the picture of nature in the exact science of our age, we do not mean a picture of nature so much as a picture of our relationships with nature. Science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer but sees itself as an actor in this interplay between man and nature.
The scientific method of analyzing, explaining and classifying has become conscious of its limitations which arise out of the fact that by its intervention, science alters and refashions the object of investigation. In other words, method and object can no longer be separated. Yeah. Yeah. By its intervention, science alters and refashions the object of investigation. So we're actually always changing uh participating uh even when we're you know just trying to to observe. So some of the you know kind of outline of some of the discoveries of quantum physics that photons and election electrons are not solid things but probability waves spreading through space. uh photons and electron wave packets are found at more than one place at the same time.
Uh they only become def definite particles when an observation is made. Uh quantum jumps electrons can vanish from one point and appear at another without passing uh through the you know space in between. Uh non-locality that's a critical one. Once correlated quantum objects remain linked despite vast distances, if the probability I have this um if you know if one if one side of the of the of the connected object is collapsed make an observation the other object is affected as well. Uh the change happens instantly uh without any you know space for a message to be sent. Uh and what this means that the objects are cannot are not connected uh in the normal way through spaceime.
They're connected through a transcendent domain. They're they're they're they're inherently inexricably linked. Um macro objects are also made up of quantum phenomena. They seem solid uh because of their their mass and their scale. The probability waves spread out slowly. And the material physical world only comes into existence when a conscious observer makes an observation. Um and a correlate of that there's ultimately only one consciousness that uh observes and chooses uh the existence of a four-dimensional space-time continuum means that what we perceive is the linear direction of time is only an illusion created by our particular perspective. Arthur Edington is a physicist. He said um events do not happen.
They are just there and we come across them. Uh Edington also said that um you know the the universe you know ultimately is made up of mind stuff rather than matter. um reflecting you know identical to kind of the eastern mysticism uh mystical perspective that um you know the I am that that that the underlying reality is actually consciousness um shoot I can't um in in spacetime everything that for each of us constitutes past and present and future is given end block each observer as his time passes discovers so to speak different slices of spaceime which appear to him as successive aspects of the material reality though in reality the the the entirety of events constituting spaceime exists prior to his knowledge of them. So once again there you know the the these physicists you know recognized the um kind of um you know philosophical transformation uh that their that that their discoveries led to and you know wrestled with it at depth tried tried to explain it tried tried to understand it um and yeah many beautiful formulations. Um the model of spacetime and relativ physics is the timeless space of a higher dimension in which all events are interconnected but the connections themselves are not causal.
Um instead of linear cause and effect the link between events in quantum mechanics is probabilistic and discontinuous discontinuous defined by the perceptions of a conscious observer. Um yeah I mean I think very few western thinkers uh before 20th century quantum physics could go into this level of understanding. I mean one of them is definitely Nichi uh who who understood that cause and effect was actually something that that was a human construct that we kind of um you know kind of imprinted or imagined on onto the onto the physical universe. uh Nichi said um wrote in the in itself there is nothing of causal connections of necessity or of psychological non-freedom there the effect does not follow the cause there is no rule or law it is we alone who have devised cause sequence for each other relativity constraint number law freedom motive and purpose and when we project and mix the symbol world into things as if it existed in itself we act once more as we've always acted mythologically Um yeah so um you know so just to reiterate you know some of some of the the postulates I mean you know Neils Boore noted that those who were not shocked when they first come across quantum theory have not understood it um you know according to what you know they're postulating time space and consciousness are intimately interrelated and inseparable and there exists a higher dimension outside our perception of spaceime in which everything is interconnected it happens at once. Then actually if we look at like string theory which we'll talk about a little bit um later on there may be you know multiple you know various higher dimensions um or or you know more intensive five dimensions subtler dimensions um yeah matter you know is largely nonmaterial.
If you if you blow up an atom the size of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. Its center would be the size of a grain of salt. The nucleus elections. Electrons cannot be considered objects in a traditional sense of the term. They don't exist the way matters. Matter exists, but only events tendencies to exist. Um John Archerald Wheeler, another amazing physicist of the 20th century, um who came up with the delayed choice experiment which we'll look at. uh participant is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the observer of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part.
It can't be done. Quantum mechanics says it. Wheeler asks, "May the universe in some sense be brought into being by the participation of those who participate." Uh and he postulates the universe is brought into being by the conscious observer. Uh Wheeler also uh said there is no spaceime, there is no time, there is no before, there is no after. The question what happens next is without meaning. Um yeah. So as you know Capra discovered in you know DAO of physics um you know the the the quantum physicists through their you know kind of experimental um efforts into the you know to discovering kind of the underlying nature of of the physical world ended up in kind of like a a Zen Buddhism you know kind of framework uh with all these paradoxes um uh you know like uh like you know time and no time you know Um David Bow very interesting um physicist uh he developed the concept of the holographic universe.
uh he proposed that um the universe and the brain both have holographic uh principles and how they function and they may actually be the projections of um you know kind of a two-dimensional surface even uh and this was f David Pete uh wrote a biography of bow um the universe according to bow actually has two faces more precisely two orders the explicit order the explicate order corresponding to the physical world as we know it in the day-to-day reality and a deeper more fundamental mental order which Bow calls the implicate order. Uh the implicate order uh could be described as a vast as the vast hollow movement. Uh we see only the surface of this movement as it presents or um uh I can't see that word from moment to moment in time and space but we see in the world the explicate order is more is more than than the surface of the implicate order as it unfolds. Um anyway, yeah. So, um um yeah.
So, so so so for bone um there is an explicit and an and an implicate order implicate implicate order. Um and um and the universe itself is like a hologram or functions on holographic principles. Uh yeah just very quickly just to refresh you know so we keep it in our minds the double slit experiment uh which is considered kind of the you know one of the foundational experiments of quantum physics. Um you know you had these electrons there were two slits um you know the the the electrons appear as these kind of interference patterns wave patterns um if you're just observing their their kind of momentum. If you fire them one by one, they turn back into particles and and and um yes, this was like this essential paradox.
Um and um you know, as as Friha Capra notes and also Gwami um yeah, you know, you can't say they're waves, you can't say they're particles, you can't say they're not waves, you can't say they're not particles. uh it ends up being very much like Nagarjuna's uh kind of um precips about the ultimate nature um of reality you know where it does not exist does not not exist does not both exist and not exist nor does it neither exist and not exist um more complex was the delayed choice experiment uh where it was kind of similar where you're you know shooting these photons this photon beam splits up according by these mirrors and the patterns cross back over. Uh and uh they found that um you know there was a decision at the very last moment whether or not to insert a mirror uh which allowed them to measure the wave aspect um and so it would have been when the light had already traveled past the point of splitting uh thought if you consider them as ordinary Newtonian objects but when they inserted that mirror it always shows the wave aspect when they don't insert it it showed the part particle aspect um and um yeah it seemed as if the light quanta was responding uh instantly and retroactively. Um but as um you know Gwami talks about in I believe the selfware universe uh the the you know the wave splits whenever there are two available uh paths. Uh when we choose to observe the photon in one path are collapsing the wave exerts a non-local influence on the wave in the other path and negates the possibility of a photon being seen in that other path.
Such a non-local influence may seem retroactive but we're influencing only possibilities in potentia. There is no breakdown of causality uh because there cannot there cannot be a signal transmitted uh in this way. Uh so Gwami points out there's no paradox in the delayed choice experiment if we give up the idea there is a fixed and independent material world even when we are not observing it. Uh so when we're not observing when there's no conscious observer um the material world um you know sort of becomes probability probability waves and as soon as the um you know conscious observer turns up uh it collapses back into definable um objects discrete objects uh and so on. Uh another formulation of this was the Schroinger's cat hypothesis.
Uh the idea was that if you have a cat in a sealed box uh with a sort of radioactive particle that probabilistically is going to switch on or off, it would switches on then the uh a poison is released and then kills the cat. Uh but if you until you open the box, you know, if there's 50% chance that poison was released until you open the box, the cat is is is you know, both dead and alive or neither, you know. Yeah. Both dead and alive. Uh so the uh you know interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation a system stops being a super superp position of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place.
Um or the many worlds interpretation um which is essentially that every decision leads to a split and creates like a new parallel universe. Um when the box is open the observer and the possibly dead cat split into an observer looking at a box with a dead cat and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. Since the dead and alive states are decoherent, there's no effect of communication or interaction between them. I don't I I personally don't really like the many worlds or parallel universe uh interpretation. Uh I think that the uh I mean for me I don't know why. What do I know?
But the Copenhagen interpretation seems uh most most likely to me. Uh I I I I think it would be too uh laborious for for um you know the universe to be constructed of these infinite parallel worlds where all the decisions keep splitting off forever and ever. I think it would uh uh be tedious really. Uh so Emwami in physics of the soul writes the consciousness of the subject in a subject object experience is the same consciousness as the ground of all being. Therefore consciousness is unitive. there's only one subject consciousness and we are that consciousness. So that's kind of the basic statement of uh you know the cinemistic idealist idea.
Um yeah so some of this you know relationships from quantum physics and mysticism or we could say esoteric science as Diana was was was talking about. Um so yeah the ministic idealism paradigm consciousness is the fundamental reality physical stuff is a projection of that unitary indivisible consciousness the I am the I am that uh there's a higher dimension of spaceime where everything we experience as as happening for a limited perspective has already occurred or you know it's once again our language kind of blocks us here but um yeah that um you know we we you know there there's a dimension beyond our limited perspective spacetime uh in which everything has already occurred or has occurred in kind of a simultaneous all at oneness. Uh if we talk about this idea of moia enlightenment or realization, it would be a shift in our identification from the ego-based level to to to recognizing oursel as as that you know that non-dual unitary indivisible level. Uh and also you know we're not we can't be separate or observe reality. we are always participating in it and creating it in some sense.
Um so Robert Lanza I don't know if people know this book bioentrism uh very very interesting I mean he um you know I think it's very similar philosophy ultimately to Gwami's uh from a biological perspective he looks at how um kind of uh you know his perspective is that consciousness has constructed the the universe and you know the the world in such a way uh in order to have you know the experience that that we're having. So, so um yeah, it's like fine-tuned for the existence of for for the development, the evolution of consciousness and so on. Um consciousness creates the physical unus organisms. Space and time are not real things but mental constructs, tools for our perceptions. Lens writes, "Some may imagine there are two worlds, one out there and a separate one being cognized inside the skull.
But the two worlds model is a myth. Nothing is perceived except the perceptions themselves and nothing exists outside of consciousness. If time is an illusion, if reality is created by our own consciousness, can this consciousness ever truly be extinguished? Uh Robert asks, Lens asks and he ends up, you know, basically feeling that the biocentric worldview leads to, you know, some level of of certainty in and there being some form of afterlife uh experience. Uh energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change form. Uh the essence of who you are, which is energy, can neither diminish nor go away. There simply isn't any away in which to go.
We inhabit a closed system. Uh so you know Gwami uh borrows from the work of Douglas Hobster uh who wrote Godal Echer Bach and also book a book called I am a strange loop. uh you know if if there is ultimately this you know there's only unitary indivisible consciousness you know how do we end up having an experience of a separate identity an egoic based identity it's funny because I always remember you know when my daughter uh was was um you know maybe two or something she used to refer to herself in the third person um and it you know took a while for her to see herself as an eye um so I found that quite fascinating that's a universal phenomenon So um you know so on the one hand that's reinforced through culture like everyone is you know calling her her name and trying to get her to you know point to herself and say her name. So ultimately you understand that you have a name that you're separate you know from the totality you're this identification you know and so on. Um and um you know Hopster and Gwami argue that our sense of separate identity is developed through something called a tangled hierarchy.
Um and um you know examples of this are uh the man from Cree who says all cretans are liars but then how could that be possible if he's from CIT then you're sort of stuck in this you know constant loop uh or the you know the cher drawings of the the two hands drawing each other or these kind of endless uh staircases or um you know levels that return back to the original place. Um so yeah we we you know at some point in our development uh we discover such a strange loop and it's in that in in that recognition that we kind of jump out of that uh to to have this illusory uh you know kind of understanding of ourselves as an eye or an ego separate from the totality. Uh the strange loop phenomenon occurs whenever by moving upwards or downwards through levels of some hierarchal system we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started. uh you know so we can look at the psychological eye or ego as a kind of necessary narrative fiction built out of symbolic structures and yeah my my perspective is really that um you know if we are all ultimately you know this indivisible consciousness that consciousness cannot actually have an experience uh of itself without creating some form of separation. So it it needs to develop you know kind of uh you know there's a necessity let's say in developing separate kind of containers of consciousness who can then reflect on on consciousness itself uh explore invent create you know within within consciousness.
Uh you know another element in the sort of new paradigm is synchronicity. Um, F. David Peed is a physicist who worked with David Bow. He wrote a wonderful book, Synchronicity, the bridge between matter and mind. And he talked about synchronicities as the joker and nature's pack of cards. For they refuse to play by the rules. And they offer a hint that in our quest we're certainly about the universe. We have ignored some vital clues. Um, you know, Carl Young looked at the subject of the physicist Wolf Gang Pali and wrote a book called synchronicity and a causal ordering principle. uh in which he noted that synchronistic phenomena prove the simultaneous occurrence of meaningful equivalences in heterogeneous causally unrelated processes.
In other words, they prove that a content perceived by an observer can at the same time be represented by an outside event without any causal connection. From this, it follows either the psyche cannot be localized in time or that space is relative to the psyche. Um in another discussion, Jung said that ultimately it suggests that mind and matter are different forms of the same thing. And uh Young's book uh Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he um recounts many amazing uh synchronicities. I mean, one that I recall is um I think he had a dream uh one night of a of a of a patient uh you know, shooting himself or something and then he discovered that happened during the night.
Um another I can't remember exactly. There was one where he had a he was talking with a patient about uh an analogy of a of an insect or something like that and then that insect appeared on the window sill. Anyway, I mean, Young very much was kind of like a uh, you know, kind of modern western shaman who, you know, was kind of uh surrounded by an ambiance of like psychic and and paranormal experience and synchronicity. Um, yeah. So, just some more uh, you know, a little deeper into physics of the soul. Um, Gwami writes, "There is no manifest quantum object until we see it. Even if the object is the entire cosmos, there is no manifest cosmos, only possibilities until the first sentient being, presumably the first living cell, observes the universe.
That observation collapses the universe along with the entire causal pathway that led to that first sentience retroactively. And the observation is self-referential. The sentience of that first living cell is co-created along with the universe. So yeah, just a totally like fascinating, you know, different angle on on, you know, from the, you know, kind of materialist idea of a kind of linear cause and effect uh evolutionary process. Uh so if we have objects correlated not only across space but also across time, conscious choice and collapse of the causal pathway at any point of time will precipitate the entire pathway. The point to realize is that in quantum physics there is neither space nor time until consciousness has chosen to collapse an event.
Um yeah I mean Gwami and Capra I mean I point out uh the um kind of um how a lot of the you know ancient Buddhist and and Vic knowledge you know really seems to have a understanding of sort of quantum universe from the inside. Um you know much as that that Nagrajuna quote that we we mentioned earlier uh you know Ash Fagosha talked about something called suchness or tatagata. Suchness is neither that which is existence or that which is not or that which is non-existence or nor that which is at once existence and non-existence nor that which is not at once existence and non-existence uh very much like the quantum the quantum phenomena the wave of uh and so um basically what Gwami does in physics of the soul is he looks at how um these new understandings from quantum physics which match up with uh ancient knowledge allow us to sort of construct a kind of scientific hypothesis around what ho how reincarnation um could could take place. Um and um he proposes there's kind of like different kind of aspects of of of of the individual. Um and the three main ones that he defines are the the ego, the the classical self, um the quantum monad and the quantum self in his terminology.
So yeah, the ego is the classical self, the conditioned self. Uh the the ego becomes increasingly conditioned in its patterns as it get as we get older. Um and um but there's always that possibility to to to break free of those patterns. Um according to Gwami then talks about the quantum monad which is sort of the intermediary between the ego the egoic self and the quantum self. Um the theme body that reincarnates in life after life. So the quantum monab for for gwami is actually the the element that reincarnates. So essentially as we live uh you know we have our patterns of thinking willing you know willing feeling action and these are forming kind of quantum aggregates that that remain connected non-locally after we die.
And then these quantum aggregates uh seek to kind of continue the the the process uh that that was happening. And so they look for another you know sort of automatically seek uh to you know incarnate another body to to to sort of continue the journey that they're on. And then beyond the ego and the quantum monad uh Gaswami talks about something he calls the quantum self which is basically that part of us which is you know totally um undifferentiated from that that pure you know consciousness pure creativity flow uh the unconditioned kind of ultimate uh reality. Uh the ego, the classical self, as I said, it develops habitual patterns of thought and behavior as we live. Like we can see as we get older, like we tend to repeat our our our our thoughts become more uh you know, we're not we're not as fresh to new phenomena.
We're more trapped in our past perceptions and so on. Um you know, once we learn a task and for any situation involving it, the likelihood that the corresponding memory will trigger a condition response approaches 100%. Um but but you know as I said Gwami points out that we always have the possibility to break out of conditioning and this is probably also something we saw in the um kind of psilocybin studies in John's Hopkins where they gave psilocybin to normal adults you know sane adults who never had a psychedelic experience before and many of them uh saw it as one of the most amazing experiences of their lives you know on a par with the birth of their first child or their marriage. And uh one thing that they noted in psychological exams they gave them 6 months, a year, two years, 5 years after is that they had permanent changes in some of their uh kind of you know psychological tendencies which tend to become more predictable with age. So one of them was that they had a much greater amount of openness to new experience.
So uh yeah it's very interesting. It it does seem that psychedelics have like a you know a kind of de demonstrable effect at kind of keeping the ego more supple and flexible if they're used uh properly at least. Uh and Gwami notes that in the same way that classical Newtonian physics is now seen as a subset of quantum physics behaviorist psychology can be recognized as a special case of the more general quantum picture. You know, so you know, behaviorism is is that tendency of our, you know, normal self, our egoic self to become kind of totally patterned and conditioned to not be fresh, to sort of become stale, just repeating experience over and over again. You know, we definitely see it with, you know, parents, old people and so on.
But but then but then that's only a part of the the you know, the the larger possibilities that that that are available to us in in the self. uh the quantum monad uh the identity that survives from one arcation incarnation to another. So it's that aggregate of thinking, feeling and willing that somehow exists in in this quantum realm uh that that you know kind of it sort of just sort of automatically seeks to perpetuate itself and to find another body and continue it its journey and form. Uh and it's a level of individuality that is intermediate between the ego and the quantum self. uh you could also think of it as as the theme body uh or Gwami talks about the jivatmon or jva in East Indian traditions.
Um in this book by James Matlock which we'll look at later in the course called signs of reincarnation he develops something that he calls the processional soul theory and he talks about the stream of consciousness that animates a body during life that continues into death and persists through death until it becomes associated with possesses another body generally one not yet born. Uh so yeah that's a similar similar concept and uh Ruff Steiner has a similar idea I think talked about as the theme body. Um yeah then for Gwami you have the quantum self uh that that aspect of our being that is the universal consciousness itself. I mean you know I guess in some sense that actually is all there is everything else is just you know transitory temporary illusion. Uh but you know that illusion is still persistent and it's still kind of who we are in a way.
Um so yeah that would be paramatman or atman in the gwami's Indian tradition uh it would be pure creativity flow uh after David P in his book on synchronicities talks about how synchronicities epiphies peak and mystical experiences are all cases which creativity breaks through the barriers of the self and allows awareness to flood through the whole domain of consciousness. It is the human mind operating for a moment in its true order and moving through orders of increasing subtlety reaching past the source of mind and matter into creativity itself. So that's kind of the the quantum self in its proper domain. And you know we we in our lives we have you know moments you know whether we when we're when we fall in love when we when we make something beautiful when we create art uh where we're really kind of you know united with that with that quantum self and its infinite field of potentiality. Um yeah so that's a picture of Gwami a cute guy uh and yeah so he talks about these distinct patterns of conditioned thought feeling and action which continue from life to life and form these kind of quantum aggregates and that he believes that you know what he's talking about here are the same as what the mystical traditions talk about as the subtle bodies.
Uh the mental body represents the individual's thought pattern as a kind of quantum aggregate. The vital body is made up the individual's pattern of action and feeling. Um and yeah the the a particular and individual quantum monad develops these vital and mental memories of past contexts over successive lives uh which sort of drive its further incarnational kind of uh journey. Uh and yet beyond these habitual tendencies that are become worn like grooves in an old record there's a body that Gwami talks about as the supermental intellect containing the archetypal themes that shape the movements of the physical mental and vital bodies. uh yeah and these are you know two two traditions the uh cababalistic tradition on the right and and I believe it's the um you know sort of Hindu tradition on on the left uh where we talk about these different bodies these kind of sheets the physical body the vital body the mental body the supermental intellect the body of bliss limitless body and similarly with cabala you have the you know manif physical body of manifestation formation creation pure thought and then sort of the unity consciousness uh the indivisible oneness.
Um and I think this is my last slide. This is from a Sufi philosopher who is a very difficult uh person to study and read but I feel like I've really gotten a lot of interesting ideas from him. He wrote a book called the transcendent unity of of of religions. uh where he looked at um kind of the the you know how I mean you have you know Islam and you know Jew Judaism and uh Christianity uh kind of in conflict on the sort of esoteric level but there's actually an esoteric level where um they don't really conflict and it can be understood as a process that's unfolding through history in a way. Uh but anyway in in this particular quote Shuan talks about um what he talks about the sufficient reason for the existence of human of the human creature is the capacity to think not to think just anything but to think about what matters and finally about what alone matters.
Man is the only being on earth able to foresee death and who desires to know and is capable of knowing the why of the world. No one can deny that at that it is in the fundamental nature of man to ask himself these questions and to have in consequence the right to answers and further to have access to them precisely by virtue of this right whether through revelation or through intellection each of these forces sources of knowledge acting according to its own laws within the framework of the conditions that correspond to it so yeah I mean for me I felt um really connected to this idea that um you know that something Yeah, somehow like one of the reasons we're actually here is to think about uh and reflect upon kind of the ultimate nature of reality, you know, death and life. And you know, it's just funny how that is um kind of so suppressed and taboo in our society. It's like this of this this basic aspect of of our being, you know, um is considered ridiculous, you know, in post-modern industrial society. you're supposed to be focused on, you know, I mean, you know, I was in the cafe this morning and the woman next to me was, you know, shopping for shoes online for hours.
You know, we're supposed to be focused on, you know, these, you know, people are brainwashed, you know, mind controlled into being focused on these very shallow goals. Uh, whereas we really have this, you know, profound ability as as human creatures to um reflect on the nature of reality to to to and so on. and that the the two techniques that that Shuan talks about for accomplishing this are revelation or intellection. Uh and um I was excited when I read that because that's I feel what I've been doing in my work. I mean for me the path of revelation has been you know psychedelic shamanism you know iawaska iboga dmt and so on then intellection is all the you know research philosophy thinking you know seeking to understand for all these other authors and then try to put those uh you know the revelation and the intellection together uh into kind of a coherent pattern.
Thank you so much everybody. It was great to meet you and I really appreciate your attention and look forward to hanging out again in a week.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.